Internet Tv Database

WHEN KEVIN BRAY, the director of last winter's All About the Benjamins, was trying to cast the film, a scene from the comedy A Night at the Roxbury popped into his head. Something about the look and attitude of actress Eva Mendes, who had a small part as a bridesmaid, intrigued him. She might be perfect, he thought, for the role of Gina, the long-suffering girlfriend of a con artist played by Mike Epps. But first Bray needed to see her other work. Not so long ago, this would have meant searching out her agent, pitching his project, and if all went well, getting a resume and head shot sent to him.

Bray instead turned to his PC, logged on to the Internet Movie Database, and typed in "Eva Mendes." Up came her filmography, a list of the TV shows on which she'd had guest spots, and a photograph. Eventually, after Bray had rented and watched a couple of her movies, he offered Mendes the part. She took it.

It wasn't the first time that Bray, an established music video and commercial director making his film debut, had used the IMDb. The site helped him land the Benjamins gig in the first place. "Before I went to pitch my ideas for the movie to the film company and to the producers," says Bray, "I looked up buddy movies and pulled every film I could find. When I went and did my meetings, I used a lot from what I'd referenced."

The period since the Industry and the Internet discovered each other has been one of ambition, disappointment, and confusion. In the late `90s, at the height of the dot-com boom, Industry moguls clambered for presence on the Net. Hollywood executives and Silicon Valley venture capitalists alike believed--and were willing to spend millions to prove--that the Web was the next vehicle for delivering movies to audiences. Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Jeffrey Katzenberg teamed with Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen to create Pop.com, a site that would produce and broadcast original short films starring big names like Steve Martin and Rene Russo. Other Hollywood Internet projects, some touting names like Tim Burton, David Lynch, and Mike Ovitz, were also launched.

By the fall of 2000, with the dot-com meltdown well under way, it had become obvious that channeling expensive Hollywood content through the Internet was not yet a profitable idea. Too many people still had dial-up modems; without a broadband connection, even a short film would take half an hour or longer to download. Production costs, while much lower than those of a big-ticket film or TV series, were still too high for the meager revenues brought in by banner ads. There was just no way to make money. After spending nearly $8 million and calculating that it would cost more than $2 million a month to operate, Pop.com's founders pulled the plug in September, just two weeks before the site was scheduled to launch.

The Internet Movie Database, conversely, has flourished in large part because its goals have always been less grandiose than those of other entertainment sites; the IMDb has never produced a film and doesn't try to get visitors to watch movies on their PCs. Rather, this simple, free archive, founded without any superstar backing or hype, has generated a huge following both inside and outside the Industry by making the most arcane, detailed information about any person or movie instantly available. In recognizing what most people use the Internet for--information gathering--the site has become one of the most popular resources in the Industry. It's also one of the few examples of symbiosis between Hollywood and the Internet, in which two disparate groups, moviemakers and film fanatics, benefit from each other's compulsions.

Most of the site's 12 million monthly visitors are not film professionals but movie buffs, drawn to the IMDb to read reviews, star bios, or gossip. But for those in the Industry, for whom information is power, the lists it has assembled for more than 300,000 films and 1 million cast and crew members are indispensable. A visit to the IMDb before a meeting--or during a phone conversation--is now obligatory. Says Big Trouble producer Tom Jacobson, who uses the site regularly, "The more you know about the people you're in business with, the more you know about what's been done, what movies have been made, who's worked with who, the better you are at your job."

IF A SCRIPT WERE BASED ON the IMDb's rise to Hollywood prominence, it would be rejected as totally implausible. The origins of the site go back to the technological middle ages--the late 1980s and early 1990s--before the Web existed. It was then that Col Needham, a software researcher for Hewlett Packard in Bristol, England, came across a Usenet bulletin board called rec.arts.movies, where fans got together and talked film. Many of the discussion threads devolved into minute dissections of the plots and inconsistencies of the latest releases. Casting decisions also generated a lot of emotion. "There was a big storm in 1988 when Michael Keaton was cast as Batman," says Needham, 35. Most users thought Keaton's work in comedies like Mr. Mom hadn't earned him the role.

Needham, whose round face, spectacles, and short dark hair give him the look of a grown-up Harry Potter, had much to offer the group. He's seen around 8,000 films, he estimates--1,100 in 1990 alone. As a kid he was friends with a video store owner who would let him keep movies for weeks at a time; he once hogged a copy of Aliens for two weeks and watched it every day. Other genres, like film noir and 1930s screwball comedies--especially those with Cary Grant--are dear to him, too. Nothing, however, compares to Hitchcock's Vertigo: Needham's manner of speech, already rapid-fire and enthusiastic, spikes in pitch at the mere mention of the film.

Needham was such a cinephile, in fact, that he could barely keep track of everything he'd seen, often getting within minutes of the end of a film before realizing it was a repeat. He decided to use his facility with computer programming (he'd started his own game software company at age 14) to create a film database. Each entry had a movie title, the names of the director and the principal cast and crew, the date Needham saw it, and his impression. "Fortunately, my wife is also a movie buff," he says.

At the same time, the Usenet group was also creeping forward in its sophistication, with one member compiling a list of actresses and their credits. "Being that this was 1990, most of the Internet audience consisted of U.S. male college students," says Needham. "Actresses got priority over actors." Other lists followed, one for actors, another for directors, and even one--inspired by Needham's love of old movies--with information on deceased filmmakers, known as the "dead list." Later came writers, composers, and cinematographers. Newsgroup users could expand each list, and in October 1990 Needham incorporated his own database software into all the lists, making them fully searchable.

The IMDb became a Web site in 1993, when a friend of Needham's at Cardiff University in Wales offered to host the database on one of the school's servers. "I have a copy of the e-mail from the first morning we went live," says Needham. "The site had been up for an hour and we had 60 hits, which seemed amazing at the time."

Every two weeks the traffic to the site doubled. As the number of people accessing the IMDb ballooned, so did the amount of information submitted--credits, summaries, reviews, trivia. The site's hobbyist caretakers, working from computer screens around the world, were becoming overtaxed, and the data were taking up too much space on the borrowed servers.

By 1995 Needham and his colleagues faced a decision: Either shut down the site or turn it into a full-time enterprise. Needham quit his job at Hewlett-Packard, becoming the new company's president and only employee, and used a credit card to buy a server in Wisconsin. The IMDb began to sell advertising space and used the revenue to expand, adding more servers and converting volunteers into full-time staff.

Larger media and Internet companies offered to buy the IMDb but were turned away. Needham felt the suitors didn't understand the IMDb or even the Web, that they were just interested in grabbing anything Internet related as the tech sector continued to soar.

Then, in 1998, Needham received an e-mail from Amazon.com asking him to meet CEO Jeff Bezos. On a typically cold January morning the two met at Bezos's hotel in London's swanky Kensington neighborhood. They swapped stories about the beginnings of their Web sites, instantly connecting. "There were similar things in Amazon's history, but obviously on a bigger scale," says Needham. Five hours later, after lunch and a walk around the streets, the two were back at Bezos's hotel room, ready to start discussing an acquisition.

Bezos was looking to expand Amazon beyond its core business of selling books, and he felt that becoming part of Amazon's growing profile made long-term sense for the site. Amazon would give the IMDb access to the technical and financial resources of one of the few successful Internet corporations; it would instantly transform the grassroots operation into a full-fledged business. Needham concurred, and in April 1998 the IMDb became a subsidiary of Amazon. What had begun as the hobby of a few computer geeks had sold for a rumored $20 million.

BECOMING PART OF AMAZON has entailed few cosmetic changes for the IMDb. Links to the e-tailer's inventory of videotapes, DVDs, and soundtracks now appear on most pages. Down the left-hand side of the home page are listings of current box office leaders, upcoming films, new video releases, and links to Italian- and German-language versions of the site. On the right are Industry headlines and celebrity birthday announcements. At the bottom are a trivia question and a quote of the day.

The search function is still the heart of the site. Typing "Air Force One," for example, brings up a cast and crew list, the average user rating (6.4 stars out of 10), recommendations of similar films (Face/Off), plus links to reviews, filming locations, and the movie's official Web site. Down a level, a click on "Harrison Ford" produces a photo of the actor, his place and date of birth, and his filmography--everything from an uncredited role in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round to the projected 2004 release of Indiana Jones 4. Down further: "Biography" leads to a page with capsule write-ups of Ford by both Leonard Maltin and a submitter named Ed Stephan. His reported salaries are given for several films, and the publicity link produces an exhaustive list of articles, interviews, and magazine covers. The trivia section mentions some of the roles Ford has declined, lists the airplanes he owns, and says he was born at 11:42 a.m.

The IMDb's technical infrastructure and some of the staff are now based in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered. Many of the employees, however, telecommute. Needham still lives and works in Bristol. The IMDb's expert on Indian films lives in Switzerland; the point person for Hollywood films is an Italian man who recently moved to the States. They and other staffers stay in contact via e-mail, instant messaging, and telephone. Many of the programmers are based in Europe and work odd schedules to synchronize with office hours in Seattle. "Of all the companies and all the promise of the virtual workplace you've heard about over the years, IMDb is one of the few [real] examples," says Barnaby Dorfman, director of IMDb Services. "I probably have a closer working relationship with a guy from London than I do with some of the people sitting up the hall."

Other film-related sites praise the IMDb. Ain't It Cool News, which posts reviews of films often weeks before they're released, has a link to it. "We here at the Geek Compound Headquarters in Austin, Texas, feel IMDb is a very, very important work tool for our site," says Jay Knowles, a contributing editor at AICN and father of site head Harry Knowles. "Seldom a day goes by that we don't go to it to gather information." Garth Franklin, who runs Dark Horizons, another popular movie news address, is impressed with the IMDb's reporting. "Considering the sheer size of the site," he says, "it's amazing how much is correct."

THE WAY THE IMDB COLLECTS data hasn't changed much under Amazon, either, although the process has been upgraded and streamlined. Tens of thousands of users still submit cast lists of movies, celebrity bios, and other information. Not all of it gets published, however. "There's a misconception in the Industry," says Dorfman. "Anybody can submit information to the IMDb. That doesn't mean it's going to be posted."

All new information first undergoes automated checks to filter out obvious mistakes: No matter how vehemently someone insists that John Huston will direct the next Star Wars installment, the information will be disregarded. Submitters are also graded according to their track record of accuracy. "Based on other information you've submitted to us, you either move up or down a trust scale," says Dorfman.

The material then goes to an editor for additional verification. If it's an actor's birth date, for example, the editor might check social security or DMV records. As the IMDb has evolved, it has forged ties with official sources of information such as the Writers Guild of America, which helps ensure that all members' screenwriting credits are listed accurately. Studios are also providing information about past and upcoming movies more readily than they once did.

Still, questionable information occasionally does elude the safeguards. Only Hollywood insiders would catch some of the mistakes: Matt Damon's agent is listed as PMK, which is a publicity company, not a talent agency. Other submissions are even more dubious. According to the IMDb, most of the dialogue in Alien was ad-libbed, Charlton Heston rehearsed his role in Airport 1975 by flying a 747, Darth Vader never said, "Luke, I am your father," and Mel Gibson stands five foot eleven. Users also like to point out that Michael Douglas is older than Catherine Zeta-Jones and that Steven Spielberg uses music in his movies.

Every week, Dorfman says, the company is contacted by someone--usually an actor, director, or producer--who wants to change something in his or her credits. Often the request is to delete a title, not add one. "Sometimes we can't figure out why they don't want to be associated with a project. Your mind is probably going to adult films and things like that," says Dorfman. When one actress claimed a soft-core title was in her filmography by mistake, an editor obtained a copy of the film and watched it. There she was, clearly recognizable and listed in the credits.

The IMDb has been threatened with lawsuits, Dorfman says, but company policy forbids changes unless a mistake can be proved. That can be a problem for many publicists, for whom policing the IMDb on behalf of clients has become a basic obligation. One says her client's filmography included a movie in which the actor hadn't appeared, but when the publicist tried to get a correction she was met with silence. It wasn't the first time. "If you try and contact them to update a resume, add a photo, it just never happens," she says. Others in Hollywood complain that the site lacks enough head shots of actors (if you're not well known, there's a $35 fee for posting one), or that it has insufficient information on projects in development.

Partly in response to comments like these, in January Needham launched IMDbpro, a subscription edition that bears a different design, additional box office statistics, and some new market research tools. Although still incomplete, IMDbpro offers more comprehensive contact information for agents and publicists. A section called In Production contains news about movies currently filming. Banner free and geared to Industry insiders, IMDbpro costs $12.95 a month. Clearly, its creators hope to produce a cheap alternative to the well-established Studio System, a network that provides more detailed information but also charges as much as several thousand dollars a month for a single subscription.

IMDb officials say they are pleased with the response. For site founder Col Needham, the simple fact that Industry players visit the original site every day is heady stuff. "It's good to be well used and appreciated," he says. Not that he's letting it swell his ego. At this year's Sundance festival, he wasn't partying with moguls; he was enjoying the anonymity that comes naturally to a man who sits in front of a computer 16 hours a day. "It's easy to spot Robin Williams or Andie MacDowell," he says. "But as you're walking down the street, nobody knows you're from IMDb."

* Chris Warren ("The Credit File"), a former assistant editor at Los Angeles, writes about business, sports, and media for Forbes. His stories have also appeared in Icon and Continental. A onetime writer in the correspondence department of the Clinton White House, Warren is currently at work on a book about the Georgetown University crew team.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Los Angeles Magazine, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group

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