A cherubic 13-year-old with a skateboard, a Justin Bieber hairdo and a frighteningly professional camera, accomplished Los Angeles paparazzi Austin Visschedyk is the perfect hook for a documentary about a culture that thrives on turning identity into a commodity. In Teenage Paparazzo, the thoughtful feature directed by actor Adrian Grenier – the kind of L.A. celebrity the teenager pursues and shoots – Visschedyk is the in for Grenier’s study of how paparazzi are the foot soldiers of the celebrity obsession that is white-anting American culture.
Grenier, an actor famous for playing a famous actor on Entourage, is a thoughtful screen presence, deferring to Visschedyk, although his narration is somewhat dry, as if he’s aware he’s doing "serious" work. The relationship between the two echoes various movie genres, going from a buddy movie, through to a thriller ("chase that car!" Visschedyk actually yells at a taxi driver as they pursue Paris Hilton’s car one evening), to a drama about a mentor and his wayward charge.
In between Grenier gains commentaries from a variety of celebrities, including Paris Hilton and Matt Damon, and lightly explores the insatiable publishing food chain that pays Visschedyk US$1000 for the right snap. The minutiae is intriguing – full frame shots have the most diverse usage – but the narrative gets bogged down midway through, with too many diversions and innocuous commentary from Grenier’s co-stars. Much of what he tells us, that celebrity and the paparazzi are mutually dependant, for example, is already understood, but by dint of his own celebrity the director finds a way to make the known entertaining.
Watch 'Teenage Paparazzo' at SBS on Demand
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