The rumor that American Media’s tabloid queen, Bonnie Fuller, shelled out $100,000 for a wedding photo of Britney Spears and ex-groom, reminds me to get cracking on the tabloid thriller I’ve been dawdling over. It’s called “Shooter,” and here’s how it begins:
“Laszlo was a fabulist who put great store in truth-telling because the truth, as all fabulists will tell you, is stranger than fiction. A tall, lean refugee from wealth and privilege when Mona first met him, he was often high on speed, always riffing, full of imagination, his sardonic humor tinged with bitter taunts. Of all the shooters she’d known, Laszlo was the cleverest. He had a flippant, street-smart intellect, brilliant at picking up on the latest youth trends. His listeners appreciated the ambling, long-limbed version of personal history that he passed off as truth-telling. He did not paint himself heroically, so much as an observer of the heroic. His was the glancing perspective of a momentary participant, someone who had witnessed history at crucial moments — Paris in ’68, the Berlin Wall in ’89, the Velvet Revolution, the Rwanda genocide … the list went on. When he riffed, his ice-blue eyes would flare with irony. He was sly yet self-deprecating. His best disguise, of course, was modesty — which made him more seductive. Laszlo’s style extended even to his diet. He ate no wheat or dairy products, in keeping with his fabulism. “She and Laszlo had met in New York, in the early ’80s, working at a supermarket tabloid where, as you might expect, nobody gave a damn about the truth. Though most of the staff had come to The World from the respectable press, they were a ragtag collection of scribblers. Laszlo was their prime freelance shooter, the go-to guy whenever the cover editor needed something special: Ted Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor in the same frame, looking like two blimps on Martha’s Vineyard, or Elton John nuzzling David Bowie on the beach at St. Tropez, or Simon and Garfunkel caught in a backstage argument at their Central Park reunion concert.”
If there are any publishers out there who’d like a further look, please contact my agent. There’s more where that came from. Meantime, the rumored Fuller payment seems like peanuts compared with a reputed $1million offer to Britney’s buddy, Jason Allen Alexander, for a video of the two of them taking their short-lived wedding vows.
