October 6, 2009 Fringe Arts

Shooting over the limousine

Veteran paparazzo on photography, Brando and why Michael Jackson tried to die like Elvis

by Madeline Coleman

Always be prepared: Ron Galella (right) wore a helmet to a press conference with Marlon Brando a year after the star had broken the paparazzo’s jaw.

Ron Galella once had his teeth knocked out by Marlon Brando. His crime? Asking the star to take off his sunglasses.

“Brando called me over and said, ‘What do you want that you don’t already have?’ I said, ‘I’d like a picture without the sunglasses.’ And Brando just slammed into my jaw without me seeing the punch. Knocked out five teeth.”

Galella wasn’t just any starry-eyed fan. He was a New York paparazzo, a photographer who specializes in catching celebrities at their most candid.

Galella began trailing celebrities in the 1960s—long before celebrity magazines like People or Star were even a twinkle in a publisher’s eye—and didn’t stop until the early ‘90s.

He enlisted in the army during the Korean War in the early ‘50s, where he learned how to use a camera and develop photos in a darkroom. He later attended art school in Los Angeles to pursue a degree in photojournalism, but his real education came on the red carpets of Hollywood.

“While going to school, I crashed premieres just to see the glamorous world of celebrities,” he explained. “I wasn’t invited. I just put on a suit, had all my cameras hanging. I looked like I belonged, you see. I’m good at that.”

The word “paparazzi” was unheard of at the time, said Galella. All celebrity gossip took place within the pages of photoplay magazines, the promotional publications movie studios would fill with false rumours of off-screen romances in order to sell movie tickets. Photographers would only take photos at events like premieres of movies or Broadway plays. Galella did that too. That is, until he found a muse in former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

“I thought she was like a great princess,” he explained. “I respected her a lot. It was awesome to take pictures of her. She was my most favourite and ideal subject because she didn’t pose.”

Onassis eventually filed a restraining order against the photographer, citing harrassment and invasion of privacy. The tension between paparazzo and star exists now much as it did then, but Galella insists that celebrities secretly savour the attention.

“They’re hypocrites. They love it,” he said, his voice rising. “If it wasn’t for the press, they’d be nobodies. Paparazzi are good; they’re promoting the stars, they’re putting them in the spotlight. It’s when they’re not following them that they should worry.”

Galella came of age as a photographer in a different time, when there was little competition for celebrity photos and fewer security barriers and public relations people between the stars and the public. He bemoaned not only the “overcrowding” of the current paparazzi scene, but also the quality of the stars themselves, who he said come up short next to Hollywood greats like Bette Davis and Elizabeth Taylor.

“These young stars, I call them featherweights—Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, all of them,” he said. “They’re celebrities that rely more on what they wear or don’t wear—their sexual appeal—rather than their talent.

“The saddest part is, the great stars, when I shot them in the past, [had] very little press. But now these minor stars with little talent are followed by masses of paparazzi and they get unbelievable press. Overexposed, really.”

The past three years have seen a return to the past for Galella. He has released four books since 2006, the latest of which is Viva L’Italia, which focuses on photographs from his archive of Italian and Italian-American actors. He plans to release a book on Michael Jackson this winter entitled Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson by Ron Galella. Although he had planned the book on Jackson before his death this summer, Galella said he was unsurprised when the singer passed away.

“I thought it was coming,” he said. “Personally, I think he committed suicide in a way. He wanted a legacy like Elvis. That’s why he married [Elvis’] daughter.”

The last few years of Jackson’s life were a maelstrom of negative media attention, but Galella said his book will focus more on Jackson as a young, talented black man. Unlike the paparazzi of today, Galella’s work was never about humiliating celebrities; it was about celebrating their glamour through art.

“It is photojournalism and it’s art too,” he said. “I’m a positive romantic. I like things beautiful.”

Ron Galella will open an exhibition of his work at the Centaur Theatre (435 St-Francois-Xavier St.) with a lecture and slideshow of his work on Oct. 7 at 12:30 p.m. Entrance is free. A collection of photos from Viva L’Italia will also be on display from Oct. 6 to Dec. 6 in the theatre’s gallery.