Trudy, your stance on this strikes me as so cynical it's almost wrapping back around to naive. Publicists' jobs are to make their charges desirable to the public. No doubt some of them feed the paparazzi to do so.
Well, as long as we're calling names I'll say you're naive if you refuse to see you're being played. If you enjoy it go ahead. If you think Tom Cruise's "how did you know you'd be here" "your publicist told us" is some rare occurrence in the big fat spin machine good for you.
However the idea that the paparazzi are always invited to fly over and take pictures of celebrities at home or to stake out their supermarket--why the fuck should someone have to send their assistant out to buy Midol? How is that the celebrity's fault?
It's not always, its often. And even when its not an explicit invite people play the game on purpose and the game isn't always fun. Sometimes I'm sure it IS too much pudding but when you buy a bunch of pudding and then eat too much of it you can't blame the pudding. It's not a mystery why Clooney or McAdams don't get this attention right now, they've pushed the pudding bowl away.
Fact is, the paparazzi know there's a market for stalkeresque pictures, whether they're set up or not. They're not patsies in a great puppet show manned by celebrities and publicists. They're agents too.
Uh huh. They're not the patsies in this little game.