How did I get here? Thumping music spills on to the street, flash bulbs explode and there’s a line of better-dressed people snaking around the block behind me. With a rising sense of panic, I discreetly check my invitation. I thought I was attending a restaurant opening. Instead, I seem to have stumbled into the 96th annual Academy Awards – if it was being held this time of year, in Brisbane, Australia, and the stars weren’t out on the picket line.
I shuffle along the red carpet, give my name to a beefy security guard and stare stupidly into a bright ring light as a phalanx of photographers jostle, wave and bark orders. “Face me!” “Over here!” “Big smile!” “One more!”
I’m at the opening of Tama, a restaurant inside a former post office in the nightlife district of Fortitude Valley and I’m blinded by the constellation of camera flashes and high-wattage smiles of other guests.
I didn’t realise it until after my deer-in-headlights moment, but I’d just had my first “red carpet experience”, a show business-style welcome featuring hired paparazzi.
Aimed at giving guests the star treatment, it’s a piece of theatre that goes well beyond the standard step-and-repeat that’s common at corporate events, where attendees are snapped in front of a promotional banner by a single photographer (or do it themselves on a smartphone).
“It’s designed to add some glamour to the night,” a publicist tells me later.
My startled face will not be gracing the homepage of TMZ or Us Weekly, then. Rather, it might have a brief gasp on social media, before quietly wending its way into the archives of hosts Artesian Hospitality Corp.
The desire to be papped like Kim Kardashian might seem to be a product of our social media age, but it predates it, says Daniel Tusia, creative director and performer with Applause Entertainment, one of many companies offering rented red carpets and fake paparazzi services.
He’s been pretending to be part of the press pack for at least two decades.
“Some people will love it – and they pose, they do the whole thing, they just love the attention – while others will try to make a beeline around you and don’t want a part of it,” he says.
Either way, it builds buzz, with a show so convincing some people might not realise it is staged. “[Guests] don’t know what’s real and what’s not real,” Tusia says.
Sometimes, when an event organiser wants to inject humour rather than glitter, Tusia puts on a trenchcoat, carries a tricked-up 1920s box camera and adopts an alter ego – Scoops McGee from the Herald Scum.
“We’ve got some old-school cameras with the flash bulbs – it’s hilarious because they’re obviously props,” he says. “They flash but they’re clearly not [real]. They’re dog bowls.”
Even when conscious of the artifice, people still pose – but these pressmen aren’t taking photos. (He recommends that hosts wanting real photos should hire a professional photographer as well.)
Increasingly, corporates aren’t the only ones calling him in. Demand for fake paparazzi now comes from individuals too – though their motives are more difficult to fathom.
Tusia and his team of snappers have been hired to ambush guests at hen’s parties, birthday celebrations and other assorted shindigs.
“Definitely the best one is when the lift opens and they can’t see you coming,” he says.
Several times, upon request, he’s chased the same bodybuilder through the airport, apparently to “send him off and amp him up” ahead of an international competition.
He’s even been contracted to pursue a litigant emerging from court.
“He hired me to pretend to be a reporter with a cameraman to harass him … in front of whoever the other parties were.”
For what purpose? “I don’t know and I didn’t need to know,” Tusia says.
His basic VIP package, which includes a real photographer plus a paparazzi performer, costs $700 an hour; while the megastar package – which adds a host conducting red carpet interviews, another fake photographer and two “screaming fans” starts at $2,000 an hour.
Tusia’s company does about one of these gigs a month on average.
Broadcaster, journalist and presenter Jeanette Francis, best known as Jan Fran, occasionally treads the red carpet for real and finds it “incredibly awkward”.
The idea that anyone would seek one out is somewhat mystifying to her. “Most people just want it over as fast as possible so they can just sit down,” she says.
“The red carpet is usually the worst part of the event.”
But when I find myself back at the GPO Brisbane building five weeks later, this time for the opening of The Tax Office restaurant and bar, there are more frocked-up folks queueing around the corner as they wait for their twirl in the spotlight.
Tonight, there are about a dozen photographers in the paparazzi pit. At least a couple – including from Guardian Australia and local daily the Courier-Mail – are professionals representing media outlets.
The rest are employees or contractors hired by Artesian Hospitality Corp.
Executive assistant Lisa Hamill has been here before, but reckons the experience never gets old. “I love an opportunity to get in and have a lot of fun and celebrate life. That’s what it’s about,” she says.
It is project manager Chantelle de la Rey’s first time on the red carpet – but she hopes it won’t be the last. Why? “It makes you feel special.”
