OVEREXPOSED: The Price of Fame – A Discussion with Author Eliot Tiegel

Eliot Tiegel has been a working entertainment journalist for nearly fifty years, covering music, records, radio, TV and films for regional and national publications such as Billboard magazine, Weekly Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.  Yet, for the first time in history, the troubled lives of four young female starlets have been obsessively chronicled in the press: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Niclole Richie.  In his book, Overexposed:  The Price of Fame, Eliot Tiegel takes us through this phenomenon from a host of perspectives, including in-depth interviews with paparazzi, publicists, major media figures and celebrities.


What is it about that tabloid news story, as outrageous as it is, that appeals to you when you’re standing in line at the grocery store?  A certain amount of curiosity can be healthy, but how much is too much?  Why are celebrity stories sneaking into the evening news more and more?  Are we a cruel society that we build ourselves up when others are down?  And where does the responsibility lie - with the paparazzi; the media outlets who pay top dollar for the most private and outrageous photos; the celebrities themselves; or us, the buyer?   These are just some of the questions I had on my mind when I spoke with Eliot Tiegel who spent a couple of years delving into this mushrooming obsession.

AL:  Do you find the public’s appetite for other people’s misery distressing?

ET:  The answer on a personal level is yes.  When I finished writing this book I was very sad, and the reason was that it was an experience of watching four young women’s lives in a freefall toward disaster.  And, in the fifty years of writing in show business I’ve never had the experience of writing about four young ladies in trouble all the time.

I think the public always has had this fascination of watching people in trouble.  In a sense it gives you, the observer, a feeling that: ‘my life is not that bad.  I thought it was really lousy, but look what’s happening to these four young ladies.  I’m safe and my life is secure and my kids are secure.  Watching these four young women makes me feel like I’ve got the best of both worlds.’

There were several things that stand out about this book…I discovered that all four of these women lost a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong in their personal lives….[My] thought was how could someone be so foolish as to go out night after night and get into trouble with so many photographers following them…Many of them would actually tip off the paparazzi as to where they’d be so they’re guaranteed to be photographed.

AL:  Is there a fear with celebrities that “If I’m not in the limelight I’m going to vanish?”

ET:  Yes. If they’re not in these tabloid magazines every week they don’t exist anymore and their ego is shattered.

The thing I don’t understand is that celebrities who repeat their troubling behavior seem to indicate that while they want to have fun in bars and clubs they just aren’t concerned about the consequences. 

AL:  This type of reporting is not news.

ET:  This is really celebrity gossip stuff.  They hardly break any really important entertainment news.  It’s all who’s in jail and whose boyfriend is cheating on whom and who got drunk and who got arrested and who’s trying to pull their lives up and is struggling.

AL:  Doesn’t this kind of reporting feed a growing shallowness in our society?  Where the idea of being bored with someone once the shock value is gone is okay and supported?

ET:  Yes.  I think the media in a small sense perpetuates this kind of attitude.  The problem is that the women themselves are to blame because they’re the ones that willingly go out and do this and they feed [the tabloids].

AL:  Where do you draw the line between protecting the First Amendment and public safety in the pursuit of stories?

ET:  [Regarding] First Amendment rights, I think we all have to be aware of this fact that we have the freedom to do something, what you do with it is another matter.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Dennis Zine has been trying to pass this public safety law that will separate the photographers from their subjects simply because there have been too many situations where the paparazzi chase after people [dangerously].

While people talk about the dangers (remembering the paparazzi chase of Princess of Diana) of doing this it’s not stopping for the simple reason that there’s a lot of money to be made for these pictures.  The simple fact is that when someone gets killed it’s a million-dollar payday…it’s kind of sick.

AL:   In your book Elliot Mintz says that PR has gotten meaner?  Why do you think that is?

ET:  I don’t think the public has gotten meaner.  I think the publications themselves have gotten meaner…It’s all about the pursuit of the dollar.

AL:  You talk about the line between the National Enquirer and The NY Times narrowing – What do you mean by that?

ET:  The National Enquirer has broken a lot of good stories and I think and a lot of people say that the National Enquirer is the best of all the tabloid publications in terms of being accurate.  What they’re saying is that the National Enquirer pays a lot more money than the NY Times and they can fly these [reporters] all over the world, they spend a lot of money going after what they think is a hot story and they generally break it.

A lot of people in show business, including myself, question the tabloids’ accuracy…many of their sources are anonymous people who they claim are “close to the subject” or in the inner circle.  They could be members of their entourage and are very protected.

AL:  So there’s no way to know the accuracy.

ET:  That’s right. 

AL: What are the affects on young people seeing this paparazzi behavior as a legitimate way of reporting?  And seeing all the negative aspects of young superstars as engaging interest stories – does it encourage them to do that to get their fifteen minutes of fame?

ET:  I think that is true.   One mental health doctor said that many young girls think it’s cool to go clubbing late at night and leave drunk because that’s what they see.  Now, if that’s the case I wouldn’t want to have a teenage daughter who thought that.

Another doctor says that when teens see someone break the law it’s not taboo, it’s the neat thing to do.  And another doctor says she does not believe that young girls are influenced to believe that bad is good by the actions of these young startlets.  One of the problems with some of these people is that their parents are their managers. So these parents are not about to tell their kids to cool that behavior because they make a percentage of their money from this kind of publicity. 

AL:  Don’t you think that as a parent the money would be secondary to your child’s well being?

ET:  You’d think so. But, we’re dealing with a different genre of parent here.   Show business parents are very different.  I think part of their concern is to keep the money rolling in, because, remember, they’re not working.  The kids are working…They just want that picture in the Star or Enquirer.


We went on to discuss how our society’s standards are being lowered all the time, from the kinds of movies being made to the example corruption in large corporations and even the government set.   The lack of accountability in our society at large from Wall Street, General Motors, Banks, etc. is pervasive.  The public feels an outrage in general but we don’t know the names of these offenders, and even if we do we’re not familiar with their faces, but we are familiar with these young girls.  And so the anonymous transgressors – those who are doing the most damage to all of us, not just themselves – fall by the wayside and are quickly forgotten because we do not have a familiarity with them and they fade in the press.  I’d like to entertain the possibility of having the paparazzi follow these guys like they do these girls and for the public to ask for accountability.  Which brings me to the question of responsibility.

AL:  Where is the public responsibility in this?

ET:  The responsibility is with the artists themselves.  When they go out they know what they’re going to do, they know they’re going to be photographed and they don’t seem to care.

In closing, celebrities and highly visible artists have the opportunity to influence public thought and behavior through their own.   They have the visibility and the reach that will be seen.  They have the influence, thus the greater responsibility.