Bozo and the Paparazzi

  
 

 
I think we ran into the ghost of Dodi Al-Fayed last night in the Latin Quarter.  I love street performers.  Musicians, jugglers, puppeteers, artists...even clowns.  The creature in the movie above is an unknown.  One would have to categorize it as a cloned mime-clown.

He had set up in the middle of an intersection of two major pedestrian walk-ways.  I threw him some money and stepped out of the way to catch a movie of the performance that I had just funded as part of the The Craig Rodgerson Charitable Trust.  Something I could sell to PBS for Pledge Breaks.

Several of us were shooting footage, I had paid my dues.  Marsha saw his "performance" exactly as he intended.  His hand gestures meant for me to stop shooting. I figured it was part of some "Dance of the Gloved Hands" kind of performance.

I was using a small digital camera, NO FLASH, and I was standing out of the way.  Something in the past of this troubled street performer had lead to a policy of NO CAMERAS.  He told me to "Arretez-Vous".  I complied.  I stopped.

I can not figure out why someone demands privacy when he has 2 footlights, a portable sound system built into the podium he is standing on, and full costume and make-up.  He is hustling money from tourists, but he wants no photos.  Other "Underwriters of the Performing Arts" were also puzzled by this policy.  The folks standing around watching kept their hands in their pockets, and I remained the only active donor of funding.  It is a VERY public area.  It is also a tourist area.  I did not chase his clown car down the street and into the tunnel support.  I did not try to check his pulse through the pancake make-up.

I am still puzzled, and PISSED, by Bozetta's behavior.  Strangely enough, we were on a subway car earlier in the day  that was being terrorized by a drunken singing clown.  When Bob Goldthwaite made the movie "Shakes the Clown" he said a lot of people do not like clowns.  Mimes have had a bad name for decades.  Maybe there is some toxin in the grease-paint. 

In the end, I know that Bozetta was in a public place drawing attention and BEGGING for Euro.  He gave up any "right" to privacy when he turned the two flood lights on, and cranked up the toons!  Wearing those colors, with stage lighting and prerecorded sound is a real cry of "I am ready for my Close-Up, Mr. DeMille."