CELEBRITY NOISE
Paparazzi End Up With Egg on Faces (well, almost)

by Mary-Liz Shaw

Call it a case of the shooters coming under fire.

These days, even the most mundane activity takes on breathless cachet if performed by a celeb. Hence, we get "exclusive" pictures of stars ordering bifocals or plugging quarters into parking meters.

To capture celebrities at such moments of unbridled excitement requires a heady mix of advanced planning, perhaps with a helicopter on standby; bribing "the help," especially stars' downtrodden assistants or their bitter personal chefs; and a very fast vehicle. Although the first two have always been important guns in the sleazy tabloid arsenal, the fast car, used to run down escaping celebs, wasn't used as often by paparazzi after Princess Diana died in a car crash while fleeing picture hounds.

But this has changed recently. About six months ago, Jennifer Lopez complained to police of being chased through the streets of Los Angeles by hungry paparazzi. Several stars have since complained of the same thing, including Reese Witherspoon and, this week, Scarlett Johansson. They might take a cue from Heath Ledger, who has found an innovative way of coping with snooping photogs.

What photogs fail to realize is all this "French Connection" stuff is pointless. It isn't as if celebrities haven't given us enough to keep us amused. Take Johansson, for instance. She provides us with whole minutes of diverting silliness every week without ever going near her car. One day, she's dissing Ewan McGregor's kissing skills. Next, she's calling Tom Cruise "ignorant." With A-list material like this, we don't need to see pictures of a frazzled Johansson trying to find a parking space at Disneyland.

The paparazzi, or, as the New York Daily News now calls them, the "stalkerazzi," may soon find the world a colder, harder place. Several stars are starting to clam up about their personal lives, refusing to fuel the flames. Jennifer Garner, for example, is letting her pregnant belly speak for itself without embellishing the story for the gossip pages. "It's too sweet to . . . talk about," she says.

Well, we'll always have Scarlett.

Scarlett sees red

Still fuming about being chased by stalking photogs, who she claims caused her to get into a fender-bender at Disneyland, Johansson has apparently left Hollywood, saying she hopes the state passes a law "to avoid these situations," her assistant Marcel Pariseau told The Associated Press.

Pariseau says Johansson was on her way to the amusement park with two friends when she noticed four SUVs following her. She turned into the Disneyland parking lot first, paying the $10 parking fee and was swerving slowly to the left, when she bumped into another car carrying a woman and two girls.

The photographers worked for a company called JFX Direct Images. The company's co-owner, Arnold Cousart, told AP that his photogs were following Johansson in SUVs, but they were "about a block" behind her when the accident happened.

One of the photographers inside the vehicles told a slightly longer story to World Entertainment News Network. Yes, they were following behind, Mario Toruno said, but they were keeping a low profile by using cars between Johansson and the SUVs as "cover."

Doesn't this suggest a creepy kind of attention to detail? It's a textbook example of Effective Tailing, as taught by the world's leading stalkers.

"We never in a million years thought we'd end up taking shots of a road accident . . . ," Toruno declares, in his best I'm-just-as- shocked-as-you-are voice. Uh huh.

Witherspoon, meanwhile, learned to her dismay that the photogs who chased her from her gym all the way back to her house earlier this year won't face criminal charges.

The case against another photographer arrested in May on suspicion of hitting Lindsay Lohan's car in a mall parking lot is still pending.

Ledger, meanwhile, is coping with paparazzi by finding a crack in the legal shell, you might say.

"I've thrown an egg," he tells World Entertainment News Network. "Not at them, just kind of next to them so it splatters up against them."

He goes on: "When they kind of spy in on you and you're trying to like bathe out in the sun. . . . It actually feels like you're getting a slap across the face. And we can't physically stand up and hit them back, of course, it would be rude and against the law. So, you just get an egg."

Funny face

Witherspoon tells Reader's Digest in its September "humor" issue that she doesn't think of herself as sexy.

"I mean, if I'm going to make it in this business, I'm not going to make it on being sexy. It's just not who I am," she says.

She does, however, think of herself as funny.

"And to me, that's one of the only things I've got."

Back to you, Scarlett

More fun from Johansson, who this time takes a poke at Tom Cruise. (Getting a dig at Cruise is Hollywood's newest thing, right up there with v-blogging and Botox.)

She was talking about Cruise giving Brooke Shields a hard time for taking Paxil to alleviate her postpartum depression.

"I can go into a very lengthy conversation with anyone about a woman's right to choose and things like that, but I don't believe in forcing my opinion on people," Johansson tells World Entertainment News Network.

She has known people who were saved from disaster through anti- depressants.

"Ruling out something that could legitimately help people seems ignorant."

Boning up on romance

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who are certainly no strangers to hordes of snooping photographers, spent a virtually paparazzi-free evening together with Jolie's son Maddox at Calgary's Royal Tyrrell Museum, known for its collection of dinosaur fossils. (Not for nuthin', but these two still haven't acknowledged they're an item.)

"Brad phoned," said the museum's spokeswoman, Wendy Taylor, who is apparently on a first-name basis with the actor. Taylor spoke to the Calgary Sun, which was quoted by AP.

Pitt wanted to know "how easy it might be for him to visit unnoticed. They did not ask us to close the museum or for an after- hours visit or any special treatment," Taylor added.

Pitt, Jolie and Maddox, who loved the T-rex exhibit, stayed about an hour.

"Our staff members were very impressed at how nice they were," Taylor said.

Golly gee. It looks like except for the money, the glamour, the mansions and the Manolo Blahniks, movie stars are just like you and me.

Garnering attention

She knows people are curious, but some things are better left un- talked about, says Jennifer Garner, who married former paparazzi poster boy Ben Affleck and is now pregnant with her first child.

When he was engaged to J-Lo, Affleck learned the hard way what it's like living life under the harsh glare of snapping tabloid photogs. It seems he and Garner do not want to make the same mistake.

In an InStyle interview quoted by AP, Garner says, "I feel uncomfortable with people reading too much about my pregnancy or my relationship. It grosses me out."

Based on reports in the New York Daily News, Associated Press and the World Entertainment News Network.