Paris: The Memoir(56)
Kids who grew up with smartphones, Facebook, and Instagram never got to experience a club or house party where they were totally free to be themselves without feeling like they were constantly on guard.
My friend Holly Wiersma, who later produced Dallas Buyers Club, produced a doc called Guest List Only—a character study of people on both sides of the velvet rope—starring club promoter Sarah Uphoff (everyone called her “Pantera Sarah”) and me along with other regulars at Opium Den, Dublin’s, and Vinyl—all my favorite LA hangouts. I remember Sarah running the door, selecting who was in and who was out. People loved to come out with me because I was always in, and I was always in because I always had an amazing group of cool people with me. I was curating an incredible circle of friends—and not just the famous people you already know about. I’m talking about wonderfully strange, creative people whose names you may not recognize, even though they made LA the wonderfully strange, creative place it was. I loved hanging with artists, poets, musicians, filmmakers, writers, and technology geeks.
A friend asked me to be in an indie film called Sweetie Pie, which was beyond lame, but to me, it was a big deal. I was in the movies! Seriously, it was a great way to start learning about the process. That’s the kind of education that works for me. I need to be on my feet, asking questions, part of the action.
I started learning my way around the recording studio the same way. I met a producer who’d worked with Jessica Simpson and Kelly Rowland, and we collaborated on the early recordings that would eventually grow into my first album. The studio was heaven to me, combining two things I love almost as much as I love my own skin: music and technology. The migration of music into the computer world—we take it for granted now, but back then, it was this rush of freedom and empowerment. Creators didn’t need permission anymore; before GarageBand, before Logic Pro, there was just good old Logic—democratizing software that opened the garage door and let everybody in.
The paparazzi were evolving with digital cameras and lightweight video equipment that made it possible for them to get airable walk-and-talk film footage and crisper, higher-definition photos with virtually any kind of lighting. Going out almost every night in LA and New York, I was getting a lot of attention, which I loved. It made me feel like a star. After that long period of never being allowed to look in a mirror, I enjoyed feeling beautiful.
Instead of cussing or avoiding the paps like a lot of people did, I waved and called out, “Hey, boys!” and made sure they got all the good angles of me struggling with my shopping bags or getting frozen yogurt and being all Marilyn Monroe on the subway grate. They could get more money for candid shots. Unlike a red carpet, where dozens of photographers are all taking essentially the same picture, the candid shots were unique. Tabloids craved photos of a celebrity in an unguarded moment, eating a burger or walking the dog, as if they were a real person. The paps weren’t allowed to come inside a club and bother people, so they camped outside, waiting for us to come out.
I bought some adorable sneakers at a little place on Melrose. Roller skates popped out of the bottom when you pushed a button on the side. Those were my favorite clubbing shoes of all time. I zoomed all over the place. If a pushy guy hit on me, I zipped off across the dance floor. It made for good video—me zooming up and down the street, in and out of parties and night spots. People started calling me “Roller Girl,” which I loved. They might have been referring to the Roller Girl porn star in Boogie Nights, but that movie came out while I was at Ascent, so I didn’t know anything about it until years later.
The Penfifteen Club did a song called “Ms. Hilton” that kinda says it all:
Ms. Hilton, you must be worth a trillion bucks.
Get the feelin’ that you really don’t give a fuck.
Ms. Hilton, I like the way you push and glide.
Roller skates on a social butterfly, woo!
A few years later, this song was on the Simple Life soundtrack, but it was written back when I wasn’t famous, just starting to be known a little. Even then, I knew I wasn’t trying to build an ordinary career; I was building a brand that would eventually turn into multiple income streams—but that sounds way more calculated than it was. Looking back, I see the mechanics of it falling into place, but at the time, I was just a teenager, having fun without apology, without inhibition. That made fun people want to hang out with me, and when I showed up at a party with a crew of models, actors, and socialites, the paparazzi always followed, so pictures would show up in Page Six or People or the early online gossip blogs. Event planners really wanted me at their parties.
I’m not talking about the Lipschitz wedding or your cousin Jill’s living room hang; I’m talking about gallery openings, film premieres, and product launches—business functions and nonprofit-organization galas—parties with a purpose. There’s a lot at stake in those red-carpet events. People invest a lot of money sponsoring them. You see how all those red carpets are stretched out in front of a wall covered with logos, right? If nobody interesting shows up to stand in front of it, that’s a stupidly expensive lost opportunity. They need beautiful people on that red carpet to draw the attention of the paparazzi. When my picture appeared in Page Six, WWD, tabloids, entertainment sections—wherever—that sponsor got the exposure they were hoping for, and the pap got paid for licensed use of the image. So I started thinking: What’s in it for me?