GRIDLOCK New Years Eve Party Paramount Studio 2007

Gridlock LA Charles Lew makes no secret of his aspirations for his event at the Paramount Pictures Studio Lot. "We want to get this televised," he says. "We want this to be the event with the Dick Clark feel ... , to produce something synonymous with L.A."

There, the CEO of Hardball Productions might have his tongue in his cheek. After all, Gridlock will be staged in the area of the Paramount lot built out to look like New York City streets, so his headliner — popular Las Vegas rockers the Killers — will perform their headlining set at "Times Square."

The Killers? How did an event that was aborted in its inaugural attempt last year get the Killers? "A lot of money," Lew says with a laugh.

Gridlock sold (and then refunded) 3,500 advance tickets last year, says Lew, who expects the Killers, combined with the celebrity cachet of countdown host Carmen Electra, to help the event reach its capacity of 6,000 this year. With five stages of entertainment and circus-like accouterments (including a Ferris wheel), there will be enough music to go around.

"My friends in Florida and on the East Coast would always ask me, 'What's going on New Year's Eve?' " says Lew, who moved to L.A. in 1997 and has been in the club and restaurant business since. "It was the same story every New Year's — it was never anything grandiose.

"There needs to be something so crazy that people everywhere will be talking about it."