Tuesday, August 18, 2009

What Went On Behind the Scenes at Kings Of Leon Concert? A Stalker's Account


Although this is slightly distasteful to me, but yet they were at a public concert. So I don't know if you could call this stalking or not, just the paps being the paps, I think.

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What Went Behind the Scenes at Kings Of Leon Concert?

This account is from an autograph hound in Vancouver: Canadagraphs. It's a stalker story and I don't like it but still...There you go:

I never noticed exactly WHO all showed up. But there was about 6-8 cast members in the entourage. Besides those 3, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz were definitely in the group & I think I saw Xavier Samuel as well, but was not as certain.

Inside the Water St Cafe they ate & drank for well over an hour, the restaraunt actually put up curtains in the upstairs area so they could eat without hassle. Funny enough staff of the restaurant or the crew kept coming to the window & snapping shots of the paps & hounds. Unaffected by it, they simply shot back.

Eventually the vehicles returned, and it took less than a minute for them to orchestrate the get away. They pulled Rob & Kristens vehicle into the alleyway, leaving the rest out on the street. Everyone went in & around R & Ks vehicle, while the rest got away practically un-noticed. Kristen bolted in, Rob immediately after. Again, everyone scrambled to their vehicles & again, the follow was on. A cavalcade of celebs & photographers were en route to their next stop.

Less than 4 minutes later the answer was known. They showed up to the back of GM Place. They were escorted into the gated security patrolled loading bay, and were positioned as close to the door as they could get them & rushed quickly into the venue.

We saw Kristen's manager outside & walked up & talked to him. He was quite sociable & pleasant & was quite understanding of what we do. The point of the photos inside the show was brought to his attention. He seemed less concerned about it than we were. He basically implied that they will always try to make a story out of nothing. Granted he is her manager and he could be protecting a client, but he seemed sincere when stating that there's nothing going on between them but friendship.

But he also realizes how photos like these will be taken & basically had a “oh well” take on it. He was calm & not overly concerned by the potential these photos had. Seems he was right, because when I finally saw them, I saw nothing implying a straight out obvious kiss, like it had been translated to me earlier by the paps.

A couple hours were wasted various ways by various people. Two groups sent people into the show. One got the shots of Rob & Kristen together, the other did not. We were the did nots. We agreed on a plan, we agreed on who to send it. It was side tracked & derailed by seniority, and it cost us. The senior member who is a staffer opted to go in & take his girlfriend with him, instead of sending in someone familiar with the building & a person who was working on getting them the info on where to find them. The guy inside with his girlfriend left before the show ended because he "couldnt find them" instead of spending that time still looking.

Shortly after he came out, the guy who was voted on to go in got the text with the exact location...it was useless now, since our only guy on the job LEFT THE SHOW EARLY!!!!! At the time, we didn't know yet that the other company had shots of them together, but we were still quite unimpressed with the poor decisions of the staff member who went in.

There was a long, drawn out wait for the cast to leave. By this point, the vehicles for them had been pulled into the building & you were not going to see them leave the show. When they did leave, it was again a convoy of cars. The cast & followers all going the same way along 1 way streets. We again managed to be the front vehicle in the pursuit.

They drove an extended route to get to the little hideaway bar no one had heard of prior called Chambar. Even us, who eat frequently across the street from it didn't know it existed.

The route they took there was tricky & assured them (only because we didn't have the knowledge beforehand they were going there...and a little misscommunication with another person on moving out of our way) a clean entry with little to no paps or fans interacting. We finally got out of there after what seemed like an eternity. We hurried around to the other side....but it was too late. They were in. A couple shots & and some short video was had, but nothing great. We were again going to have to wait.

In the many hours of waiting, it was confirmed by our paps that the competitors had got shots of R&K close together inside the show & that they were going to be big.

Everyone kinda felt like they had been kicked in the balls some. The pros gave up. Literally called it a night and left with a sinking feeling of failure I suspect. The amateurs, including myself decided "we've put in this long, we have to follow this thru now" & we did in fact wait out the ridiculously long after party the Twilighters had, with Kings Of Leon.

There was mostly dead silence thru the hours of waiting. One of the guys got a few shots of Rob & Kristen sharing a few minutes together out back thru a fence. But for the most part, it was dead silent.

It was sometime around 4 in the morning (maybe a touch earlier) when they finally came out as 1 group & jumped in a limo, their staff had hired to rush them out. A few shots of them leaving were had, but autograph chances were nil.

We chased to the hotel. The limo showed up, and they all ran in quickly, leaving Kristen's manager out there to barter with the driver. The limo driver clearly tried to gouge on the knowledge that he was carrying important people. He claimed it was the "going rate" & he might have been right for all I know, but it did seem grossly excessive. In the end Kristen's manager paid the price, and brushed it off as joking, but the limo driver didn't seem to see it much as a joke. I still think he gouged them. With that, the night was over & we were finally able to go get some much needed sleep.

Photos & vids from the night will be available later this week perhaps. I had 1 or 2 pics from the Water St Cafe arrivals run a few places. Not too sure if anything else has.

Source

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