As the city's $12-billion-a-year tourism industry rebounds, tour operators are now offering visits to the sites where stars and B-level celebrities have died, dined, fought, committed crimes and thrown headline-grabbing tantrums.
Next month, the largest tour operator in Los Angeles, Starline Tours, will team up with the celebrity news source TMZ to create a guided tour that cruises past the sites where TMZ has reported its biggest celebrity scoops.
The new TMZ guided tour was the idea of TMZ founder Harvey Levin, who declined to comment. However, Starline spokesman Philip Ferentinos said the tour will be offered on a specially designed 24-seat bus that will be fitted with four 26-inch TV screens.
Later this summer, Starline will launch a tour of celebrity crime scenes, which will be led by former law enforcement officials who investigated the crimes. It's an attempt, tour promoters say, to attract the younger visitors who are more interested in the happenings of reality TV stars like Kim Kardashian than the homes of actors Lucille Ball or Lionel Barrymore.
The TMZ tour will change with each new celebrity scandal, but operators say it may include such spots as the nightclub where Seinfeld's Michael Richards went on a racially tinged rant, the high-end department store where actress Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting and the courthouse where Lindsay Lohan is being prosecuted on a grand theft charge.
"People can never get too much of celebrities," Ferentinos said. "And today the definition of celebrity has changed so much."
A tour that launched in November lets tourists join up with paparazzi on the prowl for unsuspecting celebrities, and for years sightseeing tours fill up daily down the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre for trips to Hollywood's graves and sites where celebrities died.
In January, a Hollywood history buff launched a guided walking tour of the history of the entertainment industry in the city. "It's starting to catch on," said Philip Mershon, founder of the Felix in Hollywood Tour Co.
To completely immerse tourists in the world of celebrity-tracking, the TMZ tour bus will be equipped with a video camera to tape any celebrity who happens to pop up along the route. The footage shot on the tour can be sent directly to the TMZ studios for broadcast later that day, Ferentinos said.
"It will be TMZ on wheels," he added.
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