It was so surprising to end up mostly liking Ron Galella after watching this documentary. I started the film with the idea it was going to be about a jerky paparazzi photographer, a creep who stalked famous people with no remorse. Probably, if the film was made decades ago, my thoughts of Mr. Galella would have stayed intact; but watching him as an elder man in his late 70s, saying insightful things about photography and celebrities, quickly changed my views. Plus, he was a bunny rabbit lover. He and his wife Betty, his biggest fan, adored pet bunnies and had a special cemetery for them in their yard in New Jersey.
Mr. Galella had countless boxes of pictures of the famous, all clearly marked and organized in alphabetical order. Looking at the photographs shown in this documentary made me flashback to all the decades covered. Of course, Jackie Kennedy Onassis was his main target. Or should we say love? According to Ron Galella, he eventually analyzed his obsession with her and decided he was in love with her. She was like his imaginary girlfriend, before he married. The person he most wanted to see and capture on film. Of course, this film goes into her lawsuits against him, and has a running commentary on the First Amendment.
He did harass Jackie O, though, and stalk her, like he did others. In addition, the way he drove to pursue individuals, or to get someplace before they arrived, certainly could have ended up causing fatal car crashes. Pictures of him in his younger days did indeed make him look like a jerk, too. Yet it's so easy to forget those negative things while watching and listening to Ron Galella in this documentary. It's so easy to see him as a photographer of history and of people who intrigued hundreds, thousands, millions of others. So easy to see him as a dedicated professional, the Pope of the Paparazzi, as someone labeled him. This documentary was released in 2010, so it didn't cover his death in 2022. His wife died in 2017 and they had no children to survive them. Instead, Ron Galella was survived by millions of photographs. His legacy to the world.
