The sale of celebrity baby pictures is big business. Ever escalating, now topping out at $10 million to $15 million, the first look at Brangelina twins Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline is beginning to raise eyebrows. The newborns will make their public debut in a future issue of People with a second "exclusive" layout to follow in OK!.
Despite earmarking proceeds from the shoot to charity, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are under fire. Some question obscenely high amounts paid for celebrity baby pictures. Others call the arrangement exploitation.
Frivolous waste of resources equal to the GNP of Myanmar or shrewd use of public insatiability for celebrity photographs?
Parodoxically, the inexplicable desire for a glimpse into the lives of celebrities fuels distaste for the paparazzi. The streets of Hollywood and Manhattan are full of professional and amateur photographers attempting to earn a livelihood or turn a quick buck. It's gotten so bad, surfers attacked a TMZ crew off the coast of Malibu. Politicians contemplate new legislation. Even fans have taken up the cause.
I've posted before about paparazzi encounters of the third kind. Some of the following scenes are surreal.
At some point, unless Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie intend to raise their children in a vaccum, they must venture outside the gates of their fortified compound. Not surprisingly, paparazzi have already staked out camera angles for their anticipated departure. Money talks. Those first photographs are worth a pretty penny no matter who takes them.
Better People and OK! magazines who will donate the proceeds to charity than money grubbing paparazzi who cavalierly disregard the consequences of ignoble intrusion.