Ha, sorry! For some reason I had a gazillion things come up last minute today...
Ok, so, years ago I did this photo shoot with supermodel Eva Herzigova for a new Dom Perignon champagne (pics below).
Karl Lagerfeld was the photographer (who is insanely awesome, by the way - I was actually on cheek-kissing terms with him at one point after doing a couple of shoots for him) and there was a huge launch party for the campaign at a house in Beverly Hills. My job for the weekend was taking Karl and his crew all around LA, and that included attending this INSANE party Saturday night.
He, his crew, and Eva were all staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and when I went to pick them up for the party, Eva has on this million dollar (literally) piece of jewelry that required a bodyguard by her side at all times. Anyway, we all pile in this rented van and when we get to the party, there's a red carpet out front, paparazzi, the whole nine yards. We make our way through the house and enter the backyard... and it was just this sea of hip, famous people everywhere. And they all stopped to watch Karl, Eva, and our entire entourage enter. It was just surreal to be a part of from the get go.
Karl is basically addicted to Diet Coke, and it was my job to keep the Diet Cokes coming at all times. Which meant standing directly by his side the entire night. This was back when Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Jessica Simpson were all in their prime, and at one point during the night, all three of them were vying for time with Karl, kind of waiting their turn, and I was literally wedged in this tight triangle of starlets, one of them on each side of me. Lohan was drunk out of her mind and was literally falling into me. It was crazy.
We only stayed for an hour or so (I obviously did NOT want to leave), but Karl's old, was tired, and was ready to go. Eva, however, wasn't. So I drove Karl and his crew back to the hotel, and as he was getting out, he asked if I'd go back and pick up Eva so they could all have dinner together. I said sure, drove back to the party and found Eva, the center of attention. I told her Karl was requesting her for dinner, and she was super cool about it, ready to go by then, and said she just needed to say goodbye to a few people. She did just that, and we were in the far corner of the backyard, this entire sea of celebrities between us and the backdoor of the house, which was the only way out.
At this moment - a moment I will never, ever forget -
she locks her arm with mine, like I'm some gentleman escorting his lady, and she says, "I'm ready." So, dumbfounded, I turn and escort her, with her bodyguard and agent in tow (to this day, I still have no idea why she didn't grab either of their arms), leading her through the party, toward the back door. As I do, I swear it was like time slowed down. I was in a dream, and these were just some of the faces I remember turning and looking at us as I passed with a supermodel on my arm...
Jared Leto, Courtney Love, Ben Mckenzie, Maria Bello, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson... then we come upon the back porch and I'll never forgot
Pierce Brosnan turning around with this slightly curious look on his face like who is THAT guy escorting HER... and in that moment, all I could think was JAMES BOND, at least for a split second, is jealous of ME... we enter through the back door... and there's
Beck and his wife on the couch giving me the exact same look. At that point we're coming upon the wide open double front doors, with the paparazzi at bay, just beyond the red carpet. Again, my memory of this is all in super slow motion... I see the paparazzi ready their cameras... and it hits me that I'm about to have photographic proof of this moment that I will be able to send to every person I've ever met... we're almost to the front door... then, like a record scratch, everything suddenly slams back to real time, Eva unlocks her arm from mine, darts in front of me, and starts doing solo poses on the red carpet... with me just out of frame. So bittersweet.
But I can't complain. I ended up taking her back to the hotel, and Karl invited me and our producer to stay for dinner - consisting of $25,000 caviar - which was an experience in and of itself.
So, yeah. That's really all there is to the story. I actually ended up doing a shoot with Paris Hilton five days later - this was for the cover of Blender magazine when she had that horrible hit single - and I had to take her "off premises" from a house where we were shooting so she could smoke a joint. For 15 minutes, in a windowless a cargo van parked on the side of the road in this uber-rich neighborhood, Paris, her hairdresser and I just shot the sh*t while she smoked, and she actually brought up the party the weekend before. So it was crazy that I had actually been at the same party (especially with Karl), and was able to chime in and keep up like I was on her level or something. I remember her going on and on about how a drunk Lohan tried to crash her after party that night, and ended up balling her eyes out, asking Paris why she hated her (Paris and her ****** boyfriend had just made those "Firecrotch" T-shirts with Lohan's face on them - which Paris thought was hilarious.) Anyway, she was nice to me, but such a ***** that day overall. She literally threw a temper tantrum because she wanted to wear this ridiculous brunette wig for the shoot that no else wanted her to wear. She screamed, "I have the most famous face in the world! It's not like people won't know it's me!" and - I'm not kidding - then stormed off by stomping her feet like a child. She also has the grossest ass I think I've ever seen on someone her age. This flabby, flat ass that hangs over the top of her legs. Like old man ass or something. Part of the shoot was her in some lingerie and my favorite thing of the entire shoot was that I had to hold a full length mirror in front of her so she could see herself posing since she couldn't do so without it (she's looking right at me/the mirror in the last pic below with the disco ball). Just so insanely unprofessional overall.
