Constitution Suffers a Hollywood Mugging

Two photographers have been sentenced to Los Angeles County jail for their roles in what a judge perceived to be an over-zealous pursuit of Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, television journalist Maria Shriver, as they were driving their 3-year-old son to school.

The Schwarzeneggers testified that they were terrified by the experience, which they first thought was a kidnapping attempt. The photographers claim that they asked the actor’s permission to take his photograph and when he ignored them, they did so anyway.

Doubtless the experience was an unpleasant one for Schwarzenegger, who was recovering from heart surgery, and his wife, who was pregnant; but certainly not one to which they are unaccustomed.

Schwarzenegger has become one of the biggest stars in the world through a combination of his roles in some violent action films and shrewd self-promotion. He may not know it, but his image as a gun-toting tough guy has been responsible for much bloodshed and pain in Chechnya where, as my colleague Phil Reeves of the Independent newspaper notes, teenagers go gleefully into battle with his picture plastered on the butts of their automatic weapons.

Schwarzenegger’s skirmish with two photographers on the battlefields of Hollywood is being notched up by publicists as another victory in the ongoing war between celebrities and the press and is seen as providing fuel for the Screen Actors Guild-backed privacy legislation proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

But it is a draconian sentence for two photographers caught in the post-Princess Diana backlash against paparazzi and heralds an ominous backward move toward the days when the studios and their publicists controlled every photograph or story that was printed about their stars.

Ever since Cecil B. DeMille and his crew arrived to film “The Squaw Man” back in 1913, Los Angeles has been a star-struck town. I remember witnessing an appalling testimony to star power 10 years ago, as members of a jury lined up to shake the hand and obtain the autograph of Jan-Michael Vincent, then the star of a television series called “Airwolf.” The jurors had just acquitted Vincent of a battery charge after his girlfriend testified that he had punched her and broken her nose.

In the same court this month, I heard Schwarzenegger testify that he is “very press-friendly” and, without any irony, describe to the judge how he always permits his publicist to lead him to the roped-off photographers’ areas at functions such as the Oscars so he can pose for them. Then he demonstrated how press-friendly he is by leaving the court building through a side exit, jumping into a car that had backed up to the door and being driven off, eluding the photographers trying to record his exit.

Similarly, after Shriver’s testimony, she was hustled through a side exit by an assortment of aides including Pat Kingsley, a legend among Hollywood publicists and one of the most outspoken in the crusade to control the press.

Probably not coincidentally, another of Kingsley’s clients is Tom Cruise who, a few days ago, saw fit to telephone the police from his car because he thought he was being followed by photographers. The police had to point out that, although Cruise was unhappy, no crime had been committed. Presumably, if Cruise had had a movie to promote, photographers would have been welcomed, under controlled circumstances and as long as they obeyed Kingsley’s instructions.

Thankfully, there are still some journalists and photographers willing to cut through the hypocrisy to preserve the concept of press freedom and the 1st Amendment.

And if being photographed when they haven’t had time to pose and don’t have their publicist with them causes inconvenience to the Schwarzeneggers and the Cruises, so be it. It’s a small price to pay in return for $20 million a picture and a percentage of the gross.