Woman vs Machine

Or perhaps this should be: Woman vs Artificial Intelligence. I had a Lucy Ricardo moment, another of those times when I felt my life going ridiculously off the rails and yet I persevered ... for no particular reason.

Smash His Camera is the documentary about Ron Galella, the New York-based paparazzo who began making a name for himself in the late 1960s. I have a love-hate relationship with Galella. His work has given us a beautiful and generally flattering view of JBKO's post-White House life. I love looking at his photos. I hate what he did to get them. He stalked her, sometimes hitting her with his camera strap to get a reaction. Jumping out of bushes. Hiding in coat racks and behind retail counters. Using telephoto lenses. He bedded Jackie's cook to get her schedule and pursued her then young children and any Kennedy cousins he could find, hoping to get Aunt Jackie in the shot. (There's a scene in the movie where an adult Bobby Kennedy, Jr., asks Galella how old he is now and says, "Too old for jumping out of bushes, huh?") JBKO eventually took Galella to court for harassment. She got slammed in the press for an oversized sense of privilege (who does she think she is?), but she won and he could not come within 25 feet of her. I wonder if, had Princess Diana had the same steely sense of self and took on the press in the same way, she might be alive today.

Anyway, I learned that the documentary on Galella is now on Amazon Prime. I wanted to watch it. I was initially thwarted by my voice remote. When I asked for "Smash His Camera," I was told by my TV screen that I have no camera monitored by Xfinity. OK ... I asked for "Ron Galella." No results. I eschewed the voice feature and dove into manual search mode, laboriously key stroking first S-M-A-S-H-space-H-I-S-space-C-A-M-E-R-A and then R-O-N-space-G-A-L-E-L-L-A. I reaped no rewards, but a touch of carpal tunnel.

The mature side of my brain was telling me to say "what the hell" and move on. Unfortunately, my stubborn side is more powerful. I went to my laptop, logged in to Prime, and found it rather easily using my QWERTY keyboard and Amazon's superior search function. I watched online through the credit frame, and then went back to my TV. EUREKA! Xfinity/Prime asked me if I wanted to continue watching. Yes, please!

Was it worth it? Kinda/sorta. I tuned in for Jackie but also enjoyed the meta moments at the beginning, where Galella is still tracking an aging Robert Redford after all these years. On his way into the hotel where Redford is being feted, Galella notes a crowd of younger photographers and fans and asks who they're waiting for: Angelina Jolie. "I wish I was shooting Angelina Jolie instead," he says wistfully. I wonder if that got a laugh at Redford's Sundance Film Festival, where the documentary won an award.