DAILY DOSE OF HOPE – BLOG – NAIMA LETT
The Bling Ring – Only in LaLa Land
© NaimaLett.com/blog

© The Bling Ring starring Harry Potter’s Emma Watson

I saw a screening of Sophia Coppola’s The Bling Ring last night.
It was eye-opening. Even though we’ve seen most of the events that happen in the movie on the news or blog sites when the story broke in 2009 (so I’m not giving anything away), do you know what I kept thinking throughout the film? “Only in LaLa Land!”

Only in the LaLa

Only in the LaLa would a group of teens from affluent Calabasas (where Justin Bieber, the Kardashians and the Jacksons live) flip through fashion magazines to find celebrities’ styles they like, then “go shopping” in celebrities’ Hollywood homes like Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom and Lindsey Lohan, using TMZ, Facebook and Twitter to find out when those stars would be traveling or out partying.

Only in the LaLa could you gain access to celebrity private home addresses and pictures for a mere $19.99 a month on sites like CelebrityAddressAerial.com.

Only in the LaLa would a celebrity like Paris Hilton leave her house key under the doormat so the Bling Ring waltzes through the front door, on at least 10 occasions, stealing millions of dollars in jewelry, clothes, shoes, and purses (which she doesn’t miss until the last burglary) to then turn around and sell those designer items on Venice Beach.

Only in the LaLa, even more bizarre, would Paris Hilton then allow writer/director Sophia Coppola and her crew to film the actual scenes for The Bling Ring movie in her same house that was burglarized by the original Bling Ring. To top it off, Paris then goes on the press tour for the movie in France and Hollywood, championing the film.

Only in the LaLa could the teen thieves, who became known as the Bling Ring, become celebrities themselves, garnering a book and film to be made about them paving the way for the actors portraying them (mostly unknown with the exception of Harry Potter’s Emma Watson) to now become celebrities themselves.

The actresses on the panel last night marveled that they were on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in France just a week or so ago in the very designer names they portrayed stealing in the film. “How ironic,” one of them commented.

Based on True Events

What makes the film so disturbing as you watch it is that it is based on true events, much of which played out in LA news, blog sites, and a reality show called “Pretty Wild” that stars the real Bling Ring’s Alexis Neiers and her former-Playboy-playmate mother.

The film’s creator is Sophia Coppola (Lost in Translation), the Academy Award winning daughter of Academy Award winner Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather). Sophia based the film on the Vanity Fair article, “The Suspects Wore Louboutins” by Nancy Jo Sales, who has now authored the book, The Bling Ring: How A Gang of Fame Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World.

When I Was Burglarized

When I lived with 2 roommates in a 2nd floor apartment over a little law office on the East Coast, barely a year out of college, making $200 a week in the theater, we were burglarized while we slept. The Lord kept his protective angels around us, but the thief/thieves cleared out our living room, relieving us of our keyboard, video recorder, tech, etc.

I felt violated. It was awful that someone could walk through our home and “go shopping” for things they had not worked for or bought. But then, they came back. Our landlords had secured the windows, so they couldn’t open them. I woke up screaming as my window was busted in the middle of the night by someone who was determined to get in my room. My piercing shrill scared them off, but I ran and got my roommate’s bat, just in case. We called the cops. Then, we moved.

What material possession is so important that you feel the need to break into somebody’s house to take it? What part of “Do not steal” (Lev 19:11) don’t we understand?

Our Teens

If we want to get a better understanding of what our teen generation is going though, this film makes a good case study. Now, it is Rated R. There’s a lot of teen drug and alcohol use and lots of profanity. Mind you, it’s being released as the teen movie of the summer. Yeah.

But there is a moral ending. You can look online and find out what happens to each one of those in the Bling Ring crew. The film follows the real events, and fortunately for all of us, they didn’t get away.

Only in the LaLa though.
Only in the LaLa,
Naima

Rev. Naima Lett, D.MIN, ABD
Author of coming release Confessions of a Hollywood Christian

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