FREE THE BLING RING: THE TRUE STORY OF HOW SEVEN CELEBRITY-OBSESSED TEENS SWINDLED HOLLYWOOD PDF Nancy Jo Sales | 320 pages | 23 May 2013 | HarperCollins Publishers | 9780007518227 | English | London, United Kingdom The Bling Ring : Nancy Jo Sales : By this point, everybody and their former lingerie model mother knows that Sofia Coppola's " The Bling Ring " is based on a true story. What they may not know, however, is that the truer true story, told in journalist Nancy Jo Sales' reportorial book "The Bling Ring" expanded from her original Vanity Fair article "The Suspects Wore Louboutins" is even wilder than the drug-fueled, celebrity-obsessed months depicted in Coppola's film. Yeah, that. Like alleged Bling Ring leading lady Rachel Lee leaving a stinky something in Rachel Bilson's house, or the self-obsessed monologues alleged accomplice-turned-reality TV star Alexis Neiers oh yeah: She got a reality TV show, not that you'll see that hubbub on the big screen delivered: All real. Ahead, 16 crazy but realer-than-botox things you may not have known about the real story behind "The Bling Ring. Remember way back when, in late April when the second trailer for "The Bling Ring" went live, and Emma Watson, playing Nicki, gave that LOLarious "I'm a firm believer in karma" speech outside the courthouse? She wants to lead a country one day, for all she knows! Alexis Neiers and her lawyers, who tried to shut her up but couldn't sat down with Sales in Neiers' home, where she insisted that she had a "good The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood to say. I see myself being like Angelina Jolie but even stronger, pushing even harder for the universe and for peace and for the health of our planet. I want to do something that people notice, so that's why I'm studying business because eventually I want to be a leader. I want to lead a huge charity organization. I want to lead a country, The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood all I know. I don't know where I'm going just yet, but eventually I can see myself taking a stand for people. The Bling Ring didn't just allegedly rob their targets, they hit some of them over and over again. Between October and December ofaccording to Sales' reporting, Nick Prugo fictionalized in the film as "Marc" and played by Israel Broussard and Rachel Lee "Rebecca," played by Katie Chang robbed Paris Hilton's home four times, using a key they found under the mat. Eventually, Rachel allegedly put the key to Hilton's house on her keychain, and Paris simply replaced the key under the mat. Nick and Rachel, the real Marc and Rebecca, allegedly found that baggie somewhere decidedly more rhinestone-encrusted, namely Paris Hilton's house. After snorting it in her house, he said, "we drove around Mulholland having the best time of our lives. Due to legal reasons such as Hilton's rep blowing off the allegations The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood by Prugo and, uh, possibly Coppola's friendship with Hilton, who allowed the crew to film in her homethe film's leads find the drugs elsewhere. I remember the incident so well," Prugo told Sales, as she recounted in her book. I The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood I would never, like I think that's weird, personally. But yeah, she did. Real-life alleged Bling Ringer Courtney Ames is the basis "The Bling Ring" character Chloe Claire Julienmostly memorable for her terrifyingly husky party girl voice, mad rap skillz and love of leopard print. Ames, whose style transformed from tomboy-baggy to tight and sexy after the burglaries began, had a laughable penchant for prints, according to Sales' book. Once, she was photographed out wearing both leopard and zebra prints at the same time. The horror. Her habit of trying too hard led to her so-called friends making up a song about her to the tune of Ray Jay's "Sexy Can I," whose lyrics describe a man desperate to sleep with a hot chick, Prugo told Sales. It was like, 'Courtney, can I? Amid all the coke-snorting and crack-smoking mhmm present in the film, the kids actually come off looking kind of cool and composed, like cigarette ads before the Surgeon General's warning was the law. The reality, according to Johnny Ajar, a bouncer and older Bling Ring suspect who allegedly acted as a middleman to sell the goods the kids stole from the celebs, wasn't quite so suave. It wasn't just my club; it was every hot club in the city. And they drink horribly. Courtney, I tried to tell her, 'You can't act like that. It may seem an unbelievable coincidence, but filming on Alexis Neiers' reality show, which eventually aired as "Pretty Wild," actually began the very morning that she was arrested in connection with the Bling Ring's antics. The show, a sort of Kardashian-lite family saga, ended up as a nine-episode chronicle of Alexis and her "sister" not her sister legally or biologically Tess Taylor trying to stay out of jail for their crimes. The show doesn't appear in Coppola's movie but did affect many facets of the real-life situation: Nick Prugo reportedly angled to be a character on the show, and Sales suspects in her book that Alexis' speedy trial was on account of the cameras following her into the court. If Alexis was tried alongside the others, not only would she be in danger of having the spotlight taken off of her, but if her fellow suspects didn't sign releases, the footage could have been unusable. Even Alexis' lawyer, Jeffrey Rubenstein, had a stake in the show working out: Sales writes that he at one point asked if he needed makeup, then confided that, "The only way I'll get paid is if the reality show gets picked up. Though Coppola's movie alleges that the burglaries and backstabbing stopped when Rachel skipped town to her father's house in Las Vegas, taking Orlando Bloom's rug with her yep, that's realit didn't. Sometime after Rachel decamped to Sin City, Nick and Courtney allegedly went on a post-bender joyride, ending in The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood dramatic accident. There were four people in the backseat of her car. Courtney got taken to the hospital. When the police came to Nick Prugo's house, guns drawn, to search for stolen property and arrest him, a darkly hilarious moment: They seized a few items, not finding much suspect since Nick, on a hunch, had moved most of the stolen goods to his grandmother's basement. One thing they did take from Nick's room was a pair of sunglasses that they thought were Orlando Bloom's. Not so, said Nick: "I may have bought them with stolen money, but I didn't steal them," he told Sales. Here's a stinker: Courtney Ames didn't have a sense of smell, a fact that her bratty cohorts took advantage of after the arrests started and things turned ugly between the former friends. A cop on the LAPD told Sales as much: "[Courtney] said that [one of the other girls in the burglary crew] knew about this and took a can of tuna and put it in her car so it would rot so everything would end up smelling like rotten fish. Nick, who described his feelings for Rachel as loving her "like a sister," was apparently even closer with her than a brother would be: One of the suspects' lawyers told Sales that his client claimed that Nick and Rachel used to shower together. Though Alexis Neiers' infamous voicemail message to Sales after the publication of the Vanity Fair article didn't make it into Coppola's film, there's still a little more to the story: Sales reveals that not only did she receive four separate messages -- one for each time Alexis "stopped recording" to scream at her mother "Twenty-nine dollars! Despite Prugo's claims that Rachel Lee was the bling ringleader of the group's alleged hesists, prison coach real thing! Wendy Feldman, who counseled Lee prior to her incarceration, said that Lee is simply not capable. Feldman revealed on Fox News online :. She doesn't have a particularly high I. On Nik Richie Radio after her incarceration and subsequent probation violation for possession of black tar heroinAlexis Neiers admitted that she had had a substance abuse problem for years, admitting to "drinking, drinking, drinking," "I. An honor, to be sure. Perhaps the most surreal behind-the-scenes fact related to the whole mess has to do with Brett Goodkin, the lead LAPD investigator on the Bling Ring case. He signed on as a consultant for Coppola's version of the story, to The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood it real. The day The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood Coppola filmed the scene where the Alexis Neiers character, Nicki, is arrested, it occurred to the director that she had an actual cop present, so why not use him? Goodkin is the one who gets to pull the signature cop move on Emma The Bling Ring: The True Story of How Seven Celebrity-Obsessed Teens Swindled Hollywood, shoving her into the backseat of a squad car with his hand on top of her head.