Jimmy Kimmel boosted Hollywood. Now the neighborhood is worried

Spider-Man and a Hollywood tour guide were having it out.

They stood right outside Jimmy Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard, arguing about whether ABC was right to yank the host’s TV show off the air last week after he commented on the political response to right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s killing.

“I like Kimmel!” said the Spider-Man impersonator, who wore pink Nike sneakers and leaned in close so he could hear through his thin, face-covering costume. “What he said is free speech.”

Todd Doten, a tour agent for Beverly Hills Tours of Hollywood, pushed back. He said he believed broadcasters are held to a different standard than private citizens, and that the Federal Communications Commission — which pushed to get Kimmel’s show canceled — “has somewhat of a point.”

The men verbally sparred beside singer Little Richard’s cracked star on the Walk of Fame. Then Doten patted the selfie-hawking superhero on the back and they parted ways amicably.

The scene on Friday afternoon captured the Hollywood that Kimmel embraced and aggressively promoted: Weird, gritty and surprisingly poignant.

Ever since he began filming at the El Capitan Entertainment Centre in 2003, Kimmel has been one of the famed neighborhood’s biggest ambassadors. He drew tourists to the storied Hollywood Boulevard, which — despite being home to the Academy Awards, TCL Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame — has long struggled with crime, homelessness and blight. He used his celebrity to help homeless youth and opened a donation center on his show’s backlot for victims of the January wildfires.

And he filmed many a sketch with Hollywood itself as the bizarro backdrop — including one returning bit called “Who’s High?” in which he tried to guess which of three pedestrians was stoned.

Now, locals and entertainment industry officials alike worry what will happen if Kimmel’s show permanently disappears from a Hollywood still struggling to recover from the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 and the COVID-19 pandemic that literally shut the neighborhood down. While his suspension has sparked a roiling debate over free speech rights nationwide, in this neighborhood, the impact is more close to home.

“A hostile act toward Jimmy Kimmel is a hostile act toward Hollywood itself and one of its great champions,” former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told The Times on Friday.

“Hollywood is both a place and an idea. It’s an industry and a geography. Jimmy is always big on both. He actually lives in Hollywood, at a time when not a lot of stars do.”

Miguel Aguilar, a fruit vendor who often sets up near Kimmel’s theater, said Friday that business was always better on the days “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” filmed because so many audience members bought his strawberries and pineapples doused in chamoy. He was stunned when a Times reporter told him the show had been suspended.

“Was it canceled by the government?” Aguilar asked. “We used to get a lot more customers [from the show]. That’s pretty scary.”

A man holding a sign advertising at a nearby diner said he worried about Kimmel’s crew, including the gaffers and makeup artists.

“How many people went down with Kimmel?” he asked.

And Daniel Gomez, who lives down the street, said he feared that nearby businesses will suffer from the loss of foot traffic from the show, for which audience members lined up all the way down the block.

“Tourists still will come to Hollywood no matter what, but a portion of that won’t be coming anymore,” Gomez said as he signed a large canvas outside the theater on which scores of fans and free speech advocates wrote messages about the show being axed.

“It’s pretty bad that he got shut down because of his comments,” Gomez added. “Comedians should be free to say whatever they want.”

In a joint statement, a coalition of Hollywood labor groups including the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said the kind of political pressure that Kimmel faced as a broadcaster “chills free speech and threatens the livelihoods of thousands of working Americans.”

“At a time when America’s film and television industry is still struggling due to globalization and industry contraction, further unnecessary job losses only make a bad situation worse,” the statement read.

During his monologue Monday, Kimmel made remarks about Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of fatally shooting Kirk. He said the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

While Kimmel’s remarks could be interpreted in different ways, Kirk’s supporters immediately accused the talk show host of claiming Robinson was a Trump ally, which many of Kimmel’s supporters reject. Kimmel himself has not publicly responded.

Kimmel also mocked President Trump for talking about the construction of a new White House ballroom after being asked how he was coping with the killing of his close ally.

Nexstar Media Group responded on Wednesday, saying it would pull the show from its ABC affiliate stations because of Kimmel’s comments. Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, then announced it would suspend “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” indefinitely.

Nexstar’s decision to yank the show came after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, threatened to take action against ABC and urged local ABC affiliate stations to stand up the network.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr told right-wing podcast host Benny Johnson. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Trump wrote on his Truth Social account: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”

He also targeted late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, calling them “total losers.” He pressured NBC to cancel their shows, writing: “Do it NBC!!!”

The president this summer praised CBS’s decision to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” after this season, writing on Truth Social on July 18: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

While the show is in limbo, it is unclear what will happen to Kimmel’s iconic theater in the historic former Hollywood Masonic Temple, a neoclassical 1921 building fronted by six imposing columns.

Disney owns the building, as well as the adjacent 1920s office building that contains the El Capitan Theatre and the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Shop. Kimmel’s production company, 12:05 AM Productions, occupies four floors — 26,000 square feet — in the six-story office building, according to real estate data provider CoStar.

Disney did not respond to a request for comment.

Garcetti, who long represented Hollywood on the L.A. City Council, said Kimmel was a major advocate for renovation of the old Masonic lodge and other revitalization Hollywood projects.

And after the Oscars returned for good to the Kodak Theatre (now Dolby Theatre) across the street in 2002 after several years outside of Hollywood, Kimmel “helped usher in what I call Hollywood’s second golden age, when the Academy Awards came back and people saw actual stars in nightclubs and restaurants,” Garcetti said.

When Garcetti was showing off the city to officials with the International Olympic Committee years ago in an effort to host the Games, Kimmel met their helicopter on the roof of a Hollywood hotel to brag about the neighborhood.

At the 2013 Hollywood Chamber of Commerce ceremony awarding Kimmel a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Garcetti quipped: “When you came here to Hollywood Boulevard, this place was full of drug dealers and prostitutes, and you welcomed them with open arms.”

Kimmel joked that his parents brought him to the Walk of Fame as a 10-year-old and left him there to fend for himself.

“I’m getting emotional,” he said during the ceremony. “This is embarrassing. I feel like I’m speaking at my own funeral. This is ridiculous. People are going to pee on this star.”

Kimmel’s star is by his theater, near the stars for rapper Snoop Dogg — and Donald Duck.

On his show in May, pop star Miley Cyrus told Kimmel she developed a serious infection after filming on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, where she rolled around on the sidewalk. Part of her leg, she said, started to “disintegrate.”

“Have you been to the Walk of Fame in the middle of the night?” she asked.

“I live here,” Kimmel said.

“I thought it was my last day,” Cyrus responded.

Hundreds of protesters have gathered outside Kimmel’s theater in recent days, decrying the suspension of his show.

The cancellation occurred right after Dianne Hall and Michael Talbur of Kansas City got tickets to a live taping of the show and traveled to Los Angeles. So, they attended a protest Thursday instead.

Hall said she was expecting Kimmel’s monologue “to be something rude toward the [Kirk] family” but was surprised when she actually listened to it.

“I kept thinking, ‘Surely something bad was said for him to get fired,’ ” Hall said. “But it was nothing like that.”

Hollywood resident Ken Tullo said he’s “not a protesting type of guy, but enough’s enough” and he did not want his daughters to grow up with a fear of speaking freely.

“The current administration cannot laugh at themselves,” Tullo said, “and they don’t want anybody else to laugh.”

Times staff writer Roger Vincent contributed to this report.