In the long-awaited follow-up to her last film triumph The Hottie and the Nottie, Paris Hilton stars as herself in Paris, Not France, described as a sociological-themed documentary about what "the Paris phenomenon" says about "this moment in culture." The director, Adria Petty, seems to enjoy likening her movie to Darling, the 1965 John Schlesinger film Darling, which was a non-documentary, and also non-good, character study of a shallow, beautiful actress (Julie Christie) whose shrill emptiness and jet-set lifestyle were once thought to have said just reams about their moment in culture. (The movie won Christie an Academy Award for her willingness to behave unpleasantly, so maybe the idea is that Paris, Not France will win some kind of meaningful artistic credibility for Hilton' creepy, dead-eyed smirk. One of several points at which the comparison breaks down: Christie's character, being a movie star, was actually famous for something.) Petty (who, being the daughter of Tom Petty, can be assumed to know something about the joys and hazards of being born into dynastic celebrity), who also shot the film, is about to enjoy a break that many first-time directors would sell out their grandmothers for: on Tuesday, she'll get to see her baby screened at the Toronto Film Festival, arguably the best-loved of all big-name international festivals, and the one with the best reputation for its focus on serving the interests of filmmakers and film lovers instead of providing one more circus of hype and celebrity sleaze. So it's leaving a bad taste in some mouths that Paris, Not France has turned out to be the center in what may be a cynical publicity stunt and bid for another fifteen minutes of the the attention of a jaded world.
The problems began last week, when word hit the papers Hilton had waved her lawyers at the Festival organizers and forced them to scale back their plans to award the movie three public screenings as well as a showing for the press. The implication was that the movie is so hot and critical of the talentless heiress that Hilton wants it suppressed, and if your first thought is to wonder what the hell could be in the movie that would embarrass the star of The Simple Life, not to mention her own homemade bedroom calisthenics tape, that's clearly the point. Thom Powers, who programmed the documentary arm of the festival, seemed to be taking credit for a coup when he told blogger Katrina Longworth, "From my standpoint, of course, I wish we could do additional screenings. But this is certainly a better option than not showing the film at all.” Presumably he's seen the film, and if he thinks that showing it at all is a good option, we'll trust his judgement for now. Longworth herself, though, speaks for the crowd when she writes that she's "got to wonder if there’s more to this than meets the eye. On the surface, you’ve got a rich, fame-hungry girl who allows a filmmaker to document her for publicity purposes as she tries to legitimize her outsized fame by recording an album. A couple of years later, that album is universally considered a joke, and those publicity materials have been expanded into a stand-alone film about Hilton’s relationship to her own celebrity. Paris has obviously lost control, and she’s obviously siccing Daddy’s lawyers on Petty et al in an effort to take that control back...but Paris has made a career out of managing the release of imagery that she supposedly didn’t want us to see. From the sex tape which she first sued over and then transformed into both a cash cow and a career platform, to the prison stay that turned into a week-long, weepy melodrama and dominated the news cycle all the way up to Paris’ march out of the county jail and into her mother’s waiting getaway vehicle, all of Hilton’s career high points have involved the transformation of humiliation into triumph. It’s not that her reputation is “based on shamelessness”––it’s that she continually turns events that should be shameful into products for public consumption. I don’t think we’re dealing with anything different here, and I don’t think we should be surprised."
As Longworth points out, the really odd thing about this fiasco is the announcement that Hilton had somehow "pressured" the festival to cancel all screenings of the film but one." "It would be one thing," she writes, "if the Hilton camp has insisted that the film be removed from the festival completely––I don’t know the laws, but this is something I assume they would have the right to do, considering that Petty’s footage came from her contract to produce publicity materials for a DVD and is now going towards personal use––but they didn’t. Instead, they’ve made tickets to Paris‘ single TIFF screening a hot commodity." Now the New York Post's "Page Six" is explicitly reporting that Hilton " "has craftily manipulated the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival in an attempt to gain more publicity for a new documentary about herself." Hilton's flak even issued a statement acknowledging, "We wanted to create more buzz - create some hype . . . We felt the impact would be more extreme if we had one screening." Hilton, described as "a partner with the documentary", will attend the Tuesday screening. (The flak declined comment on whether or not Hilton has a financial interest in what's being advertised as her own takedown documentary.) To the people who care about the people whose activities are covered on Page Six, manipulating the programming of a serious film festival and robbing real movies by struggling artists of a little time in the spotlight in order to get more attention paid to your little home movie is the kind of thing you brag about.