Wired on Hollywood's Elite Message Boards

superflippy writes " Wired journalist Ben Mezrich gets the scoop on the online forums that film producers and other Hollywood heavyweights use to "track" the buzz on spec scripts, actors, writers, etc. "The tracking boards are the herd mentality gone digital," says one tracker. This helps explain how dreck like Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters."

Comments

Re:Explains?

[Ptolemarch]

This helps explain how dreck like Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters.

Er, no it doesn't.

But since the linked article had eye candy, you get a pass.

It certainly does explain how Kangaroo Jack makes it to theaters.

On the second page:

"Likewise, maybe as a favor to an agent, I could post something like, 'I love this, my boss loves it.' That will create buzz, and quite possibly people will start bidding preemptively because they're afraid of losing the project."

Movie titles flash before my eyes: Bubble Boy. Kangaroo Jack. Dude, Where's My Car?

Donnie Darko, and film's Hollywood SHOULD make

[Nova Express]

> On the other hand, your sig contained one of my favorite lines from Donnie Darko. What a spectacular movie Donnie Darko was.

Indeed. And your comment provides me the opportunity to post the URL to my just published, really long and detailed review of Donnie Darko. I've posted it before. Given the opportunity, I'll post it again. Hell, I've maxed out my karma, and if causes one intelligent person to seek out this singularly interesting film, it will be worth it...

Re:what kind of pay?

[CleverNickName]

How much were people paid? Did you meet guild rates and all that? What, more generally, did things cost?

Well, SAG makes several contracts available for producers who wish to use SAG actors, but don't have a lot of money. They are all listed at the SAG Indie website (warning: it's flash hell) http://sagindie.com/flashFS.html

For those two movies I mentioned, I worked for the SAG minimums, and took some profit-participation incentives. I did it because they were both great scripts, and I wanted to work with the people involved.

I'm very conflicted about actor's salaries. On the one hand, if an actor is going to be "opening" a movie, he or she should share in the massive profits that movie will be bringing the studio. On the other hand, because of this phenomenon, we're looking at one actor getting a multi-million dollar salary, while all the other actors work for scale.

In Sydney Lumet's book "Making Movies," he talks about those stupid actor bonuses, and how money that's spent on those things doesn't end up "on the screen," and the audience gets cheated because of it.

I'm not sure what the crew and department heads got paid. I'm sure you could get an idea for that stuff by tracking down some indie film makers . . . they usually like to help out aspiring film makers.

Film Tracker Website

[Alien54]

It isn't like the Filmtracker Website is hard to find.

With all of the effort that goes into writing cracks for things like Everquest, you would think that someone would be interested in finding a way in to cleverly promote things that make sense.

But the whole vetting thing they do would be a pain to get around. A really closed community.