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Paris Hilton Says she 'Feels Free' after YouTube Documentary

Paris Hilton. (AP)
Paris Hilton. (AP)
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Paris Hilton Says she 'Feels Free' after YouTube Documentary

Paris Hilton. (AP)
Paris Hilton. (AP)

There's a scene in a new documentary about Paris Hilton, where the so-called socialite is speaking with former classmates from a Utah boarding school. They joke about how on her reality series “The Simple Life,” Hilton pretended to be clueless over many things— including how to perform any sort of manual labor.

One bluntly described it as “some straight-up (expletive)," as they all laughed.

“I don't think you had like a high-pitch voice back then,” was another observation.

None of this is a surprise to Hilton. What's revealed in “This is Paris,” which debuted for free Monday on Hilton's YouTube channel, is that the ultra-glam, baby-talking young woman whose standard line was “that's hot,” was a manufactured caricature not just for fame but self-protection, too.

Hilton says as a teen she got into the nightlife scene and would sneak out and go to clubs while her family lived at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. Her exasperated parents sent her away to various programs to straighten out. There was an outdoor wilderness camp where Hilton and another girl tried to escape. Hilton claims they were caught and beaten in front of others as punishment.

When she was 17, Hilton was finally sent to what she describes as “the worst of the worst": Provo Canyon School in Utah.

“This is the only place where it’s impossible to run away. So it’s basically like that one place that they all talk about at the other places saying, ‘If you run away or you’re bad, you’re going to be sent to Provo,’” said Hilton.

She stayed at Provo for 11 months and says while there, she was abused mentally and physically, claiming staff would beat her, force her to take unknown pills, watch her shower and send her to solitary confinement without clothes as punishment.

The 39-year-old says the treatment was so “traumatizing” that she suffered nightmares and insomnia for years.

“We are aware of a new documentary referencing Provo Canyon School (PCS). Please note that PCS was sold by its previous ownership in August 2000. We therefore cannot comment on the operations or patient experience prior to that time," the school said in a statement on its website.

Attempts to find the previous owners for comment were unsuccessful.

Hilton says when she agreed to be the subject of “This is Paris," it was never her intention to speak about past abuses, but she opened up as she became more comfortable with director Alexandra Dean.

Hilton said while she was at Provo, she decided she wanted complete control in her life and image. That meant she would never tell anyone about what happened to her there. She also wanted to be very, very wealthy.

“I saw success as freedom and I just imagined this glamorous life… I made all these plans of what I wanted to be. And all I cared about was being successful and independent.”

For someone who has been criticized for being famous for no reason, Hilton has built a multi-billion-dollar company around her image. She has branded stores in the Middle East and Asia, is a successful DJ, and has released 27 fragrances, among other products.

“It turns out that whole machine, all that attention she got, the paparazzi, the insta-fame, it was all a creation of this traumatized girl trying to figure out how to climb her way out of this hole she was in," said Dean. "She attracted it all. In some ways she created it all. What I want people to know is that they should give her credit for being immensely innovative, but they should also understand that what they watched was not the person, but the shield that she constructed to protect herself.”

Hilton says since speaking out about what happened at Provo, she feels free. She's now sleeping through the night and no longer has nightmares. She also says she's happy and in a healthy relationship with businessman Carter Reum.

Her life has slowed down in the past six months due to the pandemic, and she's no longer traveling for work. Hilton says she likes it this way and plans to continue to be more choosy about leaving home. “I'm moving on to the next phase of my life,” she said.

She's also hopeful that speaking out against programs like Provo will deter parents from sending their kids to similar situations.

“I would never recommend that to any family ever, because I think it just causes more drama and more issues than anyone would ever have." She's now a part of the Breaking Code Silence movement, a network dedicated to raising awareness about the “troubled teen industry."

“The parents are manipulated and lied to and told a completely different story," she said. "I think it’s important to do your research.”

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Entertainment

Guillermo del Toro Almost Lost His Movie Memorabilia in a Wildfire. Now, He’s Letting Some of It Go

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro arrives for the 34th Annual Producers Guild Awards (PGA) at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, US, Feb. 25, 2023. (AFP)
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro arrives for the 34th Annual Producers Guild Awards (PGA) at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, US, Feb. 25, 2023. (AFP)
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Guillermo del Toro Almost Lost His Movie Memorabilia in a Wildfire. Now, He’s Letting Some of It Go

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro arrives for the 34th Annual Producers Guild Awards (PGA) at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, US, Feb. 25, 2023. (AFP)
Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro arrives for the 34th Annual Producers Guild Awards (PGA) at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, US, Feb. 25, 2023. (AFP)

Many fled when wildfires devastated Los Angeles earlier this year, but Guillermo del Toro rushed back in, determined to save his lifelong collection of horror memorabilia.

It's the same loyalty that finds him making another tough decision to protect the items he loves like family: letting some of them go.

Del Toro partnered with Heritage Auctions for a three-part auction to sell a fraction of a collection that is bursting at the seams. Online bidding for the first part on Sept. 26 started Thursday and includes over a hundred items, with more headed to the auction block next year.

“This one hurts. The next one, I’m going to be bleeding,” del Toro, 60, said of the auction series. “If you love somebody, you have estate planning, you know, and this is me estate planning for a family that has been with me since I was a kid.”

Del Toro is one of the industry’s most respected filmmakers, whose fascination with monsters and visual style will shape generations to come. But at his core, the Mexican-born horror buff is a collector. The Oscar-winner has long doubled as the sole caretaker of the “Bleak House”, which stretches across two and a half Santa Monica homes nearly overflowing with thousands of ghoulish creatures, iconic comic drawings and paintings, books and movie props.

The houses function not just as museums, but as libraries and workspaces where his imagination bounces off the oxblood-painted walls.

“I love what I have because I live with it. I actually am a little nuts, because I say hi to some of the life-size figures when I turn on the light,” del Toro told The Associated Press, sitting in the dining room of one of the houses, now a sanctuary for “Haunted Mansion” memorabilia. “This is curated. This is not a casual collection.”

The auction includes behind-the-scenes drawings and one-of-a-kind props from del Toro’s own classics, as well as iconic works like Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations for “Frankenstein” and Mike Mignola’s pinup artwork for “Hellraiser.”

In January, del Toro had only a couple hours, his car and a few helping hands to save key pieces from the fires. Out of the over 5,000 items in his collection, he only managed to move about 120 objects. It wasn't the first time, as fires had come dangerously close to Bleak House twice before.

The houses were spared, but fear consumed him. If a fire or earthquake swallowed them, he thought, “What came out of it? You collected insurance? And what happened to that little segment of Richard Corben's life, or Jack Kirby’s craft, or Bernie Wrightson’s life?”

An auction, del Toro said, gives him peace of mind, as it ensures the items will land in the hands of another collector who will protect the items as he has. These are not just props or trinkets, he said, but “historical artifacts. They're pieces of audiovisual history for humanity.” And his life's mission has been to protect as much of this history as he can.

“Look, this is in reaction to the fires. This is in reaction to loving this thing,” del Toro told the AP.

The initial auction uncovers who del Toro is as a collector, he said. Upcoming parts will expose how the filmmaker thinks, which he called a much more personal endeavor. The auction isn't just a “piece of business,” for him, but rather a love letter to collectors everywhere, and encouragement to think beyond a movie and “learn to read and write film design in a different way. That's my hope.”

Caring for the Bleak House collection feels like being on “a bus with 160 kids that are very unruly, and I'm driving for nine hours,” del Toro said. “I gotta take a rest.”

The auction will give the filmmaker some breathing room from the collection's arduous maintenance. The houses must stay at a certain temperature, without direct sunlight — all of which is monitored solely by del Toro, who often spends most of his day there.

He selects the picture frame for every drawing, dusts all the artifacts and arranges every bookshelf mostly himself, having learned his lesson from the handful of times he allowed outside help. One time, del Toro said, he found someone “cleaning an oil painting with Windex, and I almost had a heart attack."

“It's very hard to have someone come in and know why that trinket is important,” he said. “It's sort of a very bubbled existence. But you know, that's what you do with strange animals — you put them in small environments where they can survive. That's me.”

Each room is organized by theme, with one room dedicated to each of his major works, from “Hellboy” to “Pacific Rim.” Del Toro typically spends his entire work day at one of the houses, which he picks depending on the task at hand. The “Haunted Mansion” dining room, for instance, is an excellent writing space.

“If I could, I would live in the Haunted Mansion,” he said. “So, this is the second best.”

In selecting which items to sell, del Toro said he “wanted somebody to be able to recreate a mini version of Bleak House.”

Auction items include concept sketches and props from del Toro’s 1992 debut film, “Cronos,” all the way to his more recent works, like 2021's “Nightmare Alley.”

The starting bids vary, from a couple thousand dollars up to hundreds of thousands. One of Wrightson's drawings for a 1983 illustrated version of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is the highest priced item, starting at $200,000.

The auction also includes art from comic legends like Richard Corben, Jack Kirby and H.R. Giger, whose work del Toro wrote in the catalog “represent the pinnacle of comic book art in the last quarter of the twentieth century.”

Other cultural touchstones in illustration that are represented in the auction include rare images from the 1914 short film “Gertie the Dinosaur,” one of the earliest animated films, and original art for “Sleeping Beauty” by Eyvind Earle and Kay Nielsen.

“As collectors, you are basically keeping pieces of culture for generations to come. They're not yours,” del Toro said. “We don’t know which of the pieces you’re holding is going to be culturally significant ... 100 years from now, 50 years from now. So that’s part of the weight.”

Entertainment

Christopher Nolan to Lead Directors Guild of America

Christopher Nolan wins the Oscar for Best Director for "Oppenheimer" during the Oscars show at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Christopher Nolan wins the Oscar for Best Director for "Oppenheimer" during the Oscars show at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake
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Christopher Nolan to Lead Directors Guild of America

Christopher Nolan wins the Oscar for Best Director for "Oppenheimer" during the Oscars show at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Christopher Nolan wins the Oscar for Best Director for "Oppenheimer" during the Oscars show at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 10, 2024. REUTERS/Mike Blake

Christopher Nolan has been elected to lead the Directors Guild of America, the organization said late Saturday. The Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer” filmmaker said in a statement that it is, “one of the greatest honors of my career.”

The guild represents the interests of some 19,500 film and television directors in the United States and abroad, in addition to hosting the DGA awards annually.

“Our industry is experiencing tremendous change, and I thank the Guild’s membership for entrusting me with this responsibility,” said Nolan, a well-known champion of the theatrical experience and film stock.

The box office success of “Oppenheimer,” which was shot entirely on large-format film, and made over $976 million worldwide made many in the industry reconsider the mass audience appeal of a format that not too long ago was in danger of extinction. Earlier this year, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” helped prove the point again.

Nolan will take over for outgoing president Lesli Linka Glatter, who led the group for four years through the Hollywood strikes of 2023. He said he looks forward to collaborating with Glatter and the board “to achieve important creative and economic protections for our members.”

The DGA’s current three-year basic agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios and streamers about rates and benefits, expires next year. The AMPTP congratulated Nolan in a statement and wrote that they “look forward to partnering with President Nolan to address the issues most important to DGA members while ensuring our member companies remain competitive in a rapidly changing industry.”

Officers elected to serve alongside Nolan include Ron Howard, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Laura Belsey and former president Paris Barclay, The Associated Press reported. Among the board members are Steven Spielberg and Phil Lord.

Since its founding in 1936 when it was then known as the Screen Directors Guild, presidents have included the likes of Frank Capra, George Stevens, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Robert Wise, Michael Apted and Martha Coolidge.

Nolan has been a member since 2001 and has served on the DGA’s National Board and Western Directors Council since 2015, in addition to chairing the guild’s theatrical creative right and artificial intelligence committees. He won the guild’s top prize in 2024 for “Oppenheimer,” and was previously nominated for “Dunkirk,” “Inception,” “The Dark Knight” and “Memento.”

Nolan’s next film, a starry adaptation of Homer’s “The Odyssey,” opens in theaters July 17.

Entertainment

Host Austria Seeks to Avoid Eurovision Boycott over Israel Participation

The Wiener Stadthalle is seen on September 19, 2025, in Vienna. (AFP)
The Wiener Stadthalle is seen on September 19, 2025, in Vienna. (AFP)
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Host Austria Seeks to Avoid Eurovision Boycott over Israel Participation

The Wiener Stadthalle is seen on September 19, 2025, in Vienna. (AFP)
The Wiener Stadthalle is seen on September 19, 2025, in Vienna. (AFP)

Austria's foreign minister has appealed to countries not to boycott next year's Eurovision Song Contest - due to be held in Vienna - over Israel's participation and concerns about the war in Gaza.

Spanish state broadcaster RTVE's board voted on Tuesday to withdraw from the 2026 event if Israel takes part, becoming the fifth country to make such a pledge.

The Netherlands, Slovenia, Iceland and Ireland have made similar pledges, while Belgian broadcaster VRT has said it supports their stance.

Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger wrote to colleagues in the six countries on Friday, saying she was concerned about boycotts creating division and not improving the situation in Gaza.

"As foreign minister of the host country, I am deeply concerned about the risk of a rift between the members of the European Broadcasting Union on this issue," she wrote in the letter that has been seen by Reuters.

"Such a rift would only deepen the discord and preclude opportunities for important dialogue between artists and the public without improving the situation on the ground in Israel and Gaza," Meinl-Reisinger added.

Although conflict and humanitarian suffering could not be ignored, Eurovision was not a suitable arena for sanctions, she wrote.

"Excluding Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest or boycotting the event would neither alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza nor contribute to a sustainable political solution," Meinl-Reisinger wrote.

Eurovision, which stresses its political neutrality, has faced controversy this year linked to the war in Gaza.

Several countries urged the European Broadcasting Union, an alliance of public broadcasters that organizes and co-produces the annual event, to exclude Israel from the 2025 edition. Israeli contestant Yuval Raphael ended up finishing second.

The European Broadcasting Union is set to decide whether Israel will take part in the 2026 edition at its general assembly in December. 

Austrian singer JJ, who won this year, has also called for Israel's exclusion in 2026.

Germany slams boycott threats 

Meanwhile, Germany's culture minister slammed the boycott threats as politicizing a cultural event.  

"Eurovision was founded to bring nations together through music. Excluding Israel today goes against this fundamental idea and turns a celebration of understanding between peoples into a tribunal," said Wolfram Weimer in a statement.  

"It's precisely because Eurovision was born on the ruins of war that it should not become a scene of exclusion." 

 "Eurovision is based on the principle that artists are judged on their art and not on their nationality. The culture of cancellation is not the solution -- the solution is diversity and cohesion," Weimer said. 

"It's precisely because Eurovision was born on the ruins of war that it should not become a scene of exclusion," he added. 

This year's edition in Basel in Switzerland drew in 166 million viewers across 37 countries.  

Pro-Palestinian activists protested in Malmo, Sweden in 2024 and in Basel in May over Israel's participation amid its devastating offensive in Gaza.  

The war was sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.  

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 65,174 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.