VMAs, Hollywood style

Who IS the biggest star at MTV's Video Music Awards? Before and after Sunday's show, it's the resurgent Hollywood night-life scene. After stops in New York, Miami and a critically maligned program last year inside the Palms casino in Las Vegas, the VMAs are back in Los Angeles for the first time since 1998, and some nightclubs are poised to capitalize.

MTV Networks has effectively dropped a second mini-Grammy weekend in the middle of Hollywood, potentially filling up a number of nightclubs with star-studded parties in the same way the Grammy Awards liven up the scene downtown and beyond.

No fewer than 15 events are planned around the award festivities, which began Wednesday with an event featuring rapper the Game at the 39,000-square-foot Kress club in Hollywood. The parties include splashy MTV-sponsored soirees, private gatherings at mansions in the Hollywood Hills (one celeb-heavy event is simply called "House of Hype") and unofficial, open-to-the-public happenings hoping to cash in.

The nights are part of MTV's marketing efforts to build excitement for the ceremony, which will take place on the lot at Paramount Pictures and will be shown Sunday night on the cable channel.

MTV's return to Los Angeles coincides with a Hollywood night-life renaissance, and the halo effect around the main event should benefit new Hollywood club owners such as the Kress' Mike Viscuso.

"The whole reason I designed the Kress the way I did was for events like this," said the 51-year-old, stationed inside his multi-story Hollywood Boulevard hot spot before the Wednesday kickoff event that doubled as a two-year anniversary party for the L.A. edition of 944 Magazine. "About a third of my business is special events," added Viscuso, who hinted that he may even be close to snagging a Vanity Fair party after the Academy Awards this winter.

Steve Adelman, one of the owners of the Avalon, just blocks away from the Kress, ramped up construction on his new lounge atop the Avalon -- Bardot, formerly the Spider Club -- to accommodate a private party for chart-topping songstress Katy Perry that will take place this weekend.

"The Grammy Awards are huge, but they are [usually] here," said Alesandra Dubin, Los Angeles bureau chief of event-planning trade magazine BizBash. "The VMAs offer sponsors and hosts the opportunity to do something different and unexpected."