“Last Kiss” photographer Mo Gelber isn’t getting his Hollywood moment - but the Marine Park shutterbug is busy basking in the spotlight.
Besides national TV appearances, fans from all over the world reached out to the amateur lensman since he posted the picture on Facebook of a couple trying to smooch as cops escorted them outside Manhattan Criminal Court Aug. 16th.
Gelber, 42, entered the photo into director Ron Howard’s Project Imaginat10n contest hoping for a chance to have the image used as a basis for a movie, but was shot down Saturday after the couple’s lawyer nixed it.
“I have hundreds of new friends who never heard of me before,” Gelber said. “I’m happy to have the recognition.”
The real-life drama’s first major plot twist happened last week when Gelber asked friends on Facebook to help track down the lovebirds, whose permission he needed for the photo to make the contest’s final round. .
Alexis Creque, 28, came forward Thursday admitting she was the blond woman in the frayed shorts but refused to identify her sweetheart.
Court records showed that Creque was arrested with graffiti artist Russell “Cash 4” Murphy, 26, who was caught writing his street name on the outside wall of trendy bar Milk & Honey in the Lower East Side.
“I was just the look-out,” Creque had told The News.
Prosecutors in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens have charged Murphy with graffiti crimes dating back to October 2011.
Giant “Cash 4” scrawls are in odd spots throughout Brooklyn, including a brick wall in Newtown Creek and various building tops in Bushwick.
“Now people know that he is Cash 4. The publicity has been devastating to him,” Gelber said.
Murphy’s lawyer Stacey Richman said she told her clients not to sign off on the photo becauseit would hurt him in court.
“It’s a gorgeous photo. But if it were you in the photograph, would you want to be viewed as forever shackled?,” said Richman. “ This is an invasion of their privacy; they are innocent until proven guilty.”
Howard commented on the ongoing saga on Twitter calling it “interesting.”
A spokesman for the Hollywood hotshot said he couldn’t be reached for comment.
Still, Gelber isn’t upset that his work won’t get the celebrity treatment anytime soon.
“I have no hard feelings,” Gelber said. “Rules are rules.”
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damn crazy story
