<![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, hollywood urban achievers]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, hollywood urban achievers]]> http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/hollywoodurbanachievers http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/hollywoodurbanachievers <![CDATA[Matt Dillon Thinks A Dirty Pap's A Dirty Pap, Regardless Of Age]]> Austin Visschedyk, Kid Pap: Name ring any bells? We devoted several electronic column inches to the juvenile paparazzi after he was profiled by the NY Times, one of a growing member of a new tween underclass toiling in the Hollywood trenches. Like Gary Busey's child-interviewer attack victim and the Chinese Theater Ewok drop-kicked by a very territorial Chewbacca, Vosschedyk knows from child-labor perils. Still, there's something deeply affecting about hearing his first-person account to TMZ's cameras of the time Matt Dillon not only refused his polite request for a picture, but told the flash-happy youngster to "get a life" after Vosschedyk innocently got a gang of his closest pap-buddies to trail the camera-shy Crash star.

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=363349&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Pint Size Paparazzi Chase Their Celebrity-Stalking Dreams]]> teen-pap-nyt.jpgTaking this morning's post about the macchiato-wielding vigilante who attempted to disperse the swarm of photographers surrounding Britney Spears' car with a scalding hot coffee-shower together with yesterday's NY Times story on the teenage founders of the Pint Size Paparazzi agency, one of our readers asked us, "Don't you ever feel like sometimes we live in the most horrific place on earth?"

Our answer: Of course not! After reading the Times piece on the precocious kids learning to hunt the famous every bit as effectively as the most hardened former gang-banger or battle-tested TMZ cameraman, we came away thinking we live in the best of all possible worlds, where loving, understanding parents unconditionally support their children's Hollywood dreams:

Initially, Blaine's and Austin's parents felt the same way. "I was apprehensive at first," Mr. Hewison said. "I thought, 'My kid is going out there with a bunch of paparazzi?' But I've since come to really like a lot of them. There are some I'd be more than happy to have over for a dinner party."

Jane Sieberts, Austin's mother and a furniture manufacturer in her early 50s, said, "I'm very supportive of it." She added: "He's a real bright kid. He's careful. He can get just as injured in sports at school."

Both boys say they "do school" two times a week, visiting the City of Angels Independent Study School to drop off the tests and assignments they've completed at home. (Both enrolled at the school before pursuing their photography careers.)

This affords them free time to shoot during the day, as they bike and skateboard around Sunset Plaza and other close-to-home hot spots. At night, their parents play chauffeur; Mr. Hewison has even installed a dashboard DVD player in his Porsche 911 to wile away the time as he waits for Blaine to finish work.

Be scandalized if you must, but realize that the parents could have invested the money they put into their children's fledgling company in far more destructive fashion, ponying up the exorbitant enrollment fee for CAA's exclusive Early Assimilation Program. Instead of killing time watching movies in their Porsches while the kids snap some harmless photos of their favorite actresses, they'd find themselves the wheelmen for Armani-clad baby-snatchers, tensely waiting in hospital parking lots for their kids to emerge with burlap sacks full of mewling, fleshy newborns.

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