For the last three years, “TMZ” tmz.com has been reviled by many as the nadir of Internet celebrity gossip culture. The salacious, wildly popular gossip site and its TV spinoff — (TMZ on TV), which began airing nightly in national syndication on Fox one year ago this month — has been called evil and worse, and not just by the celebrities it skewers. But, in fact, could it be that “TMZ” serves a moral purpose by embodying the Seven Virtues (and then some) in its staunch crusade against the Seven Deadly Sins?
As an object lesson in what not to do and how not to behave, the show is better than a PSA marathon. Its vignettes stand as little cautionary tales. Drink too much, and you can end up like Andy Dick. Eat too much, and you can turn into Kirstie Alley. Boast too of ten, and you might be a ringer for Fr’ed’eric Prinz von Anhalt (or, as “TMZ” calls him, “Prince von Ahole”), Zsa Zsa Gabor’s ninth husband who claimed to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn, until a paternity test proved him wrong. Be too vain, and wind up like Priscilla Presley, face pumped full of motor oil in her prideful quest for the fountain of youth.
Chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility have a hard time of it in Hollywood. But “TMZ” has come to the rescue.
With its Highlights for Children “Fun With a Purpose” view of the universe that is the 30-mile zone of Hollywood — ie. the world — “TMZ” helpfully presents Goofus versus Gallant examples galore throughout its daily half-hour TV show, and hour long recaps on weekends. Would you rather be like Cheryl Burke, the “Dancing With the Stars” Goofus who never met a man, a drink or a photo op she didn’t like? Or George Clooney, Gallant to a fault:
polite, modest, talented, self-effacing and ever using his powers for good, not=2 0evil? Your choice.
“TMZ,” I confess, is my guilty pleasure. I record it on my DVR nightly, without fail, and watch it when no one’s around. I have, when caught, been mercilessly teased. But it turns out this pleasure is not mine alone. I’m in the company of millions. It seems like only yesterday that a brand-new magazine called People was20chastised for being fluffy. But these days, gossip is big business. “TMZ” — which brings in an average of 3 million viewers per viewing this year, the Nielsen Company says, the same as “Access Hollywood” and more than fellow gossip shows “What Perez Sez,” “The Soup,” “E! News” and “Daily Ten” put together — is like some twisted love child of The National Enquirer, Spy magazine, Jon Stewart and Joan Rivers. Produced and hosted by Harvey Levin, managing editor of the Web site, it is quick, clever and more than a tad bitchy, but it’s all for the greater good. “The show is edgy, and it has attitude,” Levin says. Who knew celebrity gossip also had a redeeming side?
At 6:40-ish a.m., Levin, the show’s resident grown-up, commands the troops, jotting the celebstories du jour on a glass blackboard, each offered up by his “newsroom” staff of puppyish reporters. There’s the cute blond guy separated at birth from Fabio, whom he smirkingly refers to as “my dad.” There’s the world-weary I-Know-But-It’s-Just-My-Job guy with dreadlocks. There’s the blond excitable girl whose eyes pop wide to bursting with each celebrity sighting: Lindsay, Samantha glued to her side! Shia LaBoeuf, at the hospital, post-drunken driving! Katherine Heigl, smoking a cigarette after making a New Year’s resolution to quit!
Levin, a lawyer (“I’m a lawyer!” the credits screech at the end of each show) who covered the O.J. Simpson trial for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, broke the Mel Gibson anti-Semitic rant story on TMZ.com (owned by AOL and Telepictures Productions, subsidiaries of Time Warner), and stalwartly continues representing the public’s right to full disclosure of celebrity doings, particularly misdoings.
“We really treat the operation as a news mission to be accurate, to break stories and really entertain people,” Levin says. “It’s not mean.”
“TMZ” is the Big Daddy of Web-to-TV crossovers, followed by “What Perez Says,” the blog from Mario Lavandeira, better known as Perez Hilton, http://www.perezhilton.com, come to life in occasional episodes on VH1. Conversely, “Access Hollywood,” the television show produced and distributed by NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric, last winter began its redesigned companion Web site, AccessHollywood.com, a more conventional, nonconfrontational, neutral site than TMZ.com or PerezHilton.com and their TV counterparts. Ah, synergy! “Entertainment Tonight” on CBS, struck up its site, ETOnline.com, in September.
All these sites, including The New York Post’s Page Six, nypost.com/gossip/gossip, and People.com, post updates, breaking and otherwise, through the day and night. You could gorge yourself silly on celeb gossip Web sites, among them Oh No They Didn’t, ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com; Drunken Stepfather, drunkenstepfather.com; Celeb Slam, celebslam.com; Dlisted, dlisted.com; Celebrity Babylon, celebritybabylon.com; Just Jared, justjared.buzznet.com; and The Defamer, defamer.com. Levin says he starts his day when he wakes up at 3:30 a.m. by updating the Web site. He and everyone else is ready to go for the show by 6 a.m.
“The biggest challenge was to find the right voice for the show,” Levin says. “The Web site was so successful people were watching to see what would happen when we brought that to TV. They thought it would be just another slick celebrity show. But it’s not. It’s authentic, it’s not scripted and there’s context and humor.TMZ is a brand, with a Web element and a TV element.”
“‘TMZ’ is at the forefront of what will be a common movement of Web sites to TV,” says Robert Thompson, professor of TV and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “More are going to foll ow. We have not reached the saturation point for celebrity gossip. Holly wood gossip is the one thing we all have in common, and there’s a real desire for a shared experience. You care about Brad Pitt breaking up with Jennifer Aniston, even if you don’t care.”
It wa s inevitable, Thompson says, that TMZ.com crossed over to TV. Its reliance on videos, graphics and commentary made it a natural to jump to TV. “It is an identified brand, and the site had a good track record of breaking stories –Mel Gibson, Michael Richards’s racist rant,” he says. What sets “TMZ” apart from other gossip shows, is its reluctance — no, its refusal — to fawn or even to stay neutral. “I hate the word ‘edgy,’ but it’s edgy,” Thompson says. “It also seems so much more modern than ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ for example, because it comes from new media, rather than the other way around.” The Web site to TV crossover is similar to what happened with many radio shows in the early days of TV, the new media at that time, Thompson points out. TV shows like “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Burns and Allen” and “Gunsmoke” started out on the radio. “‘Candid Camera’ did too,” Thompson said, “but on the radio it was called ‘Candid Microphone.'” “TMZ” specializes in the Hollywood stuff of life: the arrests, the mug shots, the hot spots of the moment and arrivals and departures at LAX, the celebrities looking fat,=2 0slurring their words and saying stupid thi ngs. Colleen Shannon, Playboy Playmate (anyone can be famous!), telling the world via paparazzi that she supports “Umbama,” and then the gaffe growing even worse with her publicist’s correction: “You mean Osama. Osama bin Laden.” Later, the Playmate calls the other guy “MoCaine.” “Colleen Shannon needs to use that Playboy money to buy a clue,” the snarky voice-over narrator informs us. Not exactly objective journalism, “TMZ” is a much closer cousin to David Spade’s 90’s “Saturday Night Live” sketch “Hollywood Minute,” with a smirky remark for each celebrity.
“Huge announcement in Hollywood last night,” the gel-shellacked black-haired “TMZ” reporter tells Levin (ie. the camera). “Eddie Murphy has promised that the tragedy that is his movie career will eventually stop.” Clips of Murphy onstage in the 1980’s with his (funny) stand-up act are shown, along with scenes of his (unfunny) cinematic ventures, with the narrator mockingly intoning, “One day, something happened — he stopped being funny.” Quick cut to a Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon. “This guy’s made more bombs than Acme,” the narrator continues, and then we see the inevitable cartoon explosion. Beep-beep.
Fabio’s son jumps in: “Stop the presses! Star Jones actually looked good!” Shot of Jones alighting gracefully from a car. “I was like, what is wrong with me?”
There are lessons aplenty here. “It’s one big morality tale,” Thompson says . “It shows that when people do excessive thin gs they pay dearly. Britney Spears’s career collapsed. And look what happened to Michael Jackson. ‘TMZ’ is very Old Testament.”
“I’m not saying we should study ‘TMZ’ as Sunday School examples,” he adds, “but it provides many lessons.”
That it does, agrees Jeffrey H. Mahan, dean of faculty and professor of Ministry, Media and Culture at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver as well as editor of “Religion and Popular Culture in America” (University of California Press, 2005). “‘TMZ’ is structured on deeply held moral assumptions,” he says. “Its moral function is that it confirms our existing social values by making fun of celebrities who exceed the norms we function by. So I get to say to myself that the very limitations of my life and the fact that I’m unwilling to do what these celebrities do — drive around with a baby on my lap or cavort all night — make me better than they are.”
In essence, “TMZ” is two treats in one. “We get to indulge our interest in forbidden activities and we also get to say: ‘That’s not me. I’m better than that,'” Dean Mahan points out.
Pish-posh, Levin says. “I’m not here to preach,” he says. “We’re not on a mission to teach anyone anything.”
“We’re covering celebrities who are entertaining,” Levin says. “The show has humor. We’re not treating Hollywood like ‘War and Peace.'”
“They’re people,” Levin says of the celebrities featured on “TMZ.” “Sometimes they’re good, and sometimes they’re not. It’s a real look at Hollywood. Reality can be sweet, it can be harsh, it can be everything.”
While celebrities may be richer, hotter and have more and better weddings than the rest of us, we can always aim to be like George Clooney, Mr. Nice Guy, in deed if not in fact. Praise to the heavens for “TMZ” showing us the way!
Here’s “TMZ” vs. the Seven Deadly Sins:
LUST:
Lust is bad, and specifically bad are the lustful who hurt the righteous.
Madonna and Alex Rodriguez, bad. Stray-Rod’s wife, good. Balthazar Getty (“Brothers and Sisters”) and Sienna Miller (“World’s No. 1 Homewrecker Kid, knocking out Denise Richards, J.Lo and Angelina Jolie”), bad. Mrs. Getty has been wronged by them, and so, by extension, she is good. As is the ultra-famously jilted Jennifer Aniston, whom”TMZ” always treats more kindly than either Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, cheating cheaters that they are. The videos and photos of Aniston always show her looking brave, and hot. Denise Richards is bad, beca use she “dated” h er best friend Heather Locklear’s ex-husband, Richie Sambora, and so “TMZ” catches Richards in an unflattering light, looking –GASP — fat. Heather Locklear, on the other hand, always looks hot.
GLUTTONY:
Speaking of Denise Richards,those celebs gluttonous enough to eat actual food and end up with cellulite to show for it are in for a bad time on “TMZ.” Fired Jenny Craig spokeswoman Kirstie Alley, spoiled oil heir Jason Davis (known on “TMZ” as Gummi Bear), Jennifer Love Hewitt in a bikini, Mischa Barton, who dared to flaunt her cellulite-pocked thighs. The possibilities for mockery are apparently endless.
As bad as gluttony may be, it’s polar opposite — too skinny, especially when pregnant, like Nicole Richie — is no less a sin. Amy Winehouse is drink and drug gluttonous. Andy Dick is too, and so many others. “TMZ” helpfully spotlights their many stumbles and bumbles. Don’t try this at home, kids.
GREED:
When it comes to Hollywood, we could discuss this category forever. But punished the hardest by “TMZ” for their greediness are the stage mothers, the Mama Roses on steroids, who presumably should know better and so be better. Mothers Teresa they are not. Lynne Spears, whose book on parenting was shelved after Britney’s annus horribilis and Jamie Lynn’s pregnancy so she came up with a more fitting tome, “Through the Storm,” newly published, was the queen of the genre, but her throne has since been toppled by Dina Lohan, who, “TMZ” has noted, again, helpfully, “has already ruined one daughter” — Lindsay — “and is working on ruining the other” — Ali. The aforementioned Denise Richards is making a name for herself in this category, too, “TMZ” points out, by parading her two young daughters around on her reality show. The show was canceled, her battles with her ex, Charlie Sheen, still rage, and she was forced to put her $4.6 million 5,600-square-foot Hidden Hills house up for sale for $100,000 less than she paid. Kris Jenner, mother of Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashi an and a couple of offspring spawned with the cosmetically enhanced Bruce Jenner, is shown in her full pandering, pimping glory. Miley’s dad, Billy Ray, is just an achy-breaky heartbeat away from joining this category.
SLOTH:
K-Fed/Fed-Ex, Britney’s unemployed baby daddy is the king of this hill.
WRATH:
That Firecrotch Lindsay Lohan has such a mouth on her! “TMZ” and the ranks of paparazzi have been obligated to show the whole world just how mean this girl can be. How mean is that? “Mind your own f****** business,” as she routinely tells inquiring minds.
ENVY:
Shauna Sand, D-list goddess and ex-wife of Lorenzo Lamas, is the “TMZ” avatar of celebrity envy, circling endlessly outside hot Hollywood clubs as if she were trapped in Dante’s Inferno but had no desire to leave.
PRIDE:
Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt — Speidi — the villainous duo on MTV’s “Hills,” is less famous than fameish, but always trying hard, forever on the lookout for paparazzi to “catch”them holding hands, kissing and canoodling. Always camera-ready. Always this close. And we all know what goeth before a fall. Always.
“TMZ”‘s new commercial tagline tells us the show’s been “Keeping Hollywood Real since 2007.” Or, as God said, let there be light.
Andrea Higbie
andreahig@aol.com
Source by Andrea Higbie