A former reporter of France’s Le Monde newspaper received an urgent phone call. It was about fashion model/actress Kim Kardashian who has recently drawn public attention for her divorce and sex video.
The reporter, Navarre, 49, quickly drove his Porsche car and chased her white-colored Rolls-Royce. As the chase continued, more cars joined him. The Rolls-Royce stopped in front of a beauty parlor in central Hollywood.
As Kardashian came out of the beauty parlor after receiving beauty treatment, hundreds of photographers took pictures of her. Navarre earned hundreds of thousands of dollar for pictures he took at the scene.
Pararazzi, who are required to have a wide information network and a sense of patience, are called the “celebrity intelligence agency” (CIA). Critics, on the other hand, call them “leeches.”
The entertainment news website Splash News classifies intelligence which comes from agents around the world into a number of categories.
U.S. pop star Jennifer Lopez was reported to have slept with a dancer in Chile. An agent reported to the Splash News that British Princess Kate was pregnant. Besides, reports had it that actor Alec Baldwin got into trouble for not switching off his mobile phone on a plane.
The intelligence collected is redistributed to an estimated 1,000 paparazzi around the world. In Los Angeles alone, the number of paparazzi and their collaborators totals 100. The collaborators are mostly those working at hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, airports and hospitals.
Hollywood, a home for celebrities, is a fishing hole for paparazzi. Bank, 36, of Splash News, patrols Hollywood’s Sunset road and adjacent areas every day. Bank keeps a close eye on a restaurant frequented by celebrities. In particular, he takes a close look at places where British footballer David Beckham and Tom Cruise live.
Bank says those areas are “on the palm of my hand.” He stayed in front of Cruise’s home _ from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. per day _ for as long as three months until after Cruise’s wife gave birth to a daughter.
Finally, he succeeded in taking pictures of Cruise family members making their first outing since the daughter’s birth. The pictures he took there reportedly sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.