A tawdry view of Hollywood

The 10 people on the TMZ Hollywood Tour van looked at one another uneasily. But Adrienne Camille,their highly caffeinated guide on this late August day,didn’t wait for an answer. “Well,we know Hugh Grant does,and right here on this corner is where he got caught in his car with one,” Camille said brightly.

One passenger,a lawyer from Australia,craned his neck for a better view. The others,including a 10-year-old girl,stared in silence. With that,the cherry-red TMZ van lurched into traffic and drove on—to the hotel where Paris Hilton filmed a sex tape,the spot where a drunken Halle Berry crashed her car (into a liquor store) and the mental ward where Britney Spears was held.

Maps to the stars’ homes? How quaint. Having supercharged celebrity gossip and news,first on the Web and then on television,TMZ is now doing the same thing to the venerable sightseeing tour. TMZ’s open-air vans and snarky guides popped up here last year and have become hotter than a paparazzo’s flash bulb. Now TMZ is bringing its tours to New York. “That’s exclusive news,nobody else knows that yet,” said Harvey Levin,TMZ’s scoop-obsessed founder.

“We’re going to show you things you actually want to see,” Camille shouted as a tour began one recent afternoon. She proceeded to point out where the singer Avril Lavigne “got beaten up in a street fight”,and where Jennifer Lopez supposedly goes for margaritas.

TMZ,which consistently beats its celebrity-news competitors (its scoops include the news of Michael Jackson’s death and,this month,publishing nude photos of Prince Harry),has made its tawdry debut on Hollywood’s tourism scene at a time when tours here are mushrooming. Thomas J. LaBonge,a Los Angeles councilman who is the chairman of the city’s Trade,Commerce and Tourism Committee,estimates that there are now 30 tour operators plying their services along Hollywood Boulevard.

TMZ’s style was apparent at one stop on the Sunset Strip. On the left side of the van was the Sunset Tower,where legend holds that John Wayne kept a cow on his terrace and Vanity Fair hosts its annual Oscar bacchanal. But nobody looked in that direction,and Camille didn’t mention the hotel. She was too busy pointing out Saddle Ranch across the street,a bar with a mechanical bull where Fred Durst,the Limp Bizkit lead singer who had his own sex tape scandal,once gave a waitress a $2,000 tip. Not just any bad behaviour makes TMZ’s cut. The spot where Sharon Osbourne lobbed a baked ham into her noisy neighbour’s yard? Skipped. But passengers were quizzed about which celebrity has frequented Larry Flynt’s Hustler store,which includes something called the Porn Star Walk of Fame.

“Fergie?” guessed Amber Mahoney,a 10-year-old,referring to the Black Eyed Peas singer. Camille said that was correct.

TMZ did include one or two sights tied to Hollywood’s more golden years. The Roosevelt Hotel,for instance,was noted as the place “where JFK would allegedly sneak through the laundry room to hook up with Marilyn Monroe.” It happened,according to the video,“back in ancient times.”