CAMERA ACTION
Spotlighting the Webby nominees in Film

by Ray Pride
05.10.00

Way back in 1941, the great Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges had a vision of the Internet. He proposed all of creation as a battlement of information: "The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of galleries... Infidels claim that the rule in the Library is not 'sense,' but 'non-sense' and that 'rationality' (even humble, pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception."

That's how I feel sometimes when I am sucked into the undertow of Amazon.com's Internet Movie Database. Of the five nominees for this year's Webbys in the category of Film, the IMDB is easily the king of information about movies worldwide. While not every piece of data provided has been vetted the way it might be in a reference book, the effort exemplifies the Library of Babel that the net once promised to become. There's a DVD of the day among dozens of other ways to run up bills against the plastic in your pocket, but the information is invaluable for at least preliminary research on any film that has been released to the public.

Atom Films does a few good things out in the world at large as well as for their site. Besides throwing monkey-mad bashes at the Sundance Film Festival this year that got their house shut down by the fire and police departments, the company puts money into placing the films to which they hold rights onto the site and into film festivals as well. It's a noble venture for the filmmakers involved, if not particularly relevant to the viewer trying to check out non-animated shorts on a less-than-cable-modem speed connection. Atom Films, their splash screen flickering with smaller screens, promises the instant disposable gratification of a short film or two. "Get into our shorts," the slogan commands. No thanks, not today, we say, with a modest amount of blushing.

IFILM is a more earnest effort, also a compendium of shorts, with titles that are often more artful or experimental than those at Atom Films. Most usefully, there are archives and links on DIY developments for the videomaker-to-be. Magazines like Res and Filmmaker strive to keep up with ever-surging information in the non-virtual world of paper and ink, yet IFILM is the kind of starting point that could edify the curiosity of any clever kid (or late-to-start adult).

It's perhaps absurd to move from the densely flagged IMDB.com or the plushly financed Atom Films site to the modest ambitions of Drew's Script-o-Rama. Always deficient in design savvy, a new upgrade still leans heavily on bright pinks and yellows and other colors we, personally, don't care to have anywhere in our personal lives. The site, noting the absurdity of the comparisons to the better-financed sites, asks what they "share in common with 'The Insider?' Answer: They both got nominations for the top award of the year for their respective fields, and neither has a chance in hell of winning!"

Script-o-Rama is like a literary Napster, linking to sites where screenplays are available free for downloading. It avoids the moral and legal question of keeping the legally tentative material on one's own server. (It's like offering directions to a thieves' bazaar.) In most cases, the writers of films like "The Matrix" aren't happy about having their intellectual property transferred without royalties to them, particularly earlier drafts they might well just consider nobody's damn business but their own. When scripts are linked to sites that seem dicey, as in the recently listed "Gangs of New York," the still-in-preproduction Martin Scorsese nineteenth-century gangster epic, it's made clear that visitors should check the site out immediately, as it's not likely to last. (Such was the case: Disney's legal wizards had all but ten pages removed from the referred site under the threat of legal annihilation.) "Shouldn't the little guy win just once?" goes the pleading at Script-O-Rama. Information wants to be free, yes, but writers want to be paid.

But it is perhaps the site for proteinTV that is the most protean: it's an under-construction splash screen, offering a link to its previous incarnation, but promising enormous things for the future. "Redefining the way you watch television," goes the slogan. If you're online to avoid television, this will be a site to avoid as well. "If you are a filmmaker, or have an idea for a show," they note earnestly, "you can contact us here. Register below and we'll let you know when our new service goes live." There are handsome, reserved screens of cool blue and icy green below their logo, above a banner of "london... san francisco... tokyo" that link to nothing but a future of limitless potential.

Newcitychicago film critic Ray Pride contributes to Filmmaker magazine, indieWIRE, Nerve.com, Cinema Scope and the BBC World Service. He intends to turn in his forthcoming book on Atom Egoyan very, very soon. He promises.

Editor's note: Newcity.com is a sponsor of the 2000 Webby Awards, but its coverage of the event remains independent of that agreement.