Walk of fame: Paris Hilton (left) and Kim Kardashian
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
The Spanish Steps in Rodeo Drive
The Montage hotel is located in the heart of Beverly Hills - celeb land
Are you looking for juicy nuggets about celebrities and do you want to see the secret places where the stars of Hollywood come out to play? They were the questions posed on the website of a starspotting tour of Hollywood.
Juicy nuggets and secret places? Like, duh! – as they say in these parts. Where do I sign up? Our adventure began outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. This is where tourists jostle to catch a glimpse of the handprints and signatures of generations of Tinseltown legends, and even the pawprints of Lassie and hoofprints of Trigger.
Among the modern-day stars to leave their mark recently is Friends actress Jennifer Aniston. She typifies the new generation of celebrities who these days have their lives picked over endlessly in the media.
Thirty years ago, tourists were happy to look at the gardens of leading actors on the 'homes of the famous' tour. Now people are clamouring to look at the spots where their lives have unravelled. The LA website which has become synonymous with the feeding of this celebrity frenzy is TMZ.com – it took its name from the Thirty Mile Zone within which the city conducts its gossipy business.
'Everything entertainment happens in the Thirty Mile Zone,' goes the old Hollywood saying, referring to the studios built within a 30-mile radius of the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard.
Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian
TMZ.com was established six years ago by lawyer Harvey Levin, and with it came not only a faster pace but a more accessible celebrity world. TMZ has changed the way we digest celebrity news, and it has also altered the way such news is gathered.
Where once a photograph could take days to appear in a newspaper, websites such as TMZ upload shots of famous people staggering out of nightclubs within minutes. And it's not just photographs – video footage appears online too, and the company also has a prime-time TV show syndicated throughout the United States.
The appetite for more and more material meant making new celebrities. It wasn't enough to wait for glimpses of Oscar-winning actors such as Sean Penn or Nicole Kidman coming out of The Ivy once a week. We wanted a fix every day.
Step forward Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Britney Spears et al, who for years flooded TMZ with their nocturnal antics. And with the rise of reality television, TMZ flourished. When these celebs were not being filmed for TV, they were still on camera for TMZ's photographers.
It wasn't just success making people famous any longer – it was TMZ. Now you can follow in the path of TMZ's favourite stars with the website's own spinoff bus tour of Los Angeles.
While the operators of some tours provide customers with a surly driver and a recorded commentary that can be listened to on a pair of headphones, TMZ puts in a bit more effort.
Van Latham (a stage name, surely?) piled us on to the bus and straight away sucked us into the world of the celebrity spy. 'Right, y'all gonna use your eyes and LOOK for celebrities 'cos I'm telling you, man, they are EVERYWHERE in LA,' Van screamed.
He promised us that if we spotted a celebrity – any celebrity – he would stop the bus and interview them, capturing it all on the in-bus camera. 'You yell and we gonna get them.'
The footage goes straight on to the TMZ website – and if it's a high-calibre star, the interview will even find its way on to the company's daily TV show.
Orignal From: L.A. and big name hunting in Thirty Mile Zone
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