“I have to say, up until this moment, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do this,” said TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers in his introduction of Paris, Not France, undoubtedly referencing the hullabaloo that sprung up over the past few weeks when the film’s four planned festival screenings were reduced to one amidst rumors of possible legal action from the Hilton camp. But if Paris Hilton (or anyone on her payroll) is suing Adria Petty (or anyone on her payroll) because of this film, she is a) insane, and b) so fiercely committed to putting on a pretty face for the camera that she’ll actually a walk a red carpet in support of a film which she allegedly doesn’t want you to see.
Yes, Paris was in the building tonight. As soon as the emergency exit door at stage left popped open, someone in the audience cried, “Paris!” and a hush fell over the crowd. The 800 or so ticket holders at the Ryerson watched in virtual silence as Paris––head down, face blank––allowed herself to be led by boyfriend Benji Madden to their reserved seats. And then the snapping started. Cellphones, point and clicks, professional cameras—it seemed like everyone had one, and everyone stood up to train it on the rail-thin blonde, panopticon-style. The snapping just went on and on until Powers took the stage and cracked, “Don’t you want to take a picture of me?” (As I write this, an hour after the screening let out, images of Paris on tonight’s red carpet have already hit the wires.)
In the lobby after the screening, a gang of journalists clustered together, and somebody threw out a phrase that seemed to float above the room and immediately etch itself larger-than-life in granite as the shortcut to Paris, Not France’s dismissal: “It’s a love letter.” That’s certainly one way to look at it. Another, is that if this is a film about Paris Hilton at all, whether loving or otherwise, then it’s a failure, because it so convinces that there is no Paris Hilton, only “Paris Hilton”––a brand designed to sell watches and perfume who has assumed the now-empty shell of the once-vivacious party girl. Though the director tries to sell the idea that her subject is a self-marketing whiz who calculatingly hides her real self behind a cover that is deliberately without content in order to make for smoother mass consumption, neither the film nor its star ever convinces that there’s a significantly more substantial real self to hide. But! If Paris is merely using the heiress as an in to talk about the cold, mechanical efficiency of today’s celebrity culture, to give the consumers of surface-as-depth media (so you, and you, and of course, me) a demystified glimpse at the way our US Weekly is made, at the Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like process by which human beings are used as vessels to fill an unquenchable thirst on the part of the masses for yet more media about we which we just don’t have to think…well, that would really be something.
Shot on HD and edited on Final Cut Pro, flipping back and forth between full color, desaturated color, black and white, and choppy footage which was either imported into the editing software at the wrong frame rate or put through a process to make it look so, Paris would have the feel of a home movie even if the subject’s address to the camera didn’t seem so chummy and unguarded. You get the sense that Petty earned Hilton’s trust and created the ideal situation for the capturing of earth-shattering revelations.
Unfortunately, based on what we see here, Paris Hilton doesn’t have anything earth-shattering to reveal. Petty frequently cuts back and forth between media footage of Paris––without fail, blowing kisses and brainlessly babbling baby talk––and footage of Paris “At home”, having her beauty needs tended to while bitching in a husky drawl about her lack of privacy on the one hand, and the gullibility of her adoring fans on the other. Does the later version of the starlet seem more present and intelligent than the Simple Life princess? Sure, until Petty leaves her camera on the star a little too long, and her voice starts to drift back and forth in real time between the “keepin’ it real” smoker’s rasp and Marilyn-influenced helium coo. Maybe this is calculated. Maybe it’s schizophrenic.
If there is a Real Paris who is a deeper thinker than the girl whose repeated negligence to hire a driver to escort her home from nightclubs landed her in jail (an incident which gets no mention here), then it’s interesting that Petty shows no footage of Hilton doing anything besides for traveling, shopping, having her hair done, talking about her own branding and having her picture taken. This deficit probably means that the filmmaker did not obtain footage of Hilton preparing to vote in the 2006 California gubernatorial election, reading a book other than Valley of the Dolls, or having a conversation about anything other than herself, because such footage could not naturally exist. But oddly, if that lack of evidence portraying the sharper side of Hilton hurts the “Paris is deep” argument, it sure does lend the “pop culture is a cruel joke on the glamour-starved masses” angle some credibility.
It’s not unreasonable to suggest that somebody like Paris would be so happy with their level of fame and the constant income it draws in that they would approach the maintenance of said fame as work. Hilton had the unusual experience of crashing into the public eye simultaneously via two vehicles––the Rick Solomon sex tape, and The Simple Life––which purported to offer the Real Paris for sale. The former product features perhaps the only guileless Paris Hilton performance committed to video tape, and Hilton doesn’t like it––she blames it for robbing her of the opportunity to become the target of unironic, Princess Diana-like universal love, And so, Hilton says, she adopted a kind of occupational blankness in order to sell the illusion that she’s giving it all away while really keeping her inner life resolutely private.
In short: being the most shallow person on earth is actually her job! Paris understands, as her creepy crisis manager Elliot Mintz puts it, “that part of the job is looking beautiful, being desirable,” and thus having hair extensions put in is akin to going to work. She understands that, once she looks good, the only way to prove it is to have her picture taken, and so she goes where she knows the paparazzi will follow––fast food drive throughs, Malibu boutiques, Las Vegas, Tokyo––because ensuring that the paparazzi have work to do is, likewise, akin to going to work herself. This is a woman ostensibly famous for being “herself”, but the self she allows to be seen is a confection with nothing on the agenda beyond generating constant press coverage.
Whether or not Paris Hilton is a different person in her off [camera] hours than she is on her fake cousin’s blog, and whether or not the split between public and private personas was her idea, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that she’s making a fortune selling absolutely nothing, and the joke’s on anyone (like you, and you, and of course, me) who’s ever bought into this scam by buying a tabloid or mainlining E! News Daily. Paris Hilton didn’t create this system––she’s just amongst its most photogenic exploiters. But at the very least, Paris Not France may serve in the future as a valuable historical documentation of that exploitation in action.
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