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"Entourage" star Adrian Grenier brings crowd, film to Carroll Hall

Actor Adrian Grenier did not think it was ironic that he was showing his documentary, “Teenage Paparazzo” — about America’s odd obsession with celebrities — to a room full of college students who were all trying to take a picture of him.

“A part of my job is to be vulnerable, and a part of making this movie made me learn how to do that,” Grenier said in a discussion after the film.
“It is ironic, but it’s more interesting to say, ‘hey, I don’t consider myself to be a celebrity.’”

Grenier, who currently plays Vincent Chase on HBO’s hit TV show, “Entourage,” showed his film Saturday night in Carroll 111 as part of the Executive Branch of Student Government’s Carolina Creative Week, which lasts from April 2-9.

The documentary, which was released at the 2010 Sundance Film Fetsival, follows 14-year-old paparazzo photographer Austin
Visschedyk as he photographs celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan in California.

The young paparazzo sometimes earns more than $1,000 for one photo.

The film follows Austin’s transformation from a naïve, fame-hungry boy who does not understand the intruding nature of the paparazzi (which is Italian for “mosquito” and was first popularized in Federico Felini’s modernist masterpiece “La dolce vita”) to someone who realizes that celebrity is often hurtful and not all that he has made it out to be.

As Grenier establishes his relationship with the young photographer, he begins to see how Austin and the rest of the world have become so obsessed with celebrities that they create a sort of “parasocial relationship,” Grenier told the audience in Carroll.

Grenier said scientists describe this as one person thinking they know someone as a friend, whether through reading interviews or seeing pictures of them, when in reality they do not know anything about them at all.

“I had never heard that point be made before, but when you think about it, the only reason people watch celebrity news shows or read celebrity tabloids is because they feel like they have some sort of relationship with these people and want to know what’s going on in their lives,” said junior Rachel Carrier, who attended the film’s screening.

Grenier also made the point that, once something is being filmed, a part of its “real-ness” becomes lost.

“We would have to ask people to repeat things, or I would have to make sure my microphone was turned on while I was talking – directing a film really makes you see that, any time there is a camera around, things are not happening the way they appear to be,” he said.

There is a line between flat out-fake and a reinterpretation of the truth, he said.

“To me, only authenticity is important,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be real or truthful, just genuine.”

Grenier said he loves these postmodernist views of life, and he hopes people can learn something from his work.

After the screening, Grenier signed autographs and sold film merchandise in the Student Union Art Gallery, where he displayed art that mirrored the messages of the film.

Read Arts Editor Nick Andersen’s interview with Adrian Grenier here.

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