BEIJING, June 13 -- Veteran celebrity photographer Patrick McMullan is also the life of the party in his own right. Here for the Shanghai International Film Festival, he talks to Tom Fitzsimons about the rich and famous and how to look good in a photo.
Tilt your head to the side a little. Work with the wind if you are outdoors. Make sure your photographer is a bit taller than you. Most of all: Be ready. That's the advice from Patrick McMullan for surviving and even succeeding in a photograph - and he should know. The 52-year-old New Yorker standing on the rooftop lawn of the Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai hotel has been taking pictures of the most glamorous people in the world for decades. This is his first visit to China.
"Everyone can look bad in a picture," he says. "Everyone. You should be ready."
With thinning gray hair, a lighter in hand and wearing a pink polo shirt, McMullan doesn't immediately look like a stargazer. But he has an ease about him with almost everyone - from a gaggle of Chinese magazine journalists to a Shanghai tourism official who shows up to introduce himself.
"I'm not particularly awed by importance," he says, "because I've known a lot of important people."
Working with ordinary people is as interesting as working with celebrities and he has become a bit of a collector of "strays" over the years, he says.
"When I have a family event, those are my celebrities," he remarks.
Nevertheless, McMullan's latest book is called "Glamour Girls" and the subjects include fashion divas, rake-thin models, movie stars and the cream of New York society.
He happily chats away about Naomi (Campbell) and Julia Roberts ("She used to be a great friend of mine") and Kate Moss ("Kate Moss is my favorite. I'm friendly with Kate Moss.").
He tells the story of introducing assisted suicide advocate Jack "Doctor Death" Kervorkian to Tom Cruise at a party. According to McMullan, Cruise had no idea who the euthanasia advocate was, but didn't hold back with the enthusiasm.
"I really love your work," he quotes Cruise as saying. "And Dr Kervorkian looks at me like 'what'?"
The photographer diplomatically saved the day by explaining that Cruise really meant the doctor's campaign for the right to die and assisted suicide.
How did it happen, this move into the glittering world?
Not by the conventional route. McMullan studied business at New York University and his gregarious style took him straight into a job in public relations.
But a bout of "virulent cancer" to rival cyclist Lance Armstrong's battle left him exhausted and unable to find work in an appearance-dominated industry.
Instead, he returned to an earlier passion and took up a job with a photographer friend.
"I don't know how long I've got left to live. I'm just going to take pictures," he recalls saying to himself.
The experience taught him to "go with the flow" and gave him an almost Buddhist outlook on life, he says. "But I always did like going to parties."
He moved through different New York magazines, always taking pictures of the nightlife, and anything else that struck him.
He was never pushy. "I was a nice guest. I didn't need to get the picture. I just needed to get pictures."
The laid-back approach worked, and he found himself increasingly let inside the ropeline. "I don't want to just stand outside. I've always wanted to be at the party."
Sometimes McMullan's philosophy sounds Epicurean, a feast of good living.
"My life is to have fun and show the good side of life," he says. "... I don't like to look down. I like to look up and see the beauty ... A lot of celebrities like me because I like everybody."
He likes them back, citing Tom Hanks, Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert de Niro as three with whom he has good rapport. Others, like Kevin Costner (who once demanded the film from his camera) and Leonardo DiCaprio (who now says: "I don't do pictures") he finds more difficult.
His theory for why we love celebrities so much - and why their faces cover the sides of buildings on Nanjing Road and sell everything from whisky to watches - is pretty simple.
"We're missing the richness of an extended group," he says.
In the global village, the old connections are being lost - the cousins, the friends of friends, the local rogue. In their place, celebrities assume to new proportions.
"We all know who Brad Pitt is, we all know who Angelina Jolie is. We can say: 'What about what happened to them'?"
What most can't say is what they're really like, which is generally nice, McMullan says.
How does constantly being in the camera's eye affect them? Does it make life feel plastic and unreal?
"The whole movie business is plastic," he says with a laugh, but he argues that glamor and good looks are as real a side of life as any other. "My pictures are as real as seeing them picking their nose. But I don't want to take pictures of them picking their nose."
That's why he refuses to be called a "paparazzo," saying he always asks for permission and never stalks stars in their private time. The same hunger for beauty means he's never wanted to be a war photographer.
Invited to Shanghai by his friend, the Chinese cosmetics queen Yue-Sai Kan, he will be chronicling the stars and crowds at the Shanghai International Film Festival.
In the weeks since the Sichuan earthquake, Americans have been feeling deeply for Chinese people, he says, while they are also increasingly curious about coming to visit here.
"And most Americans, I think, find Asian people very attractive - physically, sexually," he says.
(Source: Shanghai Daily)
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