SMASH HIS CAMERA
Directed by Leon Gast
Produced by Adam Schlesinger & Linda Saffire
Released by Magnolia Pictures
USA. 89 min. Not Rated
 

Ah, for the good old days—before cell phone cameras, gawking websites, and 24/7 tabloid scrum, when paparazzi were professional street photojournalists who stalked, lied, bribed, and skirted court orders in order to get the perfect shot that revealed a celebrity’s unguarded personality. Smash His Camera presents a thoughtful and entertaining look at the changes in our celebrity-obsessed culture over the past 40 years as seen through the ubiquitous lens and controversial career of Ron Galella, who was inspired by the character of Paparazzi in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960).

Director Leon Gast (When We Were Kings) presents many sides of Galella and the strong reactions he provokes as well as a visual feast for movie fans. The title comes from an order by Galella’s obsessively favorite subject, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, to her children’s Secret Service agents. Jackie O’s lawyers and friends, including the Metropolitan Museum’s chief, the late Thomas Hoving, receive plenty of screen time to vociferously decry Galella’s constant intrusion into her life in public places. Galella’s tips about bribing staff, chasing cars, climbing trees, and mapping back entrances to hotels certainly are frank admissions of his relentless pursuit of subjects and may engender sympathy for Marlon Brando, who punched him out in 1973. He milked the resulting wounds for more than they were worth in free publicity.

In addition to First Amendment proponents, Galella is defended by admiring magazine editors and gossip columnist Liz Smith, all of whom professionally help feed the maw of the public’s (i.e., yours and mine) insatiable curiosity with celebrities. Despite his very crude methods, the many photographs we are shown certainly do not look mean or exploitative—no baby bumps, peccadilloes, illicit canoodling, illegal partaking, or drooling. With the exception of a raft of wee hour snaps from the disco days of celebrities staggering out of Studio 54, Galella doesn’t seem to be seeking “gotcha!” evidence when he ambushes his subjects.

What is striking in his work, besides his strong sense of composition as described by photo editors, is how Galella captures the essence of what makes these famous people so fascinating, especially when they are unguarded and unmanufactured. His photographs support Gloria Swanson’s declaration of classic Hollywood royalty from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd (1950): “We had faces!” One particular image of a wind-blown Jackie O with a Mona Lisa smile on a Manhattan street, shown over and over again, is now considered iconic, and his photographs have been purchased by museums and private collectors.

Galella, a canny businessman, now makes a good living off the rights to his millions of images, including in his own books, and employs several assistants who also sift for fortuitous before-they-were-so-famous shots. With each key photo, he enthusiastically recalls what he went through to get the scoop and can rattle off what outlets bought it, from the high-toned Vanity Fair to the National Enquirer. He met his wife of 30 years when she was one such buyer. His archives are in the basement of their suburban New Jersey home straight outta The Sopranos, complete with an artificial Italian garden.

With Bronx-born Galella looking scruffy even when he tries to be incognito in a tux, this portrait is more argumentative than another, gentler documentary about a more beloved street chronicler of the stylish in Richard Press’s Bill Cunningham New York, still on the festival circuit. Smash His Camera was already shown on HBO, but seeing it in a theater with friends will help you continue the onscreen debates between lawyers and editors, reporters and subjects, about Galella’s First Amendment rights vs. stars’ off-screen right to privacy. You can start by admitting your own guilty pleasure in looking at so many of his engaging photographs. Nora Lee Mandel
July 30, 2010