PAPARAZZI (2004)
“Yeah, Clooney’s been a real goldmine…”
Director: Paul Abascal
Writer: Forrest Smith
Cinematography: Daryn Okada
Editor: Robin Russell
Music: Brian Tyler
Notable Cast: Cole Hauser, Robin Tunney, Tom Sizemore, Daniel Baldwin, Kevin Gage, Dennis Farina, Tom Hollander, Chris Rock, Mel Gibson, Matthew McConaughey, Vince Vaughn
According to Wikipedia (I know…), a “B movie” is a type of low budget commercial motion picture, which originally was a specific reference to films shown as the lesser-known second half of a double feature, similar to a “B side” in the music industry. But in more recent times, the phrase is a catch all for low budget guilty pleasures, usually of the thriller or action variety.
I actually thought they were called B movies because they would usually feature B-list actors. You’d never see an A-lister headline a B movie until their career was on the skids, a la Bruce Willis, John Travolta, etc. And it doesn’t get more B-list than Cole Hauser. And I don’t mean that as an insult. Far from it. I’m sure even he’d agree he is not an A-lister. He’s a very good, very dependable actor who always turns in solid performances, but no one could accuse him of being a movie star who puts asses in the seats.
I first came to know Mr. Hauser from his turn as the lead skinhead in John Singleton’s Higher Learning, a severely underrated flick from the director better known for Boyz n The Hood, but for my money, Higher Learning was a much more interesting and complex film, looking at college life through the lens of the nascent gender and race shit that was just starting to percolate out of far Left academia to the mainstream in the 1990’s.
It didn’t hurt that the flick was in constant rotation on the internal cable system while I was a student living in the dorms at NYU. I saw that movie more times than I care to admit, mostly out of sheer boredom, but something from it stuck with me. No idea if it holds up now, but Cole Hauser immediately stood out as an actor to watch. He played a truly odious character, but was never less than incredibly compelling. He had presence. And for that reason, I loosely followed his career from that point on.
But as with Taken, it was my dearly departed mother who turned me on to two great B movies starring Hauser in the early to mid-aughts, the film we’re here to discuss today and the underrated monster movie, The Cave. Maybe the old bird had a thing for Hauser (shame she passed away before Yellowstone. While I think that show sucks, she loved Kevin Costner, and Westerns, no doubt she’d have been a fan of that soapy slop), who knows, don’t specifically remember her mentioning him by name. Taken and Paparazzi, I understand, as they played into her long-held notions of a male protector.
But The Cave? I never knew my mother to be particularly fond of sci-fi or monster films, but boy did she love that flick. As usual, I scoffed at her viewing habits, until I watched The Cave and saw it for the pulpy entertainment it was designed to be. Not every flick has to be profound or moving or life changing. Sometimes you just want to sit down and be fucking entertained for 90 minutes. And that is a lot harder than it looks.
Which is why it is so notable when one of these films comes out of nowhere, written and directed by people you’ve never heard of, but nevertheless hits all the right notes. Paparazzi is one of those films. You look up “B movie” in the dictionary and there’s a poster for this film.
The script is inspired (like, seriously inspired, making a thriller where the PAPARAZZI are the main villains? Hilarious and amazing), the direction is solid (director Paul Abascal started out as a hairstylist, of all things, worked up to directing TV shows, landed this gig, and then promptly went back to TV where he’s been relegated ever since. Hollywood is such a racket, here this guy delivers a truly entertaining popcorn flick, and his trophy is being sent back to the ghetto of network television? Fucking criminal. He deserves much, much better), but where this film really shines is in the casting.
Goddamn does this movie have a fucking stellar cast. Actors normally relegated to supporting roles are pushed front and center and man alive, do they deliver! What a coup getting Tom Sizemore to play the main villain. Sizemore rarely got to shine like he does here. A real actor’s actor. RIP, brutha, there’ll never be another like you.
Now, having said all that, how were the 1ST 5 Minutes?
1ST 5 MINUTES
Note: Much like Alien Nation, video clips were very hard to come by for this particular title. Apologies, as always…
We get our requisite company logos, and what do we have here? Icon Productions. Mel Gibson’s company? Well, that’s fucking interesting. And totally unexpected, yet not altogether surprising that a movie star would fund a thriller where the paparazzi are the main villains. Already I’m being put in a good mood here thinking of Gibson reading this script and wanting to get it out to the public. And how often do you get a B movie financed by a big shot like that? Sign me the fuck up.
And then we’re immediately thrown into it with some cheesy ass electric guitar heavy song that is truly awful… yet oddly perfect. We are definitely in 2004, still feeling the hangover effect from the 90’s, where this film truly belongs, if we’re being honest. I mean just listen to this shit:
Amazing. So fucking bad, but perfect!
Cut to aerial shots of Los Angeles, spotlights blazing, crowds cheering, limo after limo, gigantic poster for movie within a movie, Adrenaline Force, with Cole Hauser’s mug front and center, as action star Bo Laramie. An entertainment reporter is filming their segment, which gives the audience some key info in a very organic way. Smart. Laramie is an overnight sensation as a new action hero, and this is the premiere of what is sure to be the start of a new franchise. Fans eagerly await Laramie’s arrival.
We cut to inside one of the limousines, and it is Laramie, along with his wife, played by the great Robin Tunney (LOVE!), and young son. They are super anxious and excited for this moment. They present as a very warm, loving family who are unaccustomed to the hysteria of being famous.
The limo door is opened by some PR lady, and Laramie says his farewells to his wife and son, tells them he’ll see them inside. Notable here is the subtle foreshadowing of how this new life will separate him from his family. This fame takes him away at first physically, and if they weren’t such a solid family in the first place, it would destroy them emotionally as well. Again, smart. Nice to see this kind of thing right up front.
Laramie takes to the red carpet in a dizzying assault of fans and flashbulbs. This sequence is edited brilliantly, really showcasing what it must be like to walk through that maelstrom while keeping your poise and a smile on your face.
And then smash cut to an aerial shot of a beach. Total silence. It’s a fantastic cut from that loud orgy to serene nature. Director is showing great instincts so far. We push in to a man jogging on the beach, it’s Laramie, whose voiceover kicks in at this point, expressing amazement at the premiere from the night before and this new life he’s suddenly been thrust into, as the new “it” guy in Hollywood.
This leads to my Favorite Line in the film, when referencing his new stardom, “That’s an illusion. That’s not real.” Great insight into the character, and a smart way of communicating how grounded he is, and not up in his head. Hauser’s delivery here is also on point.
He continues his jog as a group of female joggers pass him and all giggle and stare and look back. He remarks how that never happened in high school, and again repeats my Favorite Line. Love it. But then he says the fatal line. “Life is good.” Oh, Bo, you have no idea the storm that’s coming. Poor guy.
But wait, what the fuck is this credit on screen? KEVIN “WAINGRO” GAGE is in this as one of the paparazzi villains?! YES!
Fuck. Yes!
Waingro is one of cinema’s greatest characters, and it’s all Gage. Funny thing is, Gage actually spent time in jail after Heat, and all the inmates called him Waingro. How fucking AMAZING is that? Shame this cat couldn’t get his life together, super talented actor. Man, come to think of it, Tom Sizemore, Kevin Gage AND noted drug addict Daniel Baldwin, all on the same set? The parties during filming must have been fucking bonkers!
Cut to Laramie driving his convertible, a classic Chevy Chevelle, down the PCH in Malibu. Nice. This driving sequence, which ends with him pulling up to his new gigantic house, is accompanied by a very 90’s soft rock song about selling out. Again, on its own this music is fucking terrible, but when fused with this film and these scenes, I don’t know, it’s kind of fucking perfect. Take a listen:
Perhaps because it just hearkens back to a time when I was young and had potential for the future, instead of the hollowed out husk I’ve become, I don’t know, I’m not a fucking therapist. All I know is this shitty music WORKS like gangbusters. Kind of like the awful songs in Point Break.
And that wraps up the 1ST 5 Minutes of Paparazzi. You think there’s ANY chance I’m taking this off? Produced by Mad Mel, dope editing, my Favorite Line, Kevin Gage, and cheeseball 90’s rock music? Come on, now, this flick has me primed for an excellent 90 minutes (actually, 85 minutes, which is another notch in this film’s favor, love a good sub-90 minute flick!), and Tom fucking Sizemore hasn’t even made an appearance yet!
The rest of the flick
You know why I like sub-90 minute flicks? They get right into it. And so it is here, as Bo takes his son to the local market, and an excited fan comes up looking for Bo’s signature, to which he is only too happy to oblige. Bo Laramie is a man of the people!
But when she hands him the thing to sign, his expression goes dark, and we see it’s a tabloid, with him on the cover, naked, a little black bar hiding his privates, captioned Get Shorty, implying his dick is small. Amazing. He quickly signs it and exits the store with his son.
And who is sitting outside reading the newspaper? Kevin motherfucking Gage! YES! Let’s go!
Robin Tunney’s Abby is quite upset, can’t believe this sort of thing is legal. An exasperated and clearly frustrated Laramie tries to calm her nerves by telling her he’ll take care of the tabloid issue, which seems to work for now.
They head to their son’s soccer game, where almost immediately Laramie sees a paparazzo, Tom Sizemore’s Rex Harper, taking pictures of his kid. Goes to confront him. Love the interplay between these two. Sizemore’s “Oh, hey…” when Laramie walks over is hilarious, as is his under the breath “Sure thing, famous guy,” moments later when he pretends to respect Laramie’s privacy.
The soccer game continues, and when it’s finished, Laramie sees old Rex back to taking pictures and just loses it. Rushes over, grabs the camera and smashes it to the ground, yells at Rex and turns to walk away. Rex goads him with a comment about steamy pictures of Abby, and Laramie decks him. Unfortunately for Laramie, Rex knocks on the van door right behind him and the door slides open to reveal 3 more paparazzi, who filmed the whole incident. Rex tells Laramie how he’s gonna have to pay now. Laramie is beside himself.
What follows over the course of the rest of the film is a fantastic game of cat and mouse between Laramie and the four paparazzi, who’ve taken it as their mission to destroy Laramie’s life. It’s kind of hilarious how goofy this whole concept is, but everyone is giving it their all and it’s just so fucking entertaining.
We get some great cameos of celebrities playing themselves, from Mel Gibson to Matthew McConaughey to a hilarious Vince Vaughn who has a great scene as Laramie’s co-star in Adrenaline Force 2, where he has fun at Laramie’s expense over the latest tabloid claiming Laramie got a penile enhancement overseas. They also throw in Chris Rock as a starstruck pizza delivery man Bo uses, unwittingly, to escape his house undetected one night.
It sounds dumb, but this might be my favorite movie about “Hollywood,” a genre that almost always delivers turkeys, even though the movie isn’t really about Hollywood, which again sounds really goofy considering what it’s about, but fans of this flick will understand my meaning.
It’s really a movie about a guy whose family is being harassed, and the measures he takes to protect them and neutralize the threat. It merely uses Hollywood and the paparazzi as a backdrop. And therein lies the film’s genius. I can’t stress enough how fucking inspired it is to make the paparazzi the bad guys, and such malevolent bad guys at that. And then, to make PAPARAZZI the name of the magazine they work for. Hilarious. How can you not enjoy a movie like this?!
Take the film’s standout sequence, and my Favorite Scene, when our four paparazzi engage in a car chase with Laramie and his family one night after a party. They race alongside and in front and back of his car, taking a thousand pictures, nearly blinding Laramie with the flashbulbs, bumping the car when it tries to elude them.
Laramie’s wife and son are terrified, and Laramie’s instincts kick in and he jams on the brakes. All the paparazzi scream past him as he sits at a stop in an empty intersection that doesn’t stay empty for more than a second before an SUV comes barreling through, T-boning Laramie’s car, the side where his wife and son are. It’s a shocking moment, executed perfectly.
The paparazzi skid to a stop in their vehicles and stumble out of their cars, almost in a daze at the sight before them of a truly demolished vehicle with an, at best, passed out family inside and, at worst, well, you get the picture. But quickly enough their parasitic instincts kick in and they go back to get their cameras to cash in on what is certain to be a huge celebrity news story.
As they snap the pictures of Laramie and his family, the camera pans over to the car that hit Laramie, the driver halfway through the windshield, laying on the hood, dead. Definitely my Favorite Shot in the whole movie. Really nice layering of that reveal, because for the preceding moments you’re not even thinking of the other guy, you’re so focused on Laramie and the paparazzi guys. Very well done.
Laramie’s wife needs her spleen removed as a result of the accident, but she’ll be fine otherwise. His son, on the other hand, is in a coma and they don’t know if he’ll make it (love how, even here, there’s some scumbag right outside the room to take a picture the minute the door is cracked. Also love how Hauser plays that moment). It’s a pretty dark turn of the plot for a film like this, and I gotta say, I like it. While you’re fairly certain the kid will ultimately live and be a-ok, there’s a slight nagging suspicion they may not go that route. That’s the joy of a B-movie, they don’t play by the “rules,” necessarily, when it comes to plot mechanics. They take chances traditional studio movies avoid.
Eventually, Laramie turns the tables on the four paparazzi, and picks them off one by one. The first to die, Kevin Gage’s… Kevin (nice, but I think we’ll just refer to him as Waingro) is totally by accident at first, and then quickly turns into a crime of opportunity. After having a confrontation with Waingro at a local market, Laramie pulls over by the cliffside to calm down. After a few moments, he goes to pull out just as Gage is rounding the bend on his Harley, sending Waingro and his motorcycle over the edge of the canyon.
Laramie rushes out to help, unaware of who exactly is hanging there, but to his credit, even after he sees it’s Waingro, he tries to help him up. But hilariously, as Laramie is using all his strength to help this guy not die, Waingro starts mouthing off to him about what they’re gonna to do to Laramie next! Love it. Laramie’s like, “what did you say?” and then thinks for a moment before just letting go, causing Waingro to fall to his death (Hauser is so good in this scene).
Very smart making this the first way a kill happens. For while we can understand Laramie’s rage at these men, going from that to killing them in cold blood is a bit of a stretch. This is a fantastic morally gray (grey?) middle ground. And until the Baldwin death later on, he doesn’t actually murder anyone, directly anyway.
You have this death, and then when Tom Hollander’s English pap (love the scene where he pretends, in front of Abby, to have seen Laramie with a girl on his lap at some press junket) gets killed, it’s by the cops, who think the fake prop gun Laramie planted on him is a real one. It’s really nice the way they play this.
And even Baldwin’s death at Laramie’s actual hands only occurs after Baldwin and Sizemore break into Laramie’s house to plant little cameras all over, and Baldwin attacks Abby (Love Sizemore here as he yells “What the fuck are you doing?” and pulls Baldwin away, can’t believe what an idiot he is. When even Rex Harper thinks you’ve lost it…) and threatens to come back for the kid.
Each step of this revenge thriller is tinged with gray, and gives Laramie just enough to sidestep out and out villainy. At no point in this film do you really doubt his goodness. Weird to say about a guy who had a hand in two deaths and directly caused another, but here we are in B-movie land!
Sizemore’s desperation as the dead paparazzi start piling up is great. He has an excellent scene with Baldwin late in the film after the break in gone wrong, excoriating him for his stupidity. Sizemore effortlessly plays snakes and scumbags, and it is on full display. What a coup casting him here. Not sure this film would be the film it is without him. Scratch that, I am very sure this movie wouldn’t be what it is without Sizemore. He’s just so fucking good!
The last piece of the genius casting puzzle is complete once the paps turn up dead, as we are introduced to Dennis Farina’s Detective Burton. He plays a fantastic part here, always just one step behind Laramie in terms of unravelling the whole thing and nailing Laramie as the killer, leaving the audience questioning whether he is on Laramie’s side, or the side of blind justice.
At points it seems like he pieces together the fact that Laramie is behind all this death, but at other points he seems genuinely flummoxed by the events unfolding. A particularly tense sequence has Laramie racing home before Farina gets to his house to question him. Nothing you haven’t seen before, but it is executed perfectly.
And in a plot twist, Laramie doesn’t kill Sizemore’s character at the end, even though it’s the only time in the film where the kill could be completely and clearly justified, as Laramie has just caught Sizemore breaking into his house.
Love how this flick keeps you on your toes and doesn’t go for the obvious resolutions. Each step of the way you’re incredibly entertained while being left guessing as to how Laramie is going to pull it all off.
This movie is very, very good (and yes, Laramie’s kid lives, obvs!).
Maybe there are other actors who could have been just as good in this Bo Laramie (great fucking name, really rolls off the tongue) role, but I can’t think of one. Hauser is perfect, because he can play both good guy and bad. He has that duality in him, and it really works for this picture, and the depths his character is forced to go to in order to avenge and protect his family from the rapacious Hollywood apex predators.
That smile on his face when he is about to kill Baldwin with the baseball bat, wow. Love the slight slo-mo, gives it a horror-y vibe. Such a delicious feeling knowing the justice about to be meted out.
As an audience member, you are with Laramie every step of the way.
And in a great little ending stinger, Laramie is at yet another premiere, this time for Adrenaline Force 2, and the paps are doing their thing, when one in particular starts getting a little aggressive with Laramie, taunting the star’s weight. Laramie turns to him, you’re unsure what his reaction will be, but he disarmingly smiles and banters back, making the pap smile and keep snapping away. Laramie has learned the game. This is good shit.
No wonder my mother loved this movie.
Remember how it was remarked above how director Paul Abascal has only directed this one film? Well, what do you know, the writer, Forrest Smith, is an actor by trade, and this is HIS only feature script! How wild is that? A first time feature director and first time writer delivering a top notch entertainment like this and then getting NO WORK after?!?
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Bo Laramie was right about one thing, Hollywood certainly is an illusion.
The One Sheet
You don’t really expect movies like this to have good posters. And this flick does not have a good poster.
No, my friends, it has a GREAT poster! Love this graphic design, our two stars reflected in the lens, the flash going off, almost looks like a target, with a solid tagline. This is a fantastic poster for a film like this. Very well done.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how good the trailer for this movie is. I love the way they pull the bait and switch, making you think you’re seeing close ups of a gun only for it to be revealed it’s a camera taking pictures, and equating the danger of the two. The marketing team behind this movie really earned their bread with this one.
And that does it for the severely underrated B-movie masterpiece, Paparazzi. Abascal and Smith nailed this shit. Kudos to Gibson for shepherding this project along. And for assembling this dynamite cast. Incredible work all around.
I’ve seen this movie at least 10 times already, and it is always just as good as the last time. Never in a million years would I have thought that when I first sat down to watch.
Just goes to show, always listen to your mother!
See you in two f-stops…