The Screengrab

Many luminaries from the film blogosphere attended the Toronto International Film Festival this week. (I would have gone, but I don’t speak Canadian.) Spoutblog chatted with Paris, Not France director Adria Petty to find out the story behind those cancelled screenings. “I’ll just tell you the truth,” she said. “The truth is that we just didn’t want the film pirated. There’s a lot of people involved in the film that own it or financed it. It was in a lot of different camps and different layers. And basically, at the end of the day, instead of having the whole thing canceled or pulled because of all these greedy or annoying people, Paris and I, who wanted the film to screen at Toronto and were honored by it, we were like, look let’s just do it once in one big theater. And then we put the night vision goggles in one time––because everybody is like, who pays for the night vision?”

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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.

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