The new twist in our celebrity-obsessed culture: personal paparazzi

CHICAGO — The white SUV limo whisked 15 men from the Signature Room to La Pomme Rouge to Martini Park to Stone Lotus. Women hooted as the entourage darted between the limo and the swanky clubs. Bouncers ushered them past long lines and around velvet ropes.

And a paparazzo pursued them, her camera flashing away.

What bigshot caroused in Chicago that evening?

Why, it’s Phillip Barker and his crew.

Phillip who?

A Buena Park, Ill., resident, Barker toils as an ad agency copy editor by day. But trailed by a snap-happy camera that November night, he did feel like a certain celeb:

“Britney Spears,” he said with a laugh. “That’s who we were joking about.”

Inspired by a night of drinking with his buds, Barker recruited the shooter via Craigslist to act as his paparazzo for his friend Jason Layman’s 27th birthday fete.

While real stars dodge paparazzi like roaches, regular folks who crave a taste of the glamorous life now turn to personal paparazzi to make them feel like stars.

“We had a lot of people screaming out to us,” Barker, 30, recalled of the Nov. 10 festivities. “Lots of bars had lines down the street, but we’d go right in. ... They thought we were famous.”

Barker is not alone — new businesses are springing up to serve the starry-eyed.

ALL ARE WELCOME

Based in Austin, Texas, Celeb-4-A-Day offers packages from $300 (30 minutes, four paparazzi) to the $2,500 “MegaStar” treatment (2 hours with six paparazzi, a bodyguard and publicist). MegaStar customers get a starring role on a mock gossip magazine cover, plus a CD with the photos. (Tabloid lawsuit not included; but hey, you can always hire a lawyer.)

“We do enough to really give you the experience,” said founder Tania Cowher, who adds that she welcomes anyone — including B-list celebs trying to stage a comeback, or wannabes trying to launch an entertainment career.

After all, what’s Hollywood without a little acting? “The everyday person has no idea if we’re real or not.” As for Cowher’s present clientele, the goal remains simple: to spice up birthdays, bachelor parties and the like.

Cowher hatched her idea four years ago at a commercial photography school in Santa Barbara, Calif., watching “Entertainment Tonight.” But it wasn’t until November that she acted on it.

Bored with shooting bank execs and such, she launched her Web site during a lunch break. Business started slow. Then Time magazine called and her phone has been ringing off the hook ever since.

“Everyone either growing up or as an adult sees celebrities in the movies and thinks, at least once, ‘I wonder what that’s like,”‘ said Cowher, whose clients have ranged from an 8-year-old’s birthday party to a 65-year-old’s wedding anniversary.

Cowher has bookings most every weekend — a New Year’s Eve gig is already lined up — and she’s expanded to Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. She plans to add Miami and Chicago, though launch dates aren’t set.

‘LOOK OVER HERE’

Kevin Hagedorn, a dot-com real estate consultant and radio host in Austin, Texas, hired Cowher to create a surprise “media blitz” to celebrate the news that he and his wife were having a boy. He picked the company’s $300 package, took his wife to dinner in downtown Austin, and ushered her out at a prearranged signal. Then: snap, snap, snap.

Paparazzi camera flashes blinded the couple, the shooters yelling: “Look over here! Look over here!”

Barker, who paid a freelance photographer $200 to snap photos for five hours, wanted a tag-along lens so his friends wouldn’t have to worry about taking pictures. They ended up loving their spotlight night. “As 15 narcissistic gay men, we kind of ate it up,” he said.

Customers savor limelight just as much as the pics, said Reggie Waller, president of Private Paparazzi in San Diego, launched two years ago to provide affordable event photography.

Private Paparazzi charges $75 per hour per photographer, with most clients hiring one to three cameras, said client relations director Lindsay Chapin. It partners with a limo company for clients wanting the full celeb effect, and has 20 to 25 freelance photographers working events nationwide.

“People are really excited when they call,” Chapin said. The company hasn’t come to Chicago, though it hopes to soon.

PLAYING OUT A FANTASY

One client who hired Private Paparazzi for his wife’s 40th birthday even arranged for autograph-seeking “fans” as she left a Savannah, Ga., restaurant. “It’s this whole fantasy they’re playing out in their mind, and they want to experience it for one night,” Chapin said.

Others roll their eyes.

When Barker posted an ad on Craigslist seeking a photographer, he got about a dozen enthusiastic replies. But one angry e-mail called him a “vain, vain (bleep).”

Indeed, some pop culture experts see personal paparazzi as consumerism for the conceited.

“Oh my God: This is celebrity culture gone awry,” said Elayne Rapping, who teaches a Culture of Celebrity course at SUNY/University at Buffalo. “We have a national addiction: People are more interested in Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton rather than Iraq and the economy. And reality shows have everyone thinking that you really can be a star.”

Rapping not only takes issue with personal paparazzi as a vain indulgence, but also “the ultimate democratization of celebrity to the point where it doesn’t mean a whole lot. ... People may believe they’re just as entitled to be a celebrity as Meryl Streep and Bob Dylan. But they’re not.”

‘SILLY AND RIDICULOUS’

Self-absorbed? “Of course,” replied Barker. “But that’s the point: to be silly and ridiculous.”

Mandy Johnston, the freelance shooter who worked Barker’s party, agrees.

“It’s fun to have someone with you who knows what they’re doing; it makes you feel special,” said Johnston, 22, a resident of Chicago’s Wicker Park who graduated from the Art Institute last year. “It was the most fun I’ve had on a job.”

As much as Barker enjoyed his paparazzo moment, he doesn’t envy real celebs. Johnston kindly removed facial redness with Photoshop. Real paparazzi probably would leave the blemishes. (More tabloid dish, y’know.)

And once Barker and his friends had had enough, they sent Johnston home at 1:30 a.m. — putting the camera’s eye to sleep while they partied until 10 a.m.

“By the end,” he noted, “you’re kind of glad you don’t have it all the time. ... It’d be annoying. But would I do it again? Of course.”

PAPARAZZI HIGHS, LOWS

Real celebrities may wonder why anyone would pay to be pursued by the paparazzi, who can be a source of major stress for the famous. Some memorable paparazzi moments:

Ken Starr. The California town of Malibu has asked the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton’s involvement with Monica Lewinsky to help them craft restrictions on “pap packs” that descend on the celebrity-rich area. Malibu officials say their town has been overrun by the celebrity media, who invade the city’s few shopping centers and follow some celebrities down Pacific Coast Highway. In the last few years, merchants have complained about photographers blocking store entrances and staking out certain restaurants as well as Malibu’s multiplex movie theater. Brad Pitt had to place a massive tarp around his beachfront mansion to ward off paparazzi. Dozens of photographers recently swarmed around pop star Miley Cyrus during a trip to a shopping center, forcing bystanders to get out of the way.

Britney Spears. A bald Spears smacked a paparazzi’s car with an umbrella (an event captured, of course, by the paparazzi). This came after years of the paparazzi capturing some of Spears’ most reputation-damaging moments, including driving with her infant son in her lap and her panties-free night on the town. Her paparazzi plight could inspire new controls on the snappers. When a throng of paparazzi got in the way of Spears’ transfer to a hospital last year, an L.A. councilman proposed a law that would create a buffer zone between celebrities and the paparazzi.

Denise Richards. After a tiff with the paparazzi during the filming of “Blond and Blonder” at a Canadian resort near Vancouver, Richards allegedly threw two paparazzi’s laptops off of a second-floor balcony, accidentally hitting a couple of elderly ladies on the floor below. The two paparazzi later sued Richards and her “Blond and Blonder” co-star Pamela Anderson, claiming the women physically and verbally abused them. Richards has said she regrets the laptop incident, but that she reacted because the paparazzi had infiltrated the movie set and made vulgar remarks to her.

Hugh Grant. Grant was arrested last year after allegedly lobbing a plastic container full of baked beans at a paparazzo lurking near his London home. The paparazzo also told police that Grant kicked him three times and kneed him in the groin. No charges were filed against Grant.

SOME LESSONS FROM THE FRONT LINES

Lesson 1: Sometimes paparazzi surprises don’t go well.

A man in New York once hired Celeb-4-A-Day to surprise a co-worker with a team of paparazzi as he left a bar, recalled company founder Tania Cowher.

When the cameras started flashing, the co-worker was surprised — and incredibly angry. He “literally attacked” the friend who hired the paparazzi, going after his throat, and then left in a huff, Cowher said.

Apparently the target of the paparazzi had been receiving gag gifts from the friend all day and had had enough, she said.

So as not to waste the client’s money, the paparazzi showered him with the attention and flashing bulbs instead, Cowher said.

Lesson 2: Real celebrities can get their own paparazzi.

Celeb-4-A-Day paparazzi were once dispatched to the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, as a surprise birthday gift for a woman in the audience (who, incidentally, welcomed the paparazzi happily), Cowher said.

While they were focusing their attention on their non-famous target, Tim McGraw walked by, Cowher said. But the throng of fake paparazzi ignored him.

“He kept looking back, kind of like, ‘Why aren’t they following me?”‘ Cowher said, chuckling.