Hubbub Hubris
“Hubba hubba” came from the German word for pretty - hübsche. It’s been thirteen years since the 2013 Academy Awards ceremony, which was melodically hosted by Seth MacFarlane. That event was notorious for Seth, with the backing of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, singing a song called We Saw Your Boobs. Two of the actresses mentioned in the song were millennials: Jennifer Lawrence and Kristen Stewart. When the iCloud leaks (a.k.a. Celebgate) happened in 2014, the timing was incidental in that the summer was over. From August 31 to October 27, hundreds of private photos and videos were unleashed. However, it wasn’t like the P*rn Wikileaks scandal in 2011 where the entire internet could locate people’s private Facebook accounts or even other forms of contact details.
At least the 2011 event made sense in terms of how the data breach could happen. The confidential information came from a patient database managed by a non-profit health organization called Adult Industry Medical Associates. The time that it took to go from the outbreak of privacy invasion in March 2011 to the shutdown of AIM in May 2011 should make you wonder why there wasn’t an attempt to do the same thing with Celebgate in 2014. AIM had been around since 1998, so it’s a wonder that the security breach didn’t materialize during the MySpace years. By 2012, Twitter had supplanted Facebook in relevancy when you see the immediacy of attention from celebrities. By late August 2014, vacation time being over meant that regular people (namely guys) had a distraction to stop them from messaging celebrities. A doom scroll for one person is a rabbit hole for another.
This idea of a distraction that is vast enough to demand a steely resolve which could divert attention from participating in a revolt is something that is mirrored in today’s world with the Jeffrey Epstein files. A point could be made of there being a deranged hypocrisy in that the thespians who went to the island to engage in consensual acts with fellow grown-ups are mostly the same thespians who revealed their birthday suits for storytelling purposes. Could there be any more harm in an actor or actress exposing themselves in a real-life erotic encounter when they’ve already done it for our entertainment? This, of course, does not include the thirst-trap tsunami of 2014, although some may argue that the damage is done if the celebrities involved in the 2014 exposure went to an island to engage with consenting adults. Just because they didn’t know they were being filmed doesn’t make it any more different from being exposed by stealthy paparazzi.
The above man is a photographer named Tyler Shields. In front of him is an actress and all-round celebrity named Kristin Cavallari. This photo was taken in August 2010. Four Augusts later, Tyler must have been getting a lot of heat. In late July of 2014, he had been sued by a magician named Joseph Rehaume. In L.A. Superior Court, “Magic Joe” sued Tyler for failing to safely use fire during a August 2012 shoot. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, the iCloud tornado could have torn Tyler’s life apart since so many of the women were actresses whom he had photographed. Strangely, these models did not include Jennifer Lawrence nor Kristen Stewart despite Tyler having a reputation for photographing almost a “who’s who” of famous American millennial actresses. Photography-wise, there was no discrimination between TV and film, if you were beautiful then that was enough. By the way, all the photos in this article were shot by him.
Two other actresses deserve to be singled out. Individually and collectively, Tyler Shields had photographed Juno Temple and Brittany Snow. In 2008, he had even directed them in a music video for Plushgun’s Just Impolite. Their kiss foreshadowed their love scenes with other actresses. Tyler had also photographed Juno with Emma Roberts - another actress who later participated in on-screen lesbianism. Emma’s paternal aunt is Julia Roberts, and I’m sure that she’s grateful that she got to participate in revelry without the fear of being filmed by a civilian who sees themself as a budding photojournalist. When you look at the Epstein controversy, or what I like to call Islandgate, it reminds you that anyone online can be found offline no matter how they hide their identity. Using some of the slang that was adopted (for legal reasons), if you collect images of “pizza” then you will automatically be tracked down. It took too long for the 2014 culprits to be identified. But then think about people who go unpunished for making albums, films or TV shows freely available.
If you look at Islandgate, so many names and faces have been redacted. The 2014 Celebgate calamity is worth noting for how there was an attempt to protect the identities of several actresses who were already identified. Initials only served to highlight the accessibility of the alphabetical list on Celebgate sites i.e. Abigail Spencer, Christina Hendricks, Hope Solo, Jennette McCurdy, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, Emily Browning and Amber Heard. The latter (a bisexual) claimed that she sent some of her private photos to her fiancé (i.e. she married Johnny Depp in 2015). Juno Temple has acted with Olivia Wilde, Emily Browning and Emma Roberts (below). On Twitter, Mary Elizabeth Winstead had tweeted about her own involuntary indecent exposure: “Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked.”
Regardless of whether you believe that he committed suicide or was murdered, at least you have people who discuss the fate of Jeffrey Epstein. Nothing is said about what became of the five perpetrators - Ryan Collins (from Pennsylvania), Edward Majerczyk (from Chicago), Christopher Brannan (from Virginia), Emilio Herrera (from Chicago) and George Garofano (from Connecticut). Ghislaine Maxwell is still alive because her existence is what would usually be referred to as a dead man’s switch. She had to be moved to another prison, but you would think that there would be people wanting to assassinate the perverted pentagon of cyber criminals. In England, all of their faces would have been made visible for targets to be drawn. Even in America, the police don’t hesitate from using the internet to publicize mugshots of people who didn’t make nationwide news.
In 2017, the year of the Me Too Movement, Mischa Barton (below) had won a lawsuit for being a victim of revenge p*rn. Puzzlingly, ex-boyfriend Jon Zacharias was not imprisoned for wanting to sell a sex tape that was made without her permission. Besides being the son of a co-writer behind Revenge of the Nerds (a 1984 film that derives humour from non-consent in one scene), Jon was said to be an I.T. expert from Illinois - the same home as the aforementioned Edward Majerczyk and Emilio Herrera. If Jon Zacharias was publicly murdered or had simply gone missing, Mischa would be a suspect. This is why AI is a nefarious tool where you can give the uncanny valley impression that someone is still alive by impersonating them while making excuses as to why you can’t meet.
Unlike the 2011 situation with the adult entertainers, there hasn’t been a convincing explanation as to how the quintet of cyber perverts managed to get a hold of the contact details. You would need some kind of inside man. It’s not like The Who’s Pete Townshend using his credit card to find out about the cabal of statutory offenders. A more plausible scenario would be that someone on Amazon, eBay or whatever had wanted to exploit their knowledge of personal info when they saw a recognizable name. You see, this is why you need stage-names and pedestrian names for other lines of business. Simply being a good hacker is too much of a sweeping statement. The involuntary bouts of cyber flashing means that some actresses have to bury the private nudes with professional ones, especially if they are on OnlyFans.
Below is Heather Morris. The list of leaked actresses who were photographed by Tyler Shields is astonishing. Here is a dozen of them: Aly Michalka, Crystal Reed, Ashley Greene, Cobie Smulders, A.J. Cook, Christian Serratos, Abigail Breslin, Caity Lotz, Adelaide Kane, Christa B. Allen, Alison Brie and Brie Larson. What my research has informed me is that the number of actresses who have performed sex scenes is rivalled only by the number of actresses who’ve kissed other women on camera. Seriously, there are so many examples of sapphic storylines that I want to establish myself as a screenwriter who specializes in exclusive female ensembles without resorting to sapphism. Besides, films which contain lesbian subtext are more interesting than films with lesbian content.
In terms of genre, I have conceived so many stories that I want to establish myself as an all-round storyteller before I even get known as an action movie guy. Typecasting applies to people behind the camera just as much to those in front. Take, for instance, Tyler Shields. He does have interesting concepts but they are often overlooked by his hunger for the sultry. This becomes more apparent when you look at the actresses who went from being photographed by him to being leaked not by him: Haley Bennett, Emily Wickersham, Dakota Johnson, Kelli Garner, Demi Lovato, Katharine McPhee, Dianna Agron, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Diora Baird, Kathryn Newton, Emily Bett Rickards and Holland Roden.
Let’s get back to July 2014 - when Tyler Shields had been sued by Magic Joe Rehaume. It was bookended by two events involving Kathy Griffin. In June, Tyler had shot her naked by a swimming pool whereas August 29 was when she agreed to do a bare ice bucket challenge for Jimmy Kimmel Live! after emerging from a swimming pool. That’s one way of doing a cold plunge! There’s the Midas touch then there’s the Judas touch. It seems like almost any woman near Tyler’s vicinity became a victim of leaking. In May 2012, there was a Los Angeles debut of his Mouthful exhibition where some of the female guests had managed to suffer from leakage despite not being photographed by him i.e. Whitney Port, Chloe Bennet, Sarah Hyland and Vanessa Lengies.
It could almost be considered a rite of passage - let oneself be humbly photographed by Tyler Shields before stepping into the big leagues. I actually feel bad writing this article, so if it’s any consolation to any of you actresses out there - none of my screenplays contain nudity. People talk about sleazy directors, producers or studio heads but never casting directors. Just when you thought that you had seen enough leaked clientele of Tyler Shields, here is another example of a dozen: Lindsay Lohan, Nina Dobrev, Jennifer Morrison, Phoebe Tonkin, Bijou Phillips, Portia Doubleday, Eliza Coupe, Stana Katic, Tallulah Willis, Ana Mulvoy-Ten, Taryn Manning and Leven Rambin (click the below image of her to enlarge).
Surprisingly, Anna Kendrick became one of his subjects without being subjugated in nonconsensual fashion. Anna still went on to give performances where she showed enough skin to titillate whereas Alexandra Krosney was photographed by him, and succeeded in not showing enough skin to be seen as a sex object. She was in front of his lens in 2014 - two years after being unreasonably fired following the first season of Last Man Standing. Alexandra had so much potential that was undone by this unfair dismissal. Emma Stone and Shailene Woodley, like Jennifer Lawrence and Kristen Stewart, remain unscathed for not having anything to do with the photographer who has been compared to Terry Richardson. Emma stands out for not having leaked content in spite of going on to have demonstrated increasingly kinkier forms of expression.
The idolization of the female form is something to note because it seems like losing weight and looking fit mean nothing when Photoshop can lay on the finishing touches (never mind body doubles). Eventually, there will be no need for closed-set photo shoots unless you want to make a name for yourself in terms of socializing. In the June 1972 issue of Playboy, an unidentified CGI expert was quoted in an article called Hollywood’s Second Coming. This person proved to be prescient: “With some hardware that we still have to develop, and with a considerably larger range of programs than we’ve used so far, it’s conceivable we could take a few hundred photographs of faces, figures and backgrounds and use them to make an entire feature film starring, say, Clint Eastwood and Greta Garbo.”
Fashion catwalks are still dependable because they’re as much about advertising the famous audience as the frocks. Beauty pageants are a way to advertise a woman’s sex appeal. In that regard, rivals can be lovers as long as they’re both losers. Many months after the Miss Universe contest in 2008, Miss Japan (Hiroko Mima) and Miss Trinidad and Tobago (Anya Ayoung-Chee) shared a man simultaneously. That’s one way of putting aside differences between countries. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher used to have threeways. Like her mother, Rumer Willis is a kinky bisexual. The below photos of Rumer were snapped in September 2020.
Let’s get back to serious business. One of the cyber molesters, Edward Majerczyk, was the 29-year-old son of two retired Chicago police officers (they must already have knowledge about cyber crimes). According to the online sentencing memorandum, Edward had an associate degree in liberal arts. The first sign of him being incredibly irresponsibile is that Edward previously separated from his girlfriend despite having an eleven-year-old son who lived with her. Edward was described as supporting his son financially as well as visiting him regularly, but that was all for nought as he was sentenced to nine months in prison and was ordered to pay US$5,700 in restitution to cover the counseling services of one unnamed celebrity.
As a fan of Hong Kong cinema, I can’t help but think of the Chinese equivalent to Celebgate. There was a Canadian actor named Edison Chen. He unwittingly had many photos leaked of himself getting intimate with several Chinese actresses. It destroyed the conservative image that the locals had of the H.K. film industry. Clearly, they were not familiar with the Western concepts of open marriage and polyamory. While one of the actresses (Gillian Chung) had to take a year off, Edison Chen took five years off. This was because his role in Sniper had been shortened, and his role in Jump was recast altogether. In the ‘80s, there was an English new wave band called Wang Chung. It means yellow bell. I suppose that you could call Edison’s PR nightmare, Wang Chung Gate. But that sounds like it could be a martial arts movie like Dragon Gate (1975).
With the U.S. film industry in dire straits, perhaps they should consider filming lesbian orgies (interracial or not) with famous names whom can be trusted to not chicken out or peter out. Naturally, I’m reminded of Peter Griffin vs. Ernie the giant chicken in episodes of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy.