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Kevin Spacey is a Hollywood actor who likes to do good while doing well. He won an Oscar two years ago for his portrayal of Lester Burnham, the angst-ridden suburban dad in the film American Beauty. And he has enjoyed an illustrious stage career in London and New York in such plays as Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.
Spacey is also involved in a number of charitable projects. As often as not, he works quietly behind the scenes. But if he thinks it will do some good, he'll get out front to promote causes he supports. For instance, he recently toured Africa with his pal, former President Bill Clinton, in an effort to increase public awareness of the devastating AIDs epidemic there.
Spacey's latest project combines his altruism with his day job. It's a new Web site, Triggerstreet.com, which launched in September. It's designed to create a sympathetic forum where aspiring screenwriters and filmmakers can post scenarios and short films and receive constructive criticism on how to improve them.
JUDGE DEVITO. The site will include a festival of short films, which will be judged by the aspiring filmmakers who use the site. Those judged best by the jury of their peers will go on to be evaluated by such Hollywood luminaries as Annette Benning and Danny DeVito.
The site's main corporate backer is Budweiser, a unit of Anheuser-Busch (BUD
). Triggerstreet.com declined to say how much the brewer is investing in the project.
Spacey sees the site as a way of searching out young and untested film talent. His production company, Trigger Street Productions, closely monitors postings on the site, hoping to nurture and promote promising filmmakers and writers.
FOLLOWING FRANCIS. The five-year old outfit has already supported some talent it likes. Examples are the 1999 film The Big Kahuna, which was directed by John Swanbeck and adapted by Roger Rueff from his play Hospitality Suite. Spacey, DeVito, and Peter Facinelli starred in the film. Trigger Street is also just finishing up The United States of Leland, a vehicle for first-time writer and director Matthew Ryan Hoge, which features Don Cheadle and Ryan Gosling.
Triggerstreet.com, however, isn't the first in this field. Similar sites started by other Hollywood stars haven't met with huge success. Director Francis Ford Coppola's zoetrope.com offers a similar virtual studio for aspiring movie makers (see BW Online, 9/12/00, "A Conversation with Francis Ford Coppola"). None of the thousands of scenarios posted on the site has yet been turned into a significant feature film.
Then there's Project Greenlight, a similar site backed by actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. It sponsors a contest in which one scenario is chosen annually to be made into a feature film with a $1 million budget. Out of 7,000 submissions in the most recent contest, the winner was Pete Jones, a stay-at-home dad who had his film Stolen Summer produced by Miramax, a unit of Walt Disney (DIS
), and screened at the Sundance Film Festival. HBO, which has an option on the movie, broadcast a documentary on the contest and the making of Jones's film.
I recently sat down with Spacey at a Manhattan hotel and talked about his new Web site and what he hopes to achieve. Here are edited excerpts of our conversation:
Q: How are you going to measure success?
A: Well, fortunately for me, I don't come from the school where you only measure success by how much money something makes or whether it has a big box-office weekend. I measure it by how much people actually participate in the process.
I suppose what we're hoping to achieve is going to be determined to some degree by the community of people who come on and become members and participate in the site.
What we're hoping to do is open up access to all those people who don't have an agent, who don't necessarily know the right people, who don't have the ability to get on a plane and knock on doors in Los Angeles or New York, but whose ideas may have a great passion behind them.
We've all gone through -- I know I have in my own career -- where we got rejected and had doors slammed in our faces. This is a place where those people can come and -- using technology that didn't exist [until recently] -- upload their short films and screenplays, and participate.
Q: In what ways -- if any -- is it going to be different from, say, Zoetrope and Project Greenlight?
A: Project Greenlight is [for] television, and their focus is on one [winner]. [Our site] isn't just about a contest. What we're trying to do is open up a community so that many people can be involved. In fact, in 24 hours of being online and without any real press yet, we already have well over 1,000 registered members.
Q: And you see it partly as a way to stay in touch with fresh and largely unknown talent?
A: You have to recognize this: There comes a point where [a successful actor] can't accept unsolicited material. You're told, "You're going to get sued" if you open up that brown package that arrives at the office that may have a great screenplay in it.
Q: Why is that?
A: Well, because, what if you sent me a screenplay, and I sent it back and said, "No, thank you very much, but I'm not interested," and then three years later somebody I know produces a movie with that same theme? Do you know how many lawsuits there are? It's a mad dash to the courtroom.
So, this is [now] true of almost every [Hollywood player]: No major agency, no production company, no studio accepts unsolicited material. This is why movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding take forever to get produced. Nobody wants to do it. [But] it would take just one person saying, "You know, I really believe in that idea" [for the project to be a success].
So I was frustrated over the years at the cutting off of a pipeline that, quite frankly, has been the basis of my career. The best material I've found is stuff that got chucked over the wall -- people who didn't have an agent, first-time, second-time filmmakers who went on to prove themselves later. I was really frustrated by the fact that I had to cut off this avenue that I think everyone in the film industry should be interested in.
Q: Is The Big Kahuna an example?
A: Yes, The Big Kahuna is a [a project by] a first-time screenwriter and first-time director. The United States of Leland, which we just produced, is a first-time writer and director who is 27 years old. Those are practical examples of what we hope this site will open up in a much broader sense.
What I don't want to do is spend too much time comparing us to [the other Web sites]. Being successful doesn't necessarily mean that what someone is writing today on our site is going to be the one [to make it big]. But if people are nurtured, taken care of, protected, and part of a community where they get real good criticism, they might be able to take it to the next level. Maybe what they'll write in four years will be what happens.
In the case of the screenplays posted [as opposed to the short films], it will be a forum. There will be no contest, but we will definitely be monitoring the Web site very carefully. The measure of success shouldn't be whether a whole lot of movies are produced. It should be, are people learning how to write, are they improving their level of skill, are people getting critiqued by someone other than their family.
Q: Well, I sense that the other sites have had a hard time creating a sense of community among their members.... There is supposedly a lot of backbiting and Survivor-style jockeying in an effort to get scenarios seen by famous actors and directors.
A: I'm trying to emphasize that this is not about, "Oh, let's send in a scenario, and maybe Kevin Spacey will star in it." I don't want people to be sending stuff to the site because of that. They should be sending stuff there because they're passionate about the story they want to tell. It's not about a way to get to me.
Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable Feast column, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
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Copyright 2002, Bloomberg L.P.
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