Want my picture? Pay first

Section:	News
By:	SYLVIA TOH PAIK CHOO
Publication:	The New Paper 07/08/2008
Page:	19
No. of words:	580

SHOW

Celebs should follow Brangelina's cue and donate money to charity

COMMENT

By Sylvia Toh Paik Choo

paikchoo@sph.com.sg

ACTOR Morgan Freeman, seriously hurt in a car crash this week, managed to say to someone who attempted to take his picture at the scene, "No freebies, no freebies."

Seriously, you think he was joking?

Uh-uh, I don't think so.

He was being money-honey-savvy, and it showed even while the Oscar-winning thesp, broken-limbed, was being prised free of the mangled wreck.

His quick reflex – if a picture paints a thousand words, why, Hello, it may yet pay hundreds of thousands of dollars – echoes the rest of the celebrity community's. It's all hardwired to the big bucks, toots.

Doll-face, will you shut up and grow up already?

It has always been about the greenbacks, only ever more so since, well since it got greedier and grabbier when celebrity hit on the red-hot idea of sell-ibrity. That's Hollywood Evolution 101 for you.

Births, funerals, weddings, divorces (anyone snap Heather Mills dousing Macca's lawyer with a glass of water in court, that'd be worth a stonking wad of dosh, with enough left over for when she sues).

NOTHING SACRED

Is nothing sacred? Duh. There is, until you name the right fee.

Fort Knox-type security celebrity marriages, Maddie and Guy Ritchie, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, Posh and Becks, first baby pictures from Spears and K-Fed, J-Lo and Mark-A. (What's with the like-crossword-

puzzle-clue names, huh? A-Rod etc?)

The outrageousness of it all – having your guests checked for hidden phone cameras because you've signed a million-dollar deal with some tittle-tattle weekly to have first bite. Is this the happiest day of your life or a commercial transaction?

And fastest fingers too, to sue anyone taking an unauthorised souvenir shot. (You know why Americans are ever ready to sue? Because the country once belonged to the Sioux!)

Far as I can make out, the last time I looked, the above-named are no different from you and me. In fact, they are exactly like other people, only with more collagen, shoes and handbags, and a private jet. So they got lucky – no, make that they got agent.

Take Freeman again. Besides a distinctive voice, no special talent, other than to coast through films delivering lines like "I am God". Say that often enough – in two films – and you start to believe your own script; there can be no such thing as a freebie ever after.

Here's the cruncher. You and I. We are to blame. Because we place so much value on these characters and the celluloids they play.

Every move they make, every step they take – royals, actors, musicians, to a smaller extent politicians – is documented and paparazzied for our feeding, it has to cost. Why give it for free?

We're eager to buy. They're owl-eyed to charge. Why shouldn't they? We need these personalities, we need famous people to look up to, or look down upon. And they come with a price tag, and thus far it's been ka-ching!

In Brangelina's case, Hollywood's hottest couple got US$14m ($19m) for pictures of their twins. But at least they donated the money to charity. Other celebs, take note.

Imagine, if they'd had triplets, the cause they support would've benefited by $20m! Brangelina could still hit that figure. By selling the twins' first collective word to radio coast-to-coast.

And let's just halt there, no one needs to see Roon's Colleen breastfeeding in a footie rag.