YO Adrian, One More Time - ROCKY (VI) Balboa Premiere

Last night the Prince Theater in Philadelphia held the East Coast Rocky Balboa movie premiere!! For me it was an awesome night as it was the first time I attended any event as a "credentialed" member of the press (I finally reached the goal I set out to do when I arrived in NYC Aug 2005). I was unbelievably nervous, imagining all sorts of crazy things happening, especially someone in authority (or not) saying or yelling, "You don't belong here, get out of the press pit." Thankfully that didn't happen and instead I made a lot of new acquaintances. Very few photographers in Philly do this as a full time gig, like they do in NYC. I met the Phila City Photographer who shoots Council people, broken water mains and other problems the City has, I met a guy who is an accountant by day and in the evening and on weekends shoots sporting events for his local small town NJ newspaper, I met the Phila Inquirer newspaper photographer and the AP news guy photographer who didn't really care about shooting celebrities and didn't even know who Sly's wife was (Jennifer Flavin). He wasn't even born the year Rocky came out (1976). He thinks shooting car accidents and kids on their first day of school is more exciting than a Red Carpet event. Geeez this town really is small. Another thing bizarre about shooting on the Red Carpet in Philly that none of them are very aggressive and some of the best shots escaped us as the celebrities just breezed by because 1) no one called out any names even after the PR people told us who they were. 2) Some of the Phila. photographers, even the photographer representing the meanest, most underhanded, stalkerazie photo services in NYC "WIRE IMAGE" who is based in Allentown PA, said they she was too polite to yell at the celebrities and didn't want to bother them if they didn't want to pose. (OH boy am I gonna change that I thought), and then I preceded to use my best trained NY Paparazzi voice to tell the celebrity to stop and look my way and smile. I had some of the finest teachers in NYC, thanks Fernado, Luis, Carmen, Margarita and even James Devaney from Wireimage 3) I was glad I bought a little plastic ladder right before I got to the event. 4) I think my images came out fairly well since I had just bought my new semi-professional Nikon D80 10.2 Mgpxl the day before. Oh my darn flash kept hitting the guy to the side of me and these series of photos were very dark. I had to photoshop the heck out of this one to make it decent of the Stallone's heading for the Red Carpert. Sly is talking to one of the PR people. Unfortunately for me I thought the best place to shoot would be the center carpet. I was wrong, The Stallone family got to the first set of Photographers ( 4 of which were from NYC, 2 who I knew and I think they were shocked that I decided to turn pro after I told them I never would - oops) After the shot, the kids got antsy and Jennifer took them closer to the entrance of the theater. Oh well. Next time I will know where to stand. I have had a crush on this women for years and years. In fact if you looked up my name on Yahoo or Evite it says in my profile I have a secret crush on her. She looks like Meg Ryan, but she is much more confident. It's our film commissioner, Sharon Pinkenson. Ms. Pinkenson markets the City of Philadelphia and the surrounding tri-state region to the film, video, and television industry, and coordinates every aspect of production with personnel, businesses, community relations, locations and government services, while enhancing the region’s reputation internationally on both the big and small screen. OK her comes Burt Young and taking a page from Kevin Costner's book is dating his daughter, er I mean someone young enough to be his daughter or granddaughter I think.

Burt was one of those celebrities I successfully got to stop and look at me.even wave, although a wave and a look at the same time would have been nice. This is a reject Sly Stallone. If only my flash was working properly I would have gotten rid of that shadow. Oh well, I just bought the darn thing yesterday. I ran into some Rocky fans at the after party at the Phila Art Museum near the famous steps and in front of the Rocky Statue recently placed there. I got a photo of Sly's costar Milo Ventimigulia there too and its better than this one, but I submitted it to the agency and you can't see it, sorry. But here's Milo Ventimigulia, he plays Rocky's son. He's been in a lot of TV shows and movies. He was on the Gilmore Girls (Maybe my friend Philip can tell us more about that!), currently he is on a show called Heros.OK this is one of my all time favorite pictures. In another photo Sistine Rose shuts her eyes to sleep, but Sly turns to look at her and all we can see is her one eye shut tight and his head of hair. So I choose this one instead. (Ugh its almost 4AM, gotta sleep for the big Holiday Party that I am going to tonight.) Thanks for all your support and your continued readership.