Off the Record, ahhh but remind me to become famous

Paparazzi's have become a pejorative term for news photographers who take celebrity photos in exchange for large amounts of money. Countless celebrities have been 'victimized' by paparazzi's most prominent of whom are Britney Spears, J Lo, Nicole Ritchie, the Hilton sisters, Lindsay Lohan, George Clooney, Tom Cruise and wife Katy Holmes, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, and so many others.

One of the more notorious paparazzis is Ron Galella, "who transposed many of his methods to New York. Galella's success came by scandals of his own making, and he is now best known for his photographs of Jackie Onassis, who filed a lawsuit against him in 1972".

During his most notorious days, Galella went to the extent of getting beaten just to get those most precious photographs. Richard Burton's bodyguards beat him up enough to cause him to spend sometime in a hospital bed. Sean Penn spat on him, and his jaw was broken by Marlon Brando.

“The word paparazzi was popularized after the Federico Fellini 1960 film La dolce vita. One of the characters in the film is a news photographer named Paparazzo (played by Walter Santesso). In his book Word and Phrase Origins, author Robert Hendrickson writes that Fellini took the name paparazzi from an Italian dialect word for a particularly noisy, buzzing mosquito. In his school days, Fellini remembered a boy who was nicknamed "Paparazzo" (Mosquito), because of his fast talking and constant movements, a name Fellini later applied to the fictional character in La dolce vita”.

But you know what, I think paparazzi's have a hidden obsession to become celebrities themselves. They love the game. The adrenaline rush is so invigorating, perhaps?

Now that's one notorious way of earning money.