The celebrity gossip website that missed the biggest scoop of all

Gossip site TMZ may have broken the news of Michael Jackson's death but it failed to spot a scoop right under its paparazzo's lens.

A reporter noticed Benicio del Toro on Saturday and started filming him, but didn't recognise his older companion trying to escape the glare of the camera. The man was later identified as Terrence Malick, reclusive director of The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life.

Malick shuns publicity and refuses to be photographed. Tree of Life won him an Oscar nomination, but he avoided the ceremony. And TMZ missed the chance to ask him why.