HILTON INTERVIEW: "AS PREPOSTEROUS, STILTED AND SCRIPTED AS ANYONE COULD HAVE EXPECTED"... (NYT, US, THR)

By Nancy Vialatte

Paris Hilton appeared on �Larry King Live� last night in a one-hour exclusive interview which the New York Times calls, �as preposterous, stilted and scripted as anyone could have expected.� That about sums up the impressions of most bloggers and mainstream press today. Us Weekly had previously announced that the new issue of the magazine would be �Paris free� and now its web site, www.usmagazine.com has joined the ban. The Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, weighs in with �What needs to be said - and what was baldly apparent on Wednesday's "Larry King Live" - was that Hilton needed this interview far more than any network needed to give it to her.�

While the mea culpa celebrity interview has become a talk show staple - good for ratings and good for the humiliated star who can then go back to acting while the tabloids search for the next shameful controversy � Hilton doesn�t have much to go back to.

Neither singer nor actress, she desperately needed to reinvent herself. Ideally, she needed to appear chastened, slightly victimized by an unfair justice system, brave, vaguely philanthropic, spiritual and determined to jettison her wild ways. Thanks to King's aversion to follow-up after even the most self-serving of Hilton's answers, Hilton accomplished much of what she set out to do. (THR)

Excerpts from around the web:

�Paris Hilton told Larry King that she has two films lined up for the summer. It is absolutely inconceivable that she will perform in either of them any better than she did while dodging King's mostly superficial questions on Wednesday night.� (THR)

As for what pushed us over the online edge, it was a three-way tie between the paparazzi princess' claim to Larry King that "it was nice to be away from all the flashes for a while," her assertion that the most important thing she learned was "don't serve the time; let the time serve you," and this doozy of an exchange:

King: "Ever taken drugs?"

Hilton: "No."

Maybe this video of Paris smoking marijuana doesn't count to her?

We think King said it best in a post-interview interview with his colleague Paula Zahn: "I think there is a kind of denial over having done anything wrong. She denies having used drugs ever." (US)

And yet, the NYT gives Hilton some benefit of the doubt�noting that she does not excel in long interviews.

There is a bizarre counter-effect to the Paris Hilton phenomenon: a little like the children�s taunt, �I�m rubber, you�re glue,� the sheer absurdity of her fame ensures that anyone who denigrates it looks even more foolish. It was laughable when Barbara Walters of ABC told the New York Post columnist Cindy Adams that she didn�t regret not doing the Paris Hilton interview because, as she put it, �The whole thing somehow was beneath me.� (NYT)

It was delicious to watch Anderson Cooper sneer at the young celebutante�s frivolity, then piggyback his show to Mr. King�s and devote an entire hour to Ms. Hilton�s jailhouse conversion. And all week, media analysts, law professors and image consultants scuffled like paparazzi for the chance to go on television and deconstruct Ms. Hilton�s latest escapade. (NYT)

After NBC and ABC, which had competed fiercely for the first post-prison interview, backed off when news stories began to suggest the Hilton family had sought as much as $1 million for an exclusive, the interview fell to King who, the NYT says, was �ideally suited to the task - attentive but not all that interested.�

He did manage to trap Ms. Hilton with her own words. After she said she read the Bible in her cell every day, he asked her to name her favorite passage. Ms. Hilton hesitated, looked down at her notes as if hoping to find an answer, then conceded that she didn�t have a favorite. (NYT)

The medical crisis which saw Hilton released just a few days into her sentence was summed up as �claustrophobia,� and also, she hates to be alone.

But perhaps the biggest turn-about came when Ms. Hilton, famous for an X-rated sex tape that is still circulating on the Internet, said the prison strip search was �the most humiliating experience of her life�I never had to do that, you know. Doing that in front of someone you don�t even know. It�s pretty embarrassing.� (NYT)

It was such an obviously scripted performance and so at odds with everything that has ever been reported about Hilton that there is a temptation to believe that no one in their right mind could buy it. But that's not so. This is a big world, and there will always be people who want to believe that someone young and pretty can be redeemed. They know how the media loves to sensationalize, but what they don't know is how well celebrities have learned to manipulate the media. (THR)

This Hilton will be open for business in no time. (THR)