Reynolds’ run-in with a shutterbug stalker
Full disclosure: I’ve got a crush on Ryan Reynolds.
Even despite Green Lantern, an ill-advised gambit at joining the pantheon of cinematic superheroes based on comic-book characters. But every career has its bombs.
So, on behalf of all Ryan groupies, indeed all fellow Canadians, I’m outraged that Reynolds was sent to hospital after allegedly getting flung arse-over-teakettle by a paparazzo at the wheel of a getaway car.
The incident unfolded last Friday evening in the underground parking lot of the Shangri-La Hotel in Vancouver, Reynolds’ hometown, and where he’s been shooting the movie Deadpool. Police say the vehicle-on-actor collision occurred following a “confrontation.” Confrontation, in paparazzo lingo, means ambush, which is how those shutterbug stalkers make their living.
Seems almost retro, the paparazzo profession. In an era when just about everybody’s got a smartphone camera easy to hand for purposes of snapping and documenting — citizen-GOTCHA — the full-time celebrity pursuer has become something of an anachronism. A vanishing breed as well among their clicking cousins in the newspaper business, freelancers and stringers mostly — known as nightcrawlers, as per the recent Jake Gyllenhaal flick of the same name — who once prowled the streets by dark, monitoring police radio scanners (I have my own at home), chasing fires and crash-ups and murders.
Now the Toronto Police Service has gone and encrypted its communication frequencies, shifting from analogue to digital, which scrambles voices. Not that boldface predators ever relied on police scanners, of course. Theirs is a bird-dogging game that relies on contacts, insider dope and star-sighting vigilance. Also publicity agents who impart information on the sly, usually with their clients’ knowledge, acting all surprised and peeved when caught in the TMZ crosshairs.
Not that our Ryan — and don’t confuse him with Our Other Ryan, Gosling — would ever do anything so self-serving. This Ryan has been quite sanguine and tongue-in-cheek about the whole affair. After CBC Vancouver reached out for comment, Reynolds responded via social media message: “Put Beachcombers on the air and I’ll call.”
That might have crushed my crush right there. The Beachcombers was a typically mind-numbing Canadian TV series about log salvagers that inexplicably ran for nearly two decades and, even more unfathomably, drew whopping ratings and became a foreign hit, re-aired in some 50 countries. But it was filmed in B.C., and presumably budding thespian Reynolds grew up watching it, though he would have been only 12 when it was cancelled. Maybe he really is a fan. More likely, he’s pulling our finger, in that wry Canadian way. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point — and I do have one — is that the purported culprit, the longlens wheelman, seems to be a noto- rious serial offender.
Over the years, this individual, Richmond, B.C.-based Rik Fedyck, has actually managed to give paparazzi a bad name, if that’s possible.
I first became aware of Fedyck whilst in Vancouver on assignment in 2008 and stumbling onto the night-shoot set of a Jennifer Aniston movie, can’t now recall which rom-com but take your pick; they’re interchangeable. It was on that location that Fedyck got into a noseto-nose altercation with Aniston’s bodyguard while attempting to freeze-frame the actress, a gossipmag cover favourite and possibly the most paparazzi-trailed celebrity (don’t ask me why) on the planet.
Fedyck complained he was the victim of Aniston’s muscleman. “I was parked about 200 yards away from the circus and Mr. Pit Bull bodyguard came out,” he was quoted as saying. “He started swearing at me and said that I (wasn’t) going anywhere.” Fedyck further claimed Mr. Pit Bull had hurled racist insults at his Thai girlfriend.
Not wishing to cause a cross-border controversy, Aniston apparently sent her bouncer packing at the request of the production company. At least that’s what Fedyck told me, after filing a complaint with both police and the RCMP.
But Fedyck has a long history of egregious shock-troop tactics, often designed to promote his brand. He thrives on litigious crosscuts.
A year previous to the Aniston thing, he brought suit against a couple of other B-list actresses, Denise Richards and Pamela Anderson, who were shooting a movie locally; the ex-wife of nutbar Charlie Sheen, the latter a one-time Playboy centrefold, cantilevered star of Baywatch and all-round Canadian natural monument.
Fedyck so infuriated Richards that she chucked his laptop off a hotel balcony. What did Fedyck do to get such a rise out of Richards — who had recently taken up with rocker Richard Sambora, former spouse of her former best friend, actress Heather Locklear? As he admitted to the Province: “I said, ‘I know you’re a home-wrecker and you don’t know how to keep your man.’ She went ballistic on me.” No kidding. This time ’round, re Our Ryan, Fedyck is denying he hit the hunk or did anything otherwise wrong, telling the Province: “The story that’s out there is 100-per-cent false.”
The story that’s out there: After viewing surveillance video, police have recommended Fedyck be charged with the rarely applied offence of “intimidation’’ — persistent following of an individual in a disorderly manner. Up to the Crown’s office in La-La-Land North to decide if they’ll . . . pursue.
Fortunately, Our Ryan suffered only minor injuries: sore knee, sore back. And funny bone intact. Rosie DiManno appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.