HOLLYWOOD -- It was like someone was writing a Hollywood script. You can't make this up...

EXTERIOR: Hollywood Boulevard, day.

It's 4:00, Thursday afternoon, the 25th of June. Close-up on an anxious crowd, gathering outside the legendary Grauman's Chinese Theatre, clutching flowers, candles and personal mementos meant for the Hollywood Walk of Fame star that Michael Jackson had received 25 years earlier.

But they're unable to get to it.

It's buried under the red carpet that was laid down earlier in the morning for Sacha Baron Cohen's big, splashy Bruno premiere.

Instead they mill around in a bewildered daze, not entirely unlike those zombie extras in Jackson's Thriller video.

Over on Vine Street, some industrious fans have discovered another Michael Jackson star on which to deposit their last respects.

Only problem is, that particular Michael Jackson happens to be a 75-year-old British born, silver-haired L.A. radio commentator.

Meanwhile, as the growing, grieving throng outside the Chinese is held at bay by those Bruno barricades, inside the theatre, folks from Universal Pictures are feverishly editing out a scene from the Cohen film that was actually deemed too offensive, due to the present circumstances.

The sequence that premiere audiences in several European cities had already seen showed Cohen's ultra-gay Austrian fashionista character tormenting a Punk'd LaToya Jackson, trying to glimpse brother Michael's phone number on her BlackBerry.

A studio rep suggests that out of respect to Jackson's family, it's unlikely the footage will be reinstated when the film officially opens July 10.

As the cuts are being made, inside Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, home to the NBA champion Lakers, and where Jackson had been rehearsing for his This Is It comeback tour, hastily dispatched crews are busy dismantling the spectacular, state-of-the-art stage which was supposed to be shipped off to England in time for those concert dates.

While striking the stage, the crews have to take extra care with those imposing fixtures, encrusted with some 300,000 Swarovski crystals.

EXTERIOR: Hollywood Boulevard, early evening.

Sacha Baron Cohen is determined not to let anything rain on his parade -- not even those quick-moving, enterprising individuals hawking Michael Jackson T-shirts already emblazoned with the date of his death, even though an official confirmation has not yet been made by the UCLA Medical Center.

Having already raised more than a few eyebrows at those European Bruno premieres, courting controversy in Berlin (encased in an anatomically correct pink body suit), London (as a scantily clad Queen's guard) and Madrid (a well-endowed bull), he tastelessly plunges ahead.

Saluting America's military might, Cohen's Bruno rolls along the Boulevard, straddling the glittery gun turret of a tank blinged out in disco mirrors.

Only this time, his outrageous arrival has been upstaged by a legitimately shocking departure.