Six Degrees of Paris Hilton

Part pit bull, part Columbo whacked out on a pot of espresso, they don’t make investigative journalists like Mark Ebner anymore. And that’s good news if you’re a dirt bag, scum bag, douche bag or any sort of Hollywood low-level, window peeping, carpet crawling, masturbation celebrity want-to-be.

Mr. Ebner is one of the few writers left today willing to get down in the gutter with his subjects just to hear their truth. In his new book Six Degrees of Paris Hilton, Mr. Ebner takes you to the places they never show you on “Access Hollywood,” because if the general public could access the side of Hollywood Mr. Ebner uncovers, that tub of popcorn in your lap at the multiplex would serve only one purpose, that of a barf bucket.

I recently had the chance to ask Mr. Ebner about his new book and what his thoughts on the state of Hollywood are today.



Tell me about your new book Six Degrees of Paris Hilton.

The book is currently cataloging on Amazon under Biography, Famous People, Pop Culture, True Crime and Criminology. That sounds schizophrenic, but not half as pathological as the real life characters in the book. Six Degrees is a non-fiction Hollywood crime book that reads like “true crime” – partially because of my prose, and partially because, well, it’s Hollywood.



What was the genesis of the book?

The book was born out of a feature story I did for the now-defunct Radar magazine about the home invasion, robbery/extortion caper perpetrated on embattled “Girls Gone Wild” impresario Joe Francis. Through an intermediary, Darnell Riley – the guy who put the gun to Francis’ head and videotaped a whirling marital aid riding the crest of his buttocks – sent me an e-mail message from prison objecting to me calling him “Dildo Dude” in a blog post on HollywoodInterrupted.com. I wrote him in prison, and he basically said, “Look – I’m not going to pull an O.J. here. It’s not ‘if I did It,’ it’s ‘I did it…and then some.'” The “then some” became Six Degrees of Paris Hilton.

Has Hollywood always been this seedy or has it gotten worse in the past ten years?

Hollywood has always been seedy and infected with interlopers preying on the rich and famous. But the new breed of con artists and shakedown specialists are more relentless, brazen and, in fact, stupid than they were in the past.

Do you feel Hollywood is worthy of the idol worship the general public lays upon it?

Sure they’re worthy of the worship because, when the idols inevitably fall the general public has the opportunity to feel better about themselves.



How has living in Hollywood and the culture of Hollywood affected you personally?

Don’t let my Facebook friend-count fool you – I can count my real friends on one hand. My life has been compartmentalized to the point of near total isolation from any normal sort of social life. I live out of a post office box in Santa Monica and lay my head down in a 1969 VW bus. I shower at the gym and will have armed security at my book signing on February 11. Other than all that, life is peachy. Honestly, I’ve been trying to write my way out of this sewer since I started two decades ago but Los Angeles, not New York, is really the naked city of eight million stories. Six Degrees of Paris Hilton is one of them.



Have you had any problems with safety since you’ve written this book, any confrontations?

I’ve been mad-dogged a few times by the punks I’ve written about, and lawyers have been baselessly threatening me right and left, but the harassment thus far hasn’t held a candle to the way the thugs in Scientology handle their critics.

[Ebner was one of the first journalists to expose Scientology on its own turf]

Has hardcore investigative journalism, the sort you do, been lost to pandering to the rich and famous?

Tabloid culture notwithstanding, long-form investigative journalism has been dying since the advent of the internet. There just aren’t many outlets left for great think-pieces, and until the web media brokers realize that their servers will be well-served running more than just news aggregation and news/gossip flashes, there will be a lot of journalistic talent withering on the unemployment line. Big Hollywood and the Daily Beast are both a start in the right direction. Ron Burkle is plotting something serious with all his recent media buyouts. It’s slow and frustrating, but I won’t declare investigative journalism dead until there’s no place left to negotiate upwards.

What do you want people will take away from reading your book?

I would love for my readers to take away an experience that they are compelled to share with others. I didn’t write the book to languish in the “criminology” section at some soon-to-be-shuttered Border’s.



Do you feel Hollywood can benefit from having other voices in the political spectrum heard, like what’s going on at Big Hollywood?

Hollywood players will pretend that Big Hollywood doesn’t exist while, at the same time, deriding it vocally at any given opportunity. The more Big Hollywood mocks the Hollywood entertainment industrial complex and calls the shiny townsfolk out on their bullshit, the more they will listen – especially when the criticism speaks to their bottom-line. Hollywood can learn from a conservative viewpoint. Isn’t that obvious already? Oh yeah – they’re still denying it.



How many degrees of separation are you from Paris Hilton?

I ran into Paris the other night at a party celebrating the cast and filmmakers of “Milk.” She said she was going to sue me, but scotched that idea out of concern that Darnell Riley (the criminal anti-hero of my book) would kill her. So, I guess that puts me at ground-zero degrees of separation.



If to get into heaven you had to bring with you one of the lost souls of Hollywood who would it be, and why?



Crispin Glover, because both of us getting on the list and through the gates would be, with apologies to Baudelaire and “Usual Suspects” scribe Christopher McQuarrie, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.



Thank you for your time, Mr. Ebner

Six Degrees of Paris Hilton will be in books stores Feb 3rd and is available now at Amazon.com

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