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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

The First Time I Saw Paris
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 6/13/07

Daddy sat in the audience, front row, while his wife and two adorable adult daughters preened with the talk-show host, about how well they’d been raised: “Grown Up Superrich” was the theme, the daughters were named Hilton, as were Mom and Dad.  The two girls were awaiting their trust-fund to kick in, meantime “working” to pay the rent – their “allowance” paid the rent, actually, but they needed ‘expenses’ for those little things, so they worked for their bread and butter, the breadbox being paid by mummy and daddy.

Kathy Hilton insisted – in convincing tones, the host nodding with conviction – that her charges had inherited her father’s values.  He was the grandson of the hotel chain’s founder, and had learned responsibility as had his dad, so each could take over the family empire.  His wife bragged, the audience purred, and I tuned soon to something else – it was only a sampling, but I remembered Paris and her sister.  Then forgot it for some may months, when Paris sprung up into eternal fame, and now perhaps starting her eternal flame of burnout, crying in that police car as the judge slapped her wrist and the badge of the sheriff.
 
Then, on that stage, Paris and sister and mom and dad seemed so together, reasonable – it does happen, not all rich and super-rich are spoiled – and appealing.  It lingers now that the pictures are of the little gal, her dead-eyes always a giveaway to me [as with Angelie Jolie – no soul in those shark-eyes] but which seemed, as I remember the TV talkshow, to have had life on that distant day.
 
It is a dual-pity, the mother and daughter, enabler and offspring, loving the camera and fame and adoring eyeballs – it’s been said before in the PhoneBooth, the most addictive drugs are eyeballs and adrenaline.  Those junkies surpass heroine and crack chracters – I know a recovering crack-addict who says he doesn’t miss his rocks now that he’s found Jesus, but oh, boy, every day he misses the adrenaline rush saturating his brain from daily “street theatre” in those distant LA days.  His story was featured on PAX TV once, and we worked on a feature for his story, but it never matured.  But the lessons of circling among those addicts to fame, and eyeballs, and cocaine and other “caine brothers” [Novacaine, etc.] stick in my mind, knowing that Paris missed most of all things her daily fix of adoring cameras.  Screaming fans.  A supportive and enabling mother.
 
TV shows – reality in a reel-world – and club-trekking, in a stretch-limo always.  
 
News features, controversy, eyeballs aplenty.  Now it’s the eyeball of a security camera for the gal whose mom claimed to a national talkshow audience that she’d raised a Model Citizen.  Now she’s hoping for a model prisoner, who doubtlessly will find more eyeballs to addict her on release.  The tragedy began somewhere after that talk-show and before Paris came into her trust fund and began making home-video porn for the internet.
 
The signs are not only of a dysfunctional, and diss-functional, would-be star – but her MOTHER FAILED TOTALLY.  In that cell would be a cell-mate, if we had such a system of justice, named Kathy Hilton. For she enabled, and empowered her daughter, giving her aid-and-comfort at every step.  Her lies on that talkshow plainly were menadacity amok, unchallenged by the awe-struck talkhost.
 
And of course, I wonder also: WHERE IS DADDY?  Who’s your daddy has new resonance, and never comes up in these stories.  Maybe he had something to do with Sheriff Baca’s sudden compassion!  
 
So many questions, so few answers, very little inquiring journalism.  Two pitiful women, no doubt having a pity-party before the red-lights and siren showed up at the mansion.  All on display, for all to see – will these new eyeballs be as addictive?
 
Poor Paris – once a model citizen, now a good example of how not to behave – at least after the first six or ten or twelve occasions of getting-away with it.  Next?  Lindsay Lohan?  Charlie Sheen?
 
Or maybe Sheriff Baca – now there’s a prison movie I’d pay to see, with him played by an aging Burt Reynolds.  And playing the judge?  Maybe Fred Thompson, in his departing role before entering the presidential eyeball-chase. ExileStreet

copyright 2007 Steve Finefrock

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