Filmmaker Adrian Grenier, left, and Paris Hilton face a swarm of paparazzi, including young Austin Visschedyk (centre, seated), in Teenage Paparazzo. (Mongrel Media)

Adrian Grenier became a celebrity by playing one on TV. In the hit HBO series Entourage, he’s Vincent Chase, the chilled-out movie star who transports his childhood pals from Queens, N.Y., to Hollywood so they can all enjoy the temptations of Tinseltown together. These guys are just enjoying the ride — the money, the women, the weather and the non-stop media attention.

'There's this world of tabloid media and paparazzi that you think of as inevitable. But suddenly this kid is revealing that something is off, something’s not quite right.'

— Actor/director Adrian Grenier

In real life, Grenier has a much more ambivalent attitude about tabloid culture. His new documentary, Teenage Paparazzo, is a fascinating study of celebrity and those who feed off it — it’s a rare on-screen example of a star asking serious questions about the industry that provides his livelihood.

Chatting up his new project at a downtown Toronto hotel, the soft-spoken actor-director explains that he was out on the town one night when he noticed a 13-year-old snapping photos of him.

“His youth, that was the most striking thing,” Grenier explains. “Everyone would say, ‘Aw, look at this cute kid.’ I had just read this book called Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It by Thomas de Zengotita [a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine]. It blew my mind, so I was primed to think of the media in a new way. And I saw this kid who jarred me and cracked open the facade for me to peer into this world. I thought, 'Oh, there's something here. There's this world of tabloid media and paparazzi that you think of as inevitable. But suddenly this kid is revealing that something is off, something’s not quite right.'”

In the documentary, Grenier strikes up a friendship with the 13-year-old, whose name is Austin Visschedyk; it’s a relationship the director has described as mutually “exploitive.” Austin provides Grenier with a compelling central character and access to the workaday world of the paparazzi, while Grenier offers Austin the kind of celebrity access most youngsters could only dream about.

Initially, the junior shutterbug comes off as some kind of mutant spawn of the fame industry, a combination of Dennis the Menace and TMZ frontman Harvey Levin. Austin often refuses to obey his meek mother’s orders, and stays out in clubland until the wee hours tracking down the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. Grenier nobly tries to push him toward an interest in photo-journalism, but Austin is clearly bored when he’s shown the famous 1970 photo of the Kent State shootings. The kid dreams about his ultimate shot – Britney Spears holding hands with a woman, which Austin claims he would then peddle to an agency as certified proof that she's bisexual. He’s only 13, but he sounds as cutthroat and morally dubious as the most jaded adult shooter.

Eventually, the teen becomes less addicted to the adrenaline rush of the paparazzi lifestyle, and makes some genuine strides toward more responsible behaviour. Still, he’d be a handful for any parent.

“I think it’s awesome that Austin’s parents had the courage to reveal so much and be vulnerable,” says Grenier. “His mom had to have a lot of trust in what I was doing. It’s a testament to her parenting to have allowed me that much access and allowed Austin to roll with me as much as she did. I think she knew what she was doing on some level. While at first glance it looks like she was letting him run amok, at the same time, she was giving him some very significant life experience.”

Visschedyk, left, and Grenier examine a camera in Teenage Paparazzo. (Mongrel Media)

Grenier’s interaction with Austin forms the spine of the story, but he also includes some fascinating interviews with media theorists about the psychology of tabloid gossip — why, for example, humans are hard-wired to exchange hearsay and tear down figures held in high esteem. Of course, there’s nothing more tedious than hearing a showbiz personality complaining about the intrusiveness of the paparazzi — if you don’t want to be a public figure, you probably shouldn’t become a TV or movie star. In the film, Grenier allows himself a few mild snipes about “feeling violated,” but is wise enough to understand that he’s complicit in the star-making process.

The documentary loses steam during the celebrity interview segments, when Rosie O’Donnell, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon and Grenier’s Entourage castmates launch some very predictable venom in the paps’ direction. Nonetheless, Grenier has delivered an engaging and multi-layered take on our culture’s fame fixation.

When I ask him to recount his first encounter with the paparazzi, Grenier searches his memory for a few seconds, then reveals that it probably happened when he was hanging out with Leonardo DiCaprio about 10 years ago.

“It’s push and pull,” he says. “On one level, you’re exhilarated by the fact they’re looking at you and they care. There’s a force that validates you walking into Starbucks. But on the other hand, you hope this is a force of good, that they’re not trying to do something sinister. It’s almost like you’re a monkey in some experiment and you’re either going to get a shock to your pleasure centre, or you’re going to get zapped in the ass.”

Teenage Paparazzo opens in Vancouver and Toronto on Aug. 27.

Greig Dymond writes about the arts for CBC News.