Young would-be celebrities, Teenage Paparazzo and P-Star Rising

Teenage Paparazzo 

I finally watched the movie from a couple of years ago, Teenage Paparazzo, about Austin Visschedyk, then 14, who runs around with a $3,000 camera taking pictures of celebrities.

The kid probably would have been fine if he hadn't been the subject of the documentary. Thanks to the film, he was becoming a celebrity himself. There were news stories about him, Teen Vogue had a photographer taking pictures of him taking pictures of celebrities. He was adorable. The young women celebrities he harassed wanted to mother him. He and his mother signed a contract to develop a reality TV show.

The movie started out as an interesting story about a cute little kid with a giant camera running around with the grown-ups taking pictures, but it ended up cruelly documenting how a 13-year-old kid becomes brattier and brattier when people start treating him like a star himself.

The movie ends with the filmmaker going back and talking to the boy again. He's 16 now and is back to normal. He says what he remembers about watching the documentary was seeing himself acting like an asshole. He doesn't want to be famous for being paparazzo.

I can understand the parents allowing the kid to be a paparazzo, especially for the amount he was making. I can sort of understand them allowing the documentary to be made and the news stories about him. But how could any mother in her right mind agree to a reality TV show about her child? The kid was already making a fortune, $500 to $1,000 a shot. They couldn't have needed money that bad.

P-Star Rising

A 2009 PBS documentary about a single father. He has two daughters who are 13 and 18 by the end of the movie. Their mother has a serious drug problem. When the thing begins, they're living in a single room in a shelter where they've been for nearly two years. The younger daughter, Priscilla, aka P-Star, is an aspiring rap star. Her father, who had worked in the music industry in the early '80s as a rapper and producer before serving a two-year prison sentence, puts everything into her career. It will be their way out of poverty. With all the family problems, the older daughter is failing in school.

He says that his time in the music industry was the best time in his life. He was making money. It's something he knows, it's his only profession, and it makes sense he would go for it again.

They sign with a record company. Priscilla, only nine-years-old, gives a speech to the group when they sign the contract. The contract provides the family with a pretty good signing bonus and a leased car.

It actually goes surprisingly well, at least for a while. And, ultimately, Priscilla does wind up starring on The Electric Company.

Compare and contrast

You have this contrast between the two movies. Austin is from a middle-class family, he starts making a gobs of money as a paparazzo, something his mother probably shouldn't have let him do, while Priscilla was from an impoverished family with a sad background, with no memory of her mother. Austin is tempted by the chance to become famous for being famous, or at least famous for taking pictures of famous people while Priscilla is very bright and talented. Austin starts to turn into a brat while Priscilla stays the way she was (her being a couple of years younger may have played a role.)

But Austin didn't set out to become famous. He just wanted to take pictures and earn some money. The chance to become a celebrity arose. He was only thirteen and wanted to take advantage of it. He quickly realized it was a mistake. He started out as a nice enough boy and after some unpleasantness, he ends up as a nice enough kid again.

In the case of Priscilla, her father put everything into her career. With Austin, it was mainly a matter of his mother letting him to do what he wanted.

Not becoming a celebrity was the best thing for Austin and his family---they really dodged a bullet when that reality show didn't pan out--but it was a shame that Priscilla's career as a rapper didn't last longer.