'Give me your password now'

No. 21

Jan 27, 2021

Hello and welcome back to Trail Mix. Today, I have a recommendation on something to watch, a Rory cancellation, and a few more bear-adjacent things I forgot to include last time.

A recommendation: Paris Hilton’s YouTube documentary

I’ve been home alone for about 10 days now which has been… isolating. Technically this is not entirely true because one of my roommates, Ethan, is home but he sleeps all day and plays online chess all night, so I really don’t think that counts.

It’s not all bad though, to cope with the loneliness, I’ve been having ice cream every night while forcing myself to watch something new. Nothing I’ve watched is worth recommending, with one exception: the ignored-by-critics Paris Hilton YouTube Original documentary: This is Paris.

I first became aware of this documentary back in September from Emily Sundberg’s genius newsletter edition, Rebrand Season, but never got around to watching it. Until last week.

Last Monday, I was heading out for a long trail run and teed up a few podcast episodes to keep me company. I had already caught up on my go-to’s, so I decided to look at the top charts and try something new. I came across Anna Faris’ podcast: Anna Faris is Unqualified, which is highly rated, and scrolled through the episodes to find a name that sparked my interest. For reasons I cannot explain, Paris Hilton’s September 14th episode stood out, so I downloaded it.

I’ve never had a particular attraction towards Paris. I feel like she was the hot topic of the early 2000’s, when I was preoccupied waiting for my dad to finish watching The Daily Show so I could watch the cinematic excellence of That’s So Raven and Phil of the Future. Even though her relevance has faded throughout the years—relevance which many could argue never really existed—you can’t deny her widespread fame.

But besides the fact that she’s some kind of hotel heiress and she’s the reason Kim Kardashian is relevant today, I really knew nothing about her.

So when I switched to Hilton’s podcast cameo around mile six of this trail run, I was stoked to learn more. Unfortunately, I only made it 16 minutes in before needing to turn it off. Both of their voices were unnervingly dull. I wondered if the premise of Faris’ show was that she and her guests were high? Because that’s how it sounded. But then I realized that they’re both just like that. You have to listen to it for yourself and let me know what you think.

Anyway, they spend most of the first 16 minutes catching up, talking about how Faris’ mom adores Paris, and then finally, touching on Paris’ documentary. Despite how maddening their voices were, the podcast was effective at promoting this film because I only needed to hear Paris talk about it for like three minutes before I was convinced I had to see it.

Later that night, I queued it up and hit play. And oh my god you guys, it was so good. All one hour and forty-five minutes of it.

I’m not going to recap the entire thing here because I truly believe everyone needs to see it for themselves but I will give you my top five favorite moments:

Number one

Paris explaining that—despite her previous goal of achieving a 100 million dollar net-worth—she will only truly be happy once she makes one billion dollars. (Per Google, she is currently worth $300 million.)

Number two

Paris explaining that every time she gets a new boyfriend, she has to buy an entirely new laptop. “Any time I do have a new boyfriend, I have to get a whole new computer because they always break into my computers. Or they’ll scream at me and threaten me, like ‘Give me your password now.’” I literally lost my mind at this concept.

Number three

The time where Paris was playing a set at Tomorrowland (because she is apparently a DJ??? something I did not know??) and her boyfriend at the time, Aleks Novakovic tries to sabotage her computer by shutting it down, so Paris orders her security detail to detain Novakovic and cut off his artist pass wristband. This led to perhaps my favorite Paris quote:

So true, Paris.

Number four

At 24 minutes 28 seconds where they play old footage of Paris and Kim walking with linked arms and a fan comes up to ask Paris for a photo, stepping directly in front of Kim. Then the fan says “I love your song” and walks away, paying absolutely zero attention to Miss Kardashian.

Can you spot Kim?

Number five

At 18 minutes 1 second where Paris says that because she’s an influencer, she’s never been photographed in the same thing twice. This concept is terrifying to me.

The film is full of gems. Please watch it. But also, consider this from Sundberg’s commentary:

“I see this movie as a pretty honest look into her life, but more than anything, an earnest effort to rebrand. Who gets to rebrand? A multimillionaire who has said racist slurs, promoted gossip culture, and kind of endorsed Trump? I’m not going to unpack that, but I am keeping it in mind that this woman is not relatable to me.”

Paris certainly is not relatable to me either but this documentary was the exact dose of escapism I needed.

Disclaimer: This happened about a month ago but it still applies.

Rory is cancelled for seeing a bear in Tahoe and posting it on his Instagram story before personally calling me to tell me about it. What’s worse is that the bear was injured and limping across the road which just made me sad.