Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Ad Thoughts Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Eisenthal. Joe, you know what,
Speaker 1: my favorite All Thoughts podcasts are definitely all the ones
Speaker 1: we've done about poker and gambling, right, Yeah, poker and
Speaker 1: chess episodes, those are my absolute favorites. No, my favorite
Speaker 1: episodes are actually when we talk to people are fellow
Speaker 1: colleagues at Bloomberg. I agree. I love those episodes and
Speaker 1: not to sort of speak about how great things are
Speaker 1: Bloomberg and how great it is here and how great
Speaker 1: our colleagues are, but it is really remarkable the wide
Speaker 1: range of backgrounds that people have. Whether we're talking to
Speaker 1: our colleague who is a cattle farmer or former traders
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, or the guy who uh is
Speaker 1: the father of the beige book, it's always interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a large organization. There's a wide range of experiences,
Speaker 1: and it seems like a lot of people have very
Speaker 1: interesting backstories, and we've had some of them on as
Speaker 1: you just mentioned. But I think I've found the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: reporter with the most interesting background. Ever. This is going
Speaker 1: to have to be pretty impressive to be the cow farmer.
Speaker 1: But I guess cow is our commodity, so I guess
Speaker 1: maybe it does fit in with the Bloomberg bread and
Speaker 1: butter coverage. Okay, so what is the background of the
Speaker 1: person we are talking to today? Okay, So our guest
Speaker 1: for today is Eddie van der Vault. He is a
Speaker 1: medals reporter for US in London, but before he was
Speaker 1: covering all things metal, he was actually a paparazzi or
Speaker 1: I guess I should say paparazzo singular. I am very
Speaker 1: excited about this. First of all, I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of Eddie's medals coverage. I love what he talks about
Speaker 1: gold because all the crazies are in that market. But
Speaker 1: I feel like a the paparazzi is one of these
Speaker 1: things that's ubiquitous in modern life, and we basically know
Speaker 1: nothing about how the business works. And I imagine there's
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting lessons we'll learn about risk taking
Speaker 1: and risk management and all this, and maybe even also
Speaker 1: digital rights management and intellectual property. So I'm excited about
Speaker 1: this episode. Okay, Well, we have a lot to cover
Speaker 1: in twenty or thirty minutes then. I mean. The great
Speaker 1: thing about Eddie is that He also looks at the
Speaker 1: paparazzi business model from an economics perspective. I've spoken to
Speaker 1: him a little bit about it before, so I think
Speaker 1: you're really going to enjoy this discussion. Bloomberg's Eddie Vanderwalt,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us. Tracy, Hi, thank you.
Speaker 1: I guess the obvious question to begin with is how
Speaker 1: you got into the business of being a paparazzo in
Speaker 1: the first place. Yeah, I mean, I stopped off as
Speaker 1: a student photographer. The dream was to go photograph elephants
Speaker 1: in the serengetti, and you know, nobody told me that
Speaker 1: that people don't pay for pictures of wildlife. And so
Speaker 1: when I came over to the UK, I kind of
Speaker 1: I wanted to work in news, and I had a
Speaker 1: few interviews in the industry, and to be honest, I
Speaker 1: turned the first time I interviewed it at the company
Speaker 1: that I worked for, which was called Big Pictures, which
Speaker 1: one of the biggest agencies at the time. They've gone
Speaker 1: under since, but I interviewed there and I had no
Speaker 1: idea what these guys did. So I walked into the
Speaker 1: office and everywhere is just pictures of you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know people in compromising positions, and you could just
Speaker 1: you just got that got the image immediately that that
Speaker 1: this was this was their business. Their business was was peparazzi.
Speaker 1: And so I was a student when Diana died, and
Speaker 1: I remember saying to myself, the one job that I
Speaker 1: would never do in my life, it works a peparazzi photographer.
Speaker 1: But I got interviewed by a by a South African
Speaker 1: guy and he offered me the job, and the first
Speaker 1: time I turned it down, and then a few other
Speaker 1: things that I tried didn't come off. So he came
Speaker 1: back to me about a month later and said, look,
Speaker 1: the guy that we hired at that time didn't work out,
Speaker 1: but you know, are you up for it? Um? And
Speaker 1: then the second time around, I took it. And it
Speaker 1: just kind of sucks you in, the world sucks you
Speaker 1: in because the better you get it, the more you
Speaker 1: the more you know, the characters that work in it,
Speaker 1: and the backstories and so on. The more you get
Speaker 1: to know it, as in any industry, the more you
Speaker 1: become worth. And so it was much easier to get
Speaker 1: into it than it was to get out of it,
Speaker 1: to be honest, Eddie, A real quick question that I'm
Speaker 1: curious about. Are the ranks of the paparazzi filled with
Speaker 1: people who once aspired to what maybe other people would
Speaker 1: use more noble ambitions like photographing wildlife for people who
Speaker 1: thought they were gonna be war photographers and things like that. No,
Speaker 1: not really, you don't. You don't see a lot of
Speaker 1: serious photographer. You see some serious photographers that that that
Speaker 1: go into that industry, but the photographic skill set that
Speaker 1: you need isn't as high as it used to be.
Speaker 1: I think in the old days when we were shooting
Speaker 1: on film and people were developing canisters of film in
Speaker 1: the back of the boots of their cars and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, that was different. But nowadays with digital
Speaker 1: photography and you see the image immediately after you took it.
Speaker 1: And also the way that you operate, you're you're you're
Speaker 1: setting up for a specific shot and you take it
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, particularly at night, so
Speaker 1: I worked at nights. The guys who work daytime, they're
Speaker 1: a completely different breed. And the daytime guys they set
Speaker 1: up with long lenses, they hide in the bushes and
Speaker 1: so on. Right, the guys who work nighttime, you would
Speaker 1: have seen them outside of you know, Joe, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you go to these kind of, you know, posh restaurants
Speaker 1: in New York. Tracy, I'm sure you do too, but
Speaker 1: actually right, but it's a joke, but it might be.
Speaker 1: But I think that these kind of restaurants are more
Speaker 1: prevalent and you get more of celebrities hanging out in
Speaker 1: New York. So you would see these guys on the
Speaker 1: pavement and they'd have flash guns and it would be
Speaker 1: a pack of guys standing together and they're try and
Speaker 1: get close in. So to answer you a question, no,
Speaker 1: it's not really. The skill sets not photographic. The skill
Speaker 1: set is knowing who's famous, knowing who's hot. How how
Speaker 1: can you going to sell it? What are people's car
Speaker 1: registration numbers? Right? Those kind of things. That's what you
Speaker 1: want to know, and that's what makes or breaks a path.
Speaker 1: So walk us through the business model. Then you're going
Speaker 1: out at night, You're sending yourself outside, Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Chipriyani's or something in well, I guess this would be London,
Speaker 1: and you're waiting for famous people to come out, and
Speaker 1: how do you actually make money and how do you
Speaker 1: differentiate yourself from the other photographers who are standing there waiting. Right. So, Tracy,
Speaker 1: I've met the two of you. You know you would
Speaker 1: know I'm not six ft five and you know, in
Speaker 1: that sort of scrum situation, you want to get to
Speaker 1: the front, you want to push people out of the way,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's a bit of a rough and tumble.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you if you watch rugby, it's
Speaker 1: a bit like a rugby scrum, right, Um, you know
Speaker 1: you're just you're just trying to get to the front,
Speaker 1: trying to get the picture. And that was never going
Speaker 1: to be my faulte. So that was never really what
Speaker 1: I what I played too. But I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: to talk about what gives a picture it's worth and
Speaker 1: what makes it what makes a particular picture valuable because
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of things that play. The
Speaker 1: first one is how newsworthy the event is. Right, So
Speaker 1: if we think about celebrities as characters, I almost think
Speaker 1: of it is a bit like WWF because it's a
Speaker 1: little bit made up, it's a little bit real, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit and you've got to know, you know
Speaker 1: what it is that that makes this particular person sellable? Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got. So let's say we talk about the
Speaker 1: British Royals. If they show up at a red carpet
Speaker 1: event where they are opening, you know, a new theater
Speaker 1: or you know, some sort of event that is characteristic
Speaker 1: of what they would do, that is almost not worth
Speaker 1: any money, and you almost won't. You might see it
Speaker 1: in print tomorrow, but it's not going to sell for
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Now, if they do something that
Speaker 1: is out of character or something that they don't want
Speaker 1: to be seen doing, those pictures are obviously worth a
Speaker 1: lot more. So it's it's got that story you But
Speaker 1: the real interesting bit I think is what makes the
Speaker 1: pictures valuable is not whether it's not so much what
Speaker 1: the picture is of, it's it's how many people get
Speaker 1: the picture. It's the exclusivity. So the market structure is,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you've got let's say in London,
Speaker 1: maybe fifty guys who are doing this right, and you've
Speaker 1: got about six newspapers or so that would buy the
Speaker 1: pictures tomorrow morning. So you've got an oligopsony buying the pictures.
Speaker 1: And if you if you're fifty guys giving them the
Speaker 1: same image, they have all of the market power, right,
Speaker 1: they can buy from any one of you, and somebody
Speaker 1: might have a slightly different angle or might have a
Speaker 1: slightly better expression on the face, but essentially you're then
Speaker 1: selling a commoditized product. If, however, you are the only
Speaker 1: one who gets the picture, the power shifts completely because
Speaker 1: then you're running the monopoly and you've got six buyers
Speaker 1: who we're going to be competing by selling to a
Speaker 1: mass audience tomorrow. So that's what you're going for. I
Speaker 1: almost think of it like, you know, there's this debate
Speaker 1: about diamonds and water. Why is why is diamonds more
Speaker 1: valuable than than water? Well, it's about scarcity, and it's
Speaker 1: exactly the same there, because if you can manufacture a
Speaker 1: situation of scarcity, you've got a picture that sells for money.
Speaker 1: So the way you the macro perspective through which you
Speaker 1: describe the market is intuitive. A rare photo is better
Speaker 1: than a normal photo, so it's celebrity doing something unusual
Speaker 1: is more valuable if you're one of the only people
Speaker 1: who has the photo, versus if the entire scrum is there,
Speaker 1: that's more valuable, and so on. What is the precise
Speaker 1: mechanism view which the sale is made because it's a
Speaker 1: quasi auction process. You're describing how is the exact price
Speaker 1: and deal set? As in most markets, there's there's a
Speaker 1: conception that in the pepparazzi business that the photographers make
Speaker 1: a lot of money. There are a handful of guys
Speaker 1: do well and you know, lift slightly above I don't
Speaker 1: know the national average, but it's not it's not a
Speaker 1: business that will make make a lot of money year
Speaker 1: in year out, not for the photographers anyway. The guys
Speaker 1: who make money out of it are the agencies. And
Speaker 1: so what you would do is you as a photographer
Speaker 1: would usually have an agent. So my my day usually
Speaker 1: ended at four am, So four am I would go
Speaker 1: back home or three am somewhere around that, round about
Speaker 1: the time that the club's closed. The nightclubs close and
Speaker 1: people get kicked out. After that, I'll take my last pictures,
Speaker 1: head on home and file it to my agent. And
Speaker 1: the agent um you know, would represent Let's say again,
Speaker 1: there are about five or so big agencies. The business
Speaker 1: is consolidated a little bit. I think guys like Getty
Speaker 1: and Rex and so one have bought up a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of other outlets. But basically they would
Speaker 1: that's when your agent gets to work. Some guy would
Speaker 1: go and in the pictures for you. He would just
Speaker 1: crop it straight and so on, and caption it. And
Speaker 1: if it's this kind of commoditized picture that everybody else
Speaker 1: had it was a red carpet event, he would he
Speaker 1: would just go, he would caption it up, and they
Speaker 1: would send it out on a newswire essentially on a newswire,
Speaker 1: and and the newspapers would would be able to look
Speaker 1: at this, and then they would they would buy it
Speaker 1: straight off there and and in fact they set the price.
Speaker 1: And often you don't hear how much you're gonna get
Speaker 1: paid for a picture until after it was after it
Speaker 1: was in the publication, right, you have no bargaining power there.
Speaker 1: But if you had exclusivity, the situation is obviously very different.
Speaker 1: Then your agent would get to work. He would call
Speaker 1: up the various news desks. He wouldn't necessarily in the
Speaker 1: first instance, show them the pictures. He would just say, look,
Speaker 1: we have this set of pictures. Are you interested? And
Speaker 1: it's it's actually quite interesting how that pans out, because
Speaker 1: sometimes now it can take a whole news cycle, right,
Speaker 1: so so so they would hear early in the morning
Speaker 1: what you had yesterday where you got last night, so
Speaker 1: the pictures won't get to the newspaper until the following day.
Speaker 1: In the interim, he's had a discussion with various news
Speaker 1: desks saying, this is what we have. So so I've
Speaker 1: often asked the question, why don't these guys just go
Speaker 1: and published, you know, the news anyway? Say, look, you know,
Speaker 1: ex celebrity got caught with a girl that he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been with, or with a guy who shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been with or whatever. But the reason they don't is because,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at it from a game theory perspective,
Speaker 1: is because these are not one off games, right, So
Speaker 1: that kind of forces it's the idea of honor amongst thieves.
Speaker 1: If if we were going to play this game once
Speaker 1: and these guys and you just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: had a one off picture that you're going to sell
Speaker 1: to them, and they broke the news anyway, without you
Speaker 1: selling the picture to them, they could, you know, they
Speaker 1: could walk away and nothing's lost. But because I'm going
Speaker 1: to keep bringing them new pictures, they won't cheat on
Speaker 1: the game as it were. I love that we're talking
Speaker 1: about game theory in the context of paparazzi. But any
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier this notion that a exclusive photo of
Speaker 1: photo that no one else had would be worth more
Speaker 1: than a commoditized one. In economics we talk all about
Speaker 1: you know, supply and demand driving price. Was there, ever,
Speaker 1: the temptation to create artificial scarcity for a photo? And
Speaker 1: is that even possible? Right? Exactly, it does happen. So
Speaker 1: the temptation is if if you're two photographers turning up
Speaker 1: at the same you stumble on the same exclusive or
Speaker 1: on the same picture. If you were to both sell
Speaker 1: that picture and send it to separate agencies, we would
Speaker 1: go from a picture that sells for tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of pounds to a picture that sells for you know,
Speaker 1: twenty thirty forty pounds tomorrow. So the temptation is always
Speaker 1: to work together. And again it's because these are not
Speaker 1: people that are that inherently trust one another. It's just
Speaker 1: is it works in their favor by game theory, repeat
Speaker 1: games and all of that stuff to file their pictures together,
Speaker 1: and they often do. You will often see either the
Speaker 1: two photographers would decide on their own two submit via
Speaker 1: the same agency and split the money, or if they
Speaker 1: don't have, if they don't both have relationship with the
Speaker 1: same agency, for the agencies to sell the picture together.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to something that you said
Speaker 1: early on because I don't want to forget it. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of a recent episode. We were talking to
Speaker 1: Cameron christ here and he was talking about the scrum
Speaker 1: in the Chicago trading pits and the importance of size
Speaker 1: in that sort of jost and you mentioned in one
Speaker 1: of your early answers that you're not all that tall.
Speaker 1: I am curious about some of the other attributes of
Speaker 1: really good paparazzi, the degree to which sort of physicality
Speaker 1: really matters in either being big enough to push people
Speaker 1: out of the way or small enough to slide through
Speaker 1: crowds to get that perfect shot. Yeah. Absolutely. I listened
Speaker 1: to that episode and it was It was one of
Speaker 1: my favorites because because I remember while I was working,
Speaker 1: I used to think this, what I do feels a
Speaker 1: lot like that kind of business, right, and so definitely,
Speaker 1: but more than being big, what matters is being able
Speaker 1: to recognize faces at a distance, so good eyesight, but
Speaker 1: also just knowing that the people the individuals very well,
Speaker 1: so that that matters more because it's one thing to
Speaker 1: push somebody out of the way, but it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to just be there first, right because the other guy,
Speaker 1: you know, he may or may not be able to
Speaker 1: push out of the way. So but I think I
Speaker 1: think those are the key the key attributes. And for me,
Speaker 1: what's why I always think that this wasn't such a
Speaker 1: huge jump to wide of financial markets from the from
Speaker 1: the Parati business is that it is about information and
Speaker 1: it is all about knowing. So I talked about getting
Speaker 1: to know the registration numbers for cars because I worked
Speaker 1: with Kate Moss a lot and with Amy Winehous a lot,
Speaker 1: not worked with, but you know, photographed Amy Winehouse and
Speaker 1: Kate Moss a lot. And knowing where they live, knowing
Speaker 1: what times they go out, knowing what cars they drive,
Speaker 1: and getting to know the drivers, and getting to go
Speaker 1: know the guys at the nightclub, and being willing to
Speaker 1: pay for information and those sorts of things. I think
Speaker 1: in this grum situation, it matters being big, and it
Speaker 1: matters getting close up and so on, but you almost
Speaker 1: want to win before you get there. That's funny. It's
Speaker 1: it's almost like like being at an investment bank and
Speaker 1: being able to see client flows and having that edge
Speaker 1: in making your own trading decisions. I'm curious, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a business model that I imagine changed
Speaker 1: quite a lot, maybe over the time that you were working,
Speaker 1: but certainly then nowadays everyone has their own digital camera
Speaker 1: via their phones, for instance, how has the business model
Speaker 1: changed either while you were working um in it or
Speaker 1: since then. I trained on film photography and I joined
Speaker 1: when digital photography was just kind of you know, in
Speaker 1: the early early two thousands, just this digital photography was
Speaker 1: really taking off and was good enough to be used
Speaker 1: at that level, and I think that that made it
Speaker 1: that had a huge impact because it it really lowered
Speaker 1: the h skill set that you that you had to
Speaker 1: have to get into the industry. But but you're right,
Speaker 1: it's not just that, it's it's it's the publication models
Speaker 1: has changed completely. Once a picture has been placed on
Speaker 1: a website, once it's gone and everybody else on the
Speaker 1: web can tweet that picture they downloaded straight away, They don't,
Speaker 1: you know, repeat sales have fallen off a cliff, and
Speaker 1: it it has forced the industy to consolidate a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, so you've you've seen a lot of agencies
Speaker 1: either go under or sell out to the big guys
Speaker 1: or so on. Yeah, definitely, the industry is is still
Speaker 1: struggling to catch up with it. But that's made having
Speaker 1: exclusivity even more important because you cannot bank on those
Speaker 1: repeat sales. I know, in the old days, they were
Speaker 1: the older guys, I used to think of their picture library,
Speaker 1: you know, as their retirement policy, because the pictures would
Speaker 1: keep paying. Like it's a lot like the like the
Speaker 1: music industry, Your your backlog of of works will keep selling.
Speaker 1: But nowadays that's just no longer the case. You just
Speaker 1: don't see people coming back and buying those those old images. Eddie.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a slip, but you
Speaker 1: talked about working with Amy Winehouse and then you said, oh,
Speaker 1: we didn't really work together. You took Now what I
Speaker 1: meant was so, But I wondered when I heard that
Speaker 1: about the symbiotic relationship between the paparazzi and a celebrities. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of cliche is that the celebrities
Speaker 1: try to avoid the paparati, but obviously the paparazi are
Speaker 1: key to bolstering their um, their celebrities. So I'm curious
Speaker 1: about the degree to which you start to establish a
Speaker 1: rapport relationship or with the people that you cover. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's quite interesting, actually, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It's a bit like like wrestling or or a pantomime
Speaker 1: was something where the pepparazzi play the villain, play the
Speaker 1: bad guy. But but it is absolutely symbiotic, and very
Speaker 1: often the information about where the celebrity is going to
Speaker 1: be comes from the celebrity. Very often the celebrity that
Speaker 1: would tip you off, right, and you kind of get
Speaker 1: three kind of strata of people that you that you
Speaker 1: deal with in the industry, and the guys at the
Speaker 1: bottom will come out of a nightclub and they will
Speaker 1: spot you and they will come over to you and
Speaker 1: they will try and strike up a conversation and try
Speaker 1: and get you to photo raft them. And that's fine,
Speaker 1: and you'll do it, and you know, and you'll submit it.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not going to sell a picture, but
Speaker 1: they because they're building a brand, they are they will pose,
Speaker 1: They will pose kisses for you. They will do anything
Speaker 1: that you'd like them to do. If they then a
Speaker 1: couple of years later, they've made it and people know
Speaker 1: who they are, and and then they completely shun you.
Speaker 1: They're almost a little bit nasty when they when they
Speaker 1: when they're in front of you, because they want to
Speaker 1: show that they do not need you, right. And then
Speaker 1: the complete A listers, the Madonnas of this world and
Speaker 1: so on, they're completely professional. They see it as a
Speaker 1: part of their job. They will come out of the
Speaker 1: other the night the nightclub or wherever it is, and
Speaker 1: they will look straight down the camera at you, but
Speaker 1: they won't engage with you. They won't do anything that
Speaker 1: they weren't going to do anyway. They would just carry
Speaker 1: on with their business, almost as if you weren't there.
Speaker 1: But they're also they're also a lot more polite than you,
Speaker 1: than than the than the the kind of mid tier.
Speaker 1: It's it's really interesting to see to see how people's
Speaker 1: reactions change with time. It's the smile right at the
Speaker 1: long end and the short end there's a positive interaction
Speaker 1: and its belly of the curve where you have the
Speaker 1: sort of right right right Eddie. I have to ask,
Speaker 1: was there ever a photo that you took that you
Speaker 1: felt guilty about for the do you know? For the
Speaker 1: most part, no, so I kind of see it as
Speaker 1: for the most part, most people sign up for this
Speaker 1: right and they actively seek fame. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of good places in London that you could
Speaker 1: go out and have dinner and not be photographed by
Speaker 1: the paparazzi. And there are a handful of places that
Speaker 1: you know, you're definitely going to go and be photographed
Speaker 1: if you if you come out, there's going to be
Speaker 1: pops outside. So I always use the example of Sting
Speaker 1: right Sting. You know, the musician, I never saw him
Speaker 1: working in London all the time that I was here.
Speaker 1: He never showed up anywhere, and yet if he wants publicity,
Speaker 1: you know, he could have it at a drop of
Speaker 1: a hat. But there's one caveat There's two groups that
Speaker 1: did make me queasy, So not so much an individual picture,
Speaker 1: but two groups that I didn't like photographing, and that
Speaker 1: is the children of of the famous and royalty, because
Speaker 1: both of those groups have no choice, have no power
Speaker 1: over this, They cannot walk away from this. The royalty
Speaker 1: see this as a as a part of their job.
Speaker 1: But I always felt sympathy because I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of jobs that I in the world
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't do. And they've got one that they
Speaker 1: cannot walk away from. For instance, Prince Harry, he doesn't
Speaker 1: like being in front of the camera. It winds him
Speaker 1: up and you can see it. Okay, well, then let's
Speaker 1: talk about the flip side. So what was your proudest
Speaker 1: photograph or proudest moment in your paparat. Well we talked
Speaker 1: about Amy winehows I loved spending time there and Amy
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people know this, but
Speaker 1: she used to work for a for an agency that
Speaker 1: sold pictures matrix. I think she did, and she knew
Speaker 1: exactly how to play the game. So she had a boyfriend.
Speaker 1: His name was Blake, and he was in prison for
Speaker 1: a while, and she would come to the door to
Speaker 1: greet you know, the neighborhood kids who bang on the door,
Speaker 1: and she would she would turn up with a with
Speaker 1: a with a brooch or something in her hair that
Speaker 1: would show you know that that had Blake's name in
Speaker 1: it in a heart shape, something like that. Just visualizing
Speaker 1: a storyline. At one point, she was cleaning up her life,
Speaker 1: so she would come to the door with a with
Speaker 1: a vacuum cleaner, you know, throwing out an old vacuum cleaner,
Speaker 1: but it really visualized this idea of her trying to
Speaker 1: clean up her life. Um, you know, we all know
Speaker 1: how that ended, and it was very sad, but just
Speaker 1: the time spent out there, you felt a lot more
Speaker 1: like you were working with her. She was given a
Speaker 1: lot more back and she was incredibly good at it.
Speaker 1: So that's definitely some of the some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that I was proud of. Random aside here, remember how
Speaker 1: she in addition to her boyfriend named Blake, she had
Speaker 1: another guy friend who wasn't her boyfriend, who was also
Speaker 1: named Blake. Yeah, I went to high school with that Blake. Really,
Speaker 1: he was a friend of my sister's in Vermont. So
Speaker 1: I randomly have a connection to one of the two Blake,
Speaker 1: well the other I mean I never saw. I never
Speaker 1: saw Blake. We called him Blake one and Blake two,
Speaker 1: and never really met the first Blake, the one that
Speaker 1: was imprisoned. But but I met Blake two, and he
Speaker 1: was he was a nice used to hang out at
Speaker 1: my house when I was a teenage. That's fantastic. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean that whole crowd around her, they
Speaker 1: were decent, down to earth people that happened to be famous.
Speaker 1: It was, it was, it was fantastic. All right, Well, Eddie,
Speaker 1: it's been really great to listen to your stories and
Speaker 1: learn a little bit about the business model of the paparazzi.
Speaker 1: That's Eddie undervaulved Bloomberg's Medals reporter. Thank you so much, guys,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks Eddie. That was great. So Joe, I
Speaker 1: found that conversation really entertaining, and I'm now trying to
Speaker 1: think of ways that i can accessorize my outfits to
Speaker 1: visualize my personal storyline and got some paparazzi interested if
Speaker 1: anyone could pull that off. Tracy, I know that it's you.
Speaker 1: I feel like that conversation as well. And I guess
Speaker 1: I would say every story or every career or whatever,
Speaker 1: there's always some economics markets parallel that you can draw, right.
Speaker 1: But I was actually I thought that the connection was
Speaker 1: more in depth than I even was expecting. Whether it
Speaker 1: was the auction slash market structure of how the photos
Speaker 1: are sold, whether it was the repeat game theory of
Speaker 1: the relationship between the agency and the producers, whether it
Speaker 1: was you know, as I put it, the smile in
Speaker 1: terms of where on the curve and who's nice to you.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of really interesting lessons there. Mm hmm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the smile was a good analogy. I like that. It
Speaker 1: is a really fascinating dynamic because you think of paparazzi,
Speaker 1: they're these really competitive guys. Obviously the business is really competitive,
Speaker 1: really intense. But even there you can find instances of
Speaker 1: economic cooperation. So maybe that proves uh that, um, some
Speaker 1: economic models work. I guess there is hope after all.
Speaker 1: That's right, Okay, Well, on that happy note, this has
Speaker 1: been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy
Speaker 1: Alloway and you can follow me on Twitter at Tracy
Speaker 1: Alloway and I'm Joe Wisn't all. You could follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at the Stalwart, and you can follow Eddie
Speaker 1: on Twitter at ed Vanderwald. And you should follow our
Speaker 1: producer to foror Foreheads at foreheads T, as well as
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesco Levie at Francesca Today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.