The documentary filmmaker Leon Gast has an eye for maverick characters. His most famous film When We Were Kings captured Muhammad Ali in full pomp, as the heavyweight boxer prepared to fight George Foreman in Zaire, in 1974. His new work Smash His Camera is another look at celebrity, but this time, it is from the perspective of someone behind, rather than in front of the camera. His subject is Ron Galella, the photographerwhomNewsweek once called "The Godfather of the US paparazzi culture".
Galella became world famous when Jackie Kennedy Onassis sued him for harassment, twice. She told her bodyguards to "smash his camera", a phrase that has now been adopted by Gast as the title for this humorous account of the flamboyant lensman. The judicial decisions in those cases, especially the "free speech" trial of 1972, set the ground rules from which paparazzi have worked ever since. As the movie highlights, some of the most famous snaps of celebrities,not just those of Jackie O, have come from his hand.
The dandy snapper took great risks to get the shots he wanted. Occasionally, these came at a price; Marlon Brando punched him in the face; Richard Burton's bodyguards roughed him up; he was hosed down by Brigitte Bardot's security staff and Elvis Presley's heavies slashed his tyres. Galella, now 79, simply looks back on these memories fondly. At the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Galella arrived at the launch of an exhibition of his work dressed as if he had walked out of Huggy Bear's joint in Starsky & Hutch. He could not have cut a more contradictory figure to the humble septuagenarian director Leon Gast, who blended into the room almost unnoticed.
In the film, Galella's never-say-die approach and refusal to give up sees the American expert on constitutional law, Floyd Abrams, call him "the price tag of the First Amendment". The photographer laughs at the suggestion: "Yeah, I stretched it as far as I could, but everything I did was legal because I shot my pictures of Jackie in public areas, the streets of New York, restaurants, the park; all public areas, and it's perfectly legal because she is a celebrity. But she claimed I invaded her privacy and harassed her, which is not true."
What Gast does extremely well is give both an amusing picture of his protagonist and an interesting and balanced discussion on the freedom of the press. Paparazzi generally have a bad name, but both sides of the argument are pointedly put, and the director cannot hide a grudging respect for their work and especially that of his subject. "Ron is an artist," the documentarian says. "The thing that impressed me more than anything was: here is a guy who actually goes underneath his big sink, takes out these chemicals, mixes them and puts them in these trays, and who does that kind of thing anymore? My impression is that anyone can be a paparazzo today. We were at a premiere yesterday and there were a few hundred people lined up as they knew that Ben Affleck and Tommy Lee Jones were going to be down there. They were snapping away - you don't need any talent, you just need to know how to focus and set up an F-stop (set an aperture setting). You just need to snap away and hope you get lucky. Ron is a real artist: I really believe that.
"At times he crossed the line but his motive was never for the money. He did it for posterity." The filmmaker shares with his subject a fascination with celebrity. Gast admits: "I'm fascinated by a certain kind of celebrity. There are similarities in Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali and Ron Galella. First of all, Ron has a tremendous ego, as Ali had. Ali became famous, infamous, for saying: 'I am the greatest.' People disliked him, resented him. Galella says: 'I'm Ron Galella, paparazzo superstar.'
"Ali said whatever was on his mind, it was unfiltered. Ron also says whatever is on his mind. Ron is selfish. Ali was selfish. "When it came to Ron's art or Ali's skills as a boxer, both are individualists and strong individuals." But there are moments in the film, such as when the photographer surreptitiously gets into a private event using false accreditation, that it is questionable how morally right his actions are. Gast says: "I wanted the film to address freedom of speech and the right to privacy.
"Where does it cross the line? You, as a photographer, sneak into somebody's house and get an intimate picture of whoever it might be. You sneak out, you have the picture, you hand it to a newspaper publisher, you can be arrested, you can be charged with a felony, you, as the photographer, because you crossed the line by breaking and entering.However, the First Amendment covers the publication, so they cannot be prosecuted. They have freedom of the press."
The attitude of Galella to the tactics used by a paparazzo to get good pictures is typically more gung-ho. "A lot of times you have to crash events when you are not invited," the photographer declares. "So you dress accordingly. I always wore a white tie and black suit because you have to sneak in and fit the occasion. Sometimes, it's normal." As for his own notoriety, the photographer says fame can help as well as be a hindrance.
"I forced Jackie O to be spontaneous, that's the advantage that I had of being known. I'm somewhat famous or infamous in that stars react to me, either positively or negatively and that's great. I love that. That's what good, I don't have to use a celebrity because stars react when they see and recognise me." Yet he adds that there is a limit to how self-aggrandising one can be: "I love my work and being myself, and being yourself you never think you are a superstar really. I say, or am quoted as saying: 'I'm a paparazzo superstar,' but really if stars believe they are superstars it's wrong because in the end we are all human."
What strikes a chord while watching the film is that, in a bygone era, stars certainly seemed to have more allure. It's a standpoint that the photographer agrees with. "The days that I shot these great stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Cher or any of them, they had a mystery about them,and a lot of it is contrived too. "Jackie O was a great actress, she knew how to create mystery, like using a low whispery voice, never talking too much, never giving interviews, not even to Barbara Walters, but you see I had the advantage when you're there with the camera. She would say quotes at me, quotes like 'smash his camera','Aren't you supposed to be in jail?' and many others."
Galella keeps every photo he takes. In the film Gast and Galella take us into the latter's warehouse archive.All his photographs have been filed in an orderly and exhaustive fashion, and Gast admiringly says: "He's a collector of things about him. Every picture that he has ever taken and was taken of him, he still has." Galella is certainly one of those rare characters that the more you know about them, the more you like and admire them.