Lindsay Lohan: In her own voice
A guest post from television editor Kate Aurthur:
In an article I wrote in July about the media coverage of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson's romantic relationship, I posed the question of whether Lohan would parlay the novelty of her lady liaison into a payday from one of the big gossip magazines. They were all approaching her, after all, so it appeared that Lohan would be the latest to profit. Like Jamie Lynn Spears did with her pregnancy and Brangelina has done with their babies.
Back then, I asked -- in the context of her calling in to Ryan Seacrest's radio show and using only gender-neutral words to describe her current partner, such as "the person I care about" -- "Is Lohan getting closer to more specific nouns and pronouns, particularly if one of the celebrity magazines will pay her a big check to do so, as has been rumored?"
But that so has not happened! Not only has Lohan eschewed capitalizing on an interesting story that people (not to mention People) might be willing to pay for, but she has actually done the opposite. She has plainly and simply written about Ronson as "the girl who means the world to me" (along with other references) on her MySpace page. On the Internet, the land of the free.
For that, I owe her this rowback/clarification.
Lohan first began blogging in late July. She wrote that she had just found out the log-in for her MySpace page, "so i can be more involved." Since then, she's written pretty frequently, checking in about what music she's listening to -- loves Annie Lennox's "Walking on Broken Glass," hates "Ladies of the Canyon" by Joni Mitchell: "So- I don't like the one person that requested this song once and they have ruined the song for me forever more....Those who know me and care about me will understand why... I love the artist, but dislike this particular song for my own reasons…" (Sidebar: Who is this person so horrible that he/she could make someone hate "Ladies of the Canyon"?)
But what's gotten more attention have been the rants, and there have been a bunch. Against the suggestion that her 14-year-old sister, Ali, has gotten breast implants; against her troubled father, Michael; against Sarah Palin. The most recent Palin post was in fact a joint one with Ronson, with the peg being an AP story about Palin's church promoting the conversion of gay people into straight people.
The celebrity blogosphere's reaction to Lohan's political blogging has been one of interest, of course. TMZ commented that Palin "may have trouble getting the rehabbed and rumored-to-be-gay vote come November." And Perez Hilton, who is himself obsessed with Palin and all campaign matters, has excerpted all of Lohan's blogs.
As has been true for months in the tabloids -- and continues to be the case on MySpace as well -- the Lohan-Ronson relationship is simply there for the public to see, with Lohan throwing random shoutouts to Ronson at the end of posts ("this song is for sr... ILY.") But as opposed to a big coming out party as paid for by a gossip magazine, Lohan's self-presentation is the less predictable route for a celebrity these days. She's mad at her dad, she's wishing her mom a happy birthday, she's trying to remember the name of an ice cream she liked when she was a kid and she's obsessed with the election.
In this case, at least, stars really are just like us.
DiggDogg! L.A. has 50 dogs named 'Digger'
(Photo credit: Waldo Jaquith / Flickr user )
Here, Digger!
According to the L.A Times' nifty new Doggy Database, it turns out that 50 pooches in the area go by that very name.
Raising the question: How long would it take 50 dogs named "Digger" at 50 computers to submit the exact same set of stories that Digg users have already submitted?
Also receiving an honorable mention is the guy who went a step further and named his pup "Digger dawg."
But, as often happens in discussions of Digg, "Buzz" is getting unfairly left out. There are actually 124 L.A. dogs named Buzz. I was shocked to find that no local owners named their dogs "Delicious," even though dogs abound with names like "Dr. Ruff" and "Betti Spaghetti."
Four local canines are named "Google," making it, according to the database, the 9,100th most common L.A. dog name.
If you find any funny Web 2.0-related dogs, please send along and I'll add to the post.
Q&A: Joss Whedon examines 'Dr. Horrible'
Felicia Day (front), Zack Whedon // Photo credit: Amy Opoka.
Writer-director Joss Whedon answered a couple of e-mail questions about the origins of "Dr. Horrible" and what he thinks of the Internet as a creative medium.
How did knowing that Dr. Horrible was going to be on the Internet change the way you approached the making of it? What kinds of stylistic or narrative elements might work on the Internet that might not on TV or film?
The first answer is obviously freedom: not just creative but structural, in terms of running time, number of episodes, presentation and (fingers crossed) monetization. Nothing is set in stone. I'm a very traditional storyteller, and I'm in no way Internet savvy, but I did appreciate the elasticity of the medium. The story was also geared toward the Internet audience -- and not just by putting "blog" in the title. The fact that Dr. Horrible does blog is part of his character, which is the guy alone in his room ranting about the world not being the way it should. We're long past the age of "everybody on the Internet watches 'Star Trek' and lives in their parents' basement," but there is a modern societal truth about the kind of guy who needs to tell the world his troubles and show off his talents. And I relate to that guy. Neil's blogs wouldn't work in the same way if they weren't coming from your computer screen. Correction: They will work brilliantly on DVD. Or at a midnight screening in your local city! Other difference in doing it without major backing: I become a whore.
Most importantly, there is the silly. The things that have hit on the Internet have almost all had that quality, from "Star Wars" kid, to "The Landlord," to 1,500 prisoners doing "Thriller." Not just the I-made-it-myself aesthetic, but the truly, transcendently goofy. The absurd (which is important to me, as an Absurdist) is part of the Internet's identity. Maybe it's just a stage, but it's an awesome one. On TV, Dr. Horrible would be greeted with a lot more skepticism than on the Internet. We knew as writers that we could bare our ridiculous souls to the point where people would suddenly, sincerely burst into song -- it took six years to achieve that kind of audience trust on "Buffy."
And finally, it does have to be said that every time a shot wasn't perfect and we had to move on, we'd just proclaim "It's an Internet musical!" and comfort ourselves with the idea that it would all be very tiny.
*
Whedon talks about making money from the show here...
Exclusive: Rare Clint Eastwood footage (1966's "Le Streghe" / "The Witches") finds its way to YouTube
I've just been alerted that two lengthy clips from a barely known 1966 Italian art-house film starring Clint Eastwood have been up on YouTube for over a year, and no one's noticed! The film, called "Le Streghe" ("The Witches"), was produced by Dino De Laurentiis and starred his wife, Silvana Mangano. It's comprised of five vignettes by five directors; one of the vignettes -- "Civic Sense" -- stars Eastwood playing an uncharacteristic role as the everyman husband of Mangano. The YouTube blurb describes it as a "light comedy," but it's actually more surrealist and Fellini-esque -- and is quite saucy in parts (at one point Eastwood tells Mangano, "I want to swallow you").
The film had a limited U.S. release (four years after it was made, it says here) and is not available on DVD. In fact, according to a tipster, until recently all known copies of "The Witches" were thought to be lost. Universal apparently owned some or all of the U.S. rights to the film, but it's not clear if they still do.
Developing...
Live on tape from Google's lobby: the search visualizer
I was bouncing around Santa Monica yesterday and happened to land in the lobby of the Google office on 2nd Street. Up on the wall is a nice big monitor that shows all the terms being searched on Google in real time. (They've had these things for a while but it was the first time I've seen one in person.) Lots of languages and varied interests. If anyone wants to translate some of the non-English phrases, please leave them in the comments. By the way, does anyone know what "space ibiza" is? Sounds like a fun party.
RZA's WuChess.com: a hip-hop chess community
Wu Tang's RZA, also known as Robert Diggs, is bringing chess online with a new subscription chess site called WuChess.com.
Here's how the site describes itself:
"WuChess.com is the worlds first online chess and Hip-Hop community. You can create and share profiles with your friends and triumph over enemies on the 64 squares. Not just against people in your neighborhood but from all over the world.
"Play live chess with people from all over the world and get your learn on. ...
"At Wuchess.com you can log-on to watch chess clans do battle on and check out exhibition matches with Rza, other Wu-Tang members and stars from across the planet."
Though I'm acquainted with "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'," I did not realize that RZA was a chess enthusiast.
The site costs $48 a year, which doesn't seem entirely in the spirit of giving back to the community. You should at least be able to play free for a month in order to get hooked.
I am in the process of securing a guest membership and will report back from the chess chambers.
Webbys will honor Stephen Colbert, Lorne Michaels, David Byrne
The Webby Awards have picked out some big names to honor for their web-wise contributions at this year's ceremony.
David Byrne, Lorne Michaels, Stephen Colbert, Michele Gondry, along with will.i.am, and Tim & Eric, will receive special achievement awards for the different ways they've brought focus and energy to online entertainment.
Michaels gets the honor, in part for "Lazy Sunday," one of the first really viral YouTube videos (recall that NBC had it yanked for copyright reasons, but looks like the Webbys are giving Lorne a pass on that). Gondry has always been Web friendly -- from his weird Rubik's cube video series to his latest movie, "Be Kind Rewind," which uses a low-budge Web video aesthetic. Colbert, the Webby person of the year, is being honored for his creative string of Web-based self-promotions. Says the Webbysite, Colbert has done it all ...
... from Google bombing to make him the top search result for "greatest living American" to challenging the "truthiness" of Wikipedia. In his presidential campaign, the "One Million Strong for Stephen T. Colbert" Facebook group attracted more than 78 members per minute in its first week, while his supporters have raised more than $250,000 for the education charity DonorsChoose.org.
This is obviously good marketing -- not only will the Webbys get attention from the TV, movie and music worlds, but the awards actually make sense. The entertainment landscape still comprises mostly people who haven't figured out "the Web thing" yet, so to spotlight a few who have is an all-around winner.
Scripps takes lifestyle programming to YouTube
Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels. While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.
Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.
How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise." Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip. And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.
Playboy looking for the next playmate on YouTube
(Playboy editor Holly Madison / photo by David Sarno)
"Playmates are hard to find!" giggled Holly Madison, whose resume fairly bulges with credits like Playmate editor, 2005 Playboy cover girl, star of E!'s "The Girls Next Door," and lady-friend of Hugh Hefner.
Madison is in charge of Playboy's online casting call, part of the magazine's search for its 55th-anniversary playmate. The magazine invited aspiring centerfolds across the U.S. to submit (non-nude!) videos to YouTube describing why they should be the one to be splayed across those august pages come January 2009, the release date of the anniversary issue.
Whereas the 400-person live casting events Playboy generally uses tend to yield only one candidate, Madison said the results of the YouTube contest have been surprising. Of the 42 submissions she's received in the first week of the contest, "I've seen several girls I definitely want to fly out here and test."
On the screen in front of her, a candidate was busy removing her small white T-shirt to reveal a skimpy striped bikini. "I think I should be the 55th-year anniversary playmate because I love," she says, the shirt flying off, "to get naked!"
Madison tittered. "You can't judge them too harshly because I don't know what I would say either! The worst is when people say, 'Tell me about yourself,' and you're like ... uhhh."
If you wade through the submissions, you'll see that--like YouTube videos in general--most of them are amateurish and borderline unwatchable. The girls talk about their favorite sports teams, their gymnastics skills, hometowns, how they made lasagna earlier this week, and how they'd love, just love, to be a playmate. Some viewers may experience a spike in interest when the candidates invite them into the shower (see video below), but most of this footage wouldn't make many final cuts, even for a reality show.
But that's less a criticism than a point in the Playboy's favor. Rather than worrying about how silly homemade videos might tarnish the bunny's hard-won image, Playboy is experimenting with something new.
Hardly any major media companies are inviting regular folk to contribute user-generated videos to a page that also shows their corporate logo. Music companies use YouTube to release their music, and TV companies use it to promote their TV shows. Perhaps its only fitting that Playboy be the one to go where no one else dares tread.
Soon Madison's screen showed a different girl painting a picture of the famed bunny on a large canvas. She's wearing a bikini bottom. The bunny comes out pretty well.
"I think it takes a little extra bravery to put up a video for the whole world to see," Madison said.
While it might be less efficient than live casting in some ways, a YouTube casting call can reach a much larger pool of aspirants. And, as Madison points out, anyone who's willing to post their audition video online clearly isn't afraid to put themselves out there.
Web miniseries stars Kathy, Nicky and Paris Hilton, and Kathy's perfume line
For the next five days, TV Guide is bringing you "A Day with the Hiltons, " a web miniseries (I thought all Web series were mini!). The show's premise appears to be that the Hilton women--Mama Kathy and daughters Paris and Nicky--have taken a "regular mother and daughter" under their wings, to show them how Mother's Day is done.
In the first episode (embedded below), the Hiltons don't actually make an appearance. Rather, we're introduced to the normals and let in on how excited they are to meet Kathy and the girls. "I've always admired Kathy Hilton," says Cleveland mom Kelly Mills. "She's a phenomenal mother, role model and businesswoman."
"I've watched her on HSN," continues Miles, "where she has her amazing skin care products."
Mills then gives the name of Hilton's new fragrance and her website, no doubt earning a tote-bag-full of of cleansers and exfoliaters for hitting all the talking points.
This here is must-watch stuff: Not only has Kathy managed to wrangle her daughters (and TV Guide) into producing a thinly veiled infomercial for her perfume and body-care merch (plus the Hotel Bel-Air), but she's opened up a canny new marketing front by getting the 'show' syndicated onto YouTube, Hulu and Veoh--three of the biggest online video sites.
We're asked to tune in to episode two to witness the Millses actually meeting Kathy. It's not clear how many episodes Paris or Nicky will make cameos in--or, more to the point, how many minutes of Paris-Nicky footage the creators have to spread over the remaining five episodes. Given that each installment is only a couple of minutes--probably not many.
Tom Cruise's new website and the best PR money can buy
I just checked out Tom Cruise's new web site, and it's magnificent.
It's beautifully designed with the latest, flashiest user interface and some of the highest-quality Web video I've ever seen.
The video itself -- a five-minute resume of some of Cruise's greatest cinematic moments (in the Lifetime Achievement Award style), is itself a fine work of editing and scene selection.
And if you like magazine-cover quality pictures of the man's chiseled face, lustrous hair and sartorial splendor, you will be just enchanted.
Tom Cruise's site is clearly intended to remind us that Tom Cruise is an institution -- he's a Hollywood icon with a once-in-a-generation combo of perfect looks, stellar acting talent, and enough onscreen magnetism to attract $50 million in an opening weekend.
So kudos, Tom Cruise Incorporated, LLC International. This is a great website (promoted with Google Adwords, no less). And wow, couple that with a pair of "Oprah" appearances, including today's (in which a parade of celebrities appeared on OprahVision to congratulate Cruise on a great 25 years since "Risky Business"), and the message that Tom is great has reached a few orders of magnitude more people than niggling little global nuisances like spiking oil prices, violence in Darfur, or epidemics in China.
This platinum PR blitz may sing Cruise's praises from the rooftops, but the echoes from below bounce back with a different message. "My image needs bolstering!" we seem to hear. "Please, remember: I'm an actor!"
Not a spokesperson for Scientology, or a guy that jumps on couches or gives medical advice to Brooke Shields or gets 86'd by Sumner Redstone.
In some bizarro parallel universe where great actors are just actors and no one much cares what they do in their spare time, you wouldn't have the kind of so-called image problems that this campaign's shock and awe are so obviously meant to distract from. But we don't live in that bizarro universe, we live in this one, where image problems themselves are a giant industry.
Incidentally, reports the AP, the PR crowd gives this latest Cruise Control effort high marks. Get what you pay for!
CNN on Internet fame: Is 15 fans enough?
CNN.com's Anne Hammock has a piece, now getting attention on Digg, that opens:
"The Internet is setting a new standard for celebrity. Fame is no longer about getting '15 minutes'; it's about becoming famous to 15 people."
It's probably not fair to be too snarky. After all, Hammock is trying to bring a new idea to a broad audience. There's no doubt that celebrity is changing as more online "communities" form — tech, fashion, food, film, etc. — each with its own leaders and personalities.
But 15 people?
Hammock ends by quoting David Weinberger of the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society:
"Fame is becoming ours; we are making it ours, as we are doing so much else in our culture. Fame now reflects us."
The problem with this kind of theorizing is that if we're all famous (most of us do, after all, have 15 people who will listen to our rantings), then no one's famous.
The Internet makes communications of all kinds easier: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, etc. But it's not clear to me that the old definition of fame is changing much at all. If anything, the Britneys and Parises and Judge Abduls of the world are hogging more of the spotlight.
It seems to me there's some muddling of terms going on. To be truly famous, you need to have a lot of people know who you are. Otherwise, isn't it just popularity?
(Photo by Flickr user dreamsjung)
How long till Marilyn Monroe's sex tape hits the Internet?
(New York Post)
In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M. It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant. And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.
"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.
"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "
You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?
Especially with all the sordid details around it. The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK. Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?
Celebrity sex tapes want to be free. And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right? Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied. Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who died almost 50 years ago.
The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold? If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know. I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....
UPDATE: And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over. As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence. Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?" Sounds like quite a character...
Arrington vs. Cashmore: Tech titans clash in Hollywood
(Photo by Robert Scoble)
Last night at the Vanguard night club in Hollywood, there was yet another sign that the Silicon Valley tech scene is taking on Tinsel Town attributes (read: ego, expensive 2,000-person parties DJ'd by Perry Farrell, internecine territory squabbles and--crucially--more and more celebs caught on video).
Blog czar Michael Arrington (above) of the popular technology blog TechCrunch was accused by detractors of ejecting unwanted company from his exclusive Hollywood Boulevard shindig (co-thrown by PopSugar). The outcasts were, specifically, Mashable.com's Pete Cashmore, a young pretender to the tech blogging throne, and the crew from Valleywag, the tech scene's online tabloid.
'Quarterlife's' improbable third quarter
(photo courtesy NBC Universal)
The story of "Quarterlife," which premieres tonight on NBC, has been more about the ambitions of the show's creators, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, than about the show itself. This drama about being young in a confusing world is in many ways the tale of two TV-makers being confused in a young person's world.
"Quarterlife" -- which Mary McNamara reviews in today's paper, and which I wrote about in November -- began as a pilot for ABC way back in 2004, when YouTube was still a far-off twinkle in some nerd's eye. For one reason or another, "1/4life" didn't make it to prime-time, forcing Zwick and Herskovitz -- who wanted to keep their idea alive -- to figure out another approach.
What they came up with sounded pretty good on paper: an "Internet show," complete with a main character who's also a video blogger -- and all wrapped in a real-live social network. If that wasn't cutting-edge television, then kiss my grits.
But despite a good deal of hype, some newfangled trimmings, and a partnership with MySpace, "Quarterlife" never quite crossed the Web's success threshold: it didn't go viral. The episodes on MySpace tended to hover around 100,000 views over their lifetime, with maybe another 50,000 or so each from each episode's YouTube incarnation. (For reference, a semi-well known YouTube blogger named KevJumba scored 450,000 views this week when he posted a video about how he broke his shin and had to "get a cast that extends up to my unmentionables.")
The strangest turn happened when, very soon after the writers strike started, Herskovitz and Zwick sold the show to a content-strapped NBC. "Quarterlife" had quickly come full circle -- imagined as a TV show and then reimagined as an Internet show, it was now being re-reimagined as an Internet show that beat the odds to make it onto TV.
Will the show work on NBC, even though it didn't really work online? In a recent essay for Slate, Herskovitz waves away the question: "We've already won the main victory, no matter what happens." In this case, the main victory is not making a hit show, but getting a network TV deal that gives him "100 percent ownership and creative control."
YouTube's F-some Foursome: Silverman, Damon, Kimmel, Affleck
No one knows the exact recipe for getting a video to go viral, but here's one that ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" has exploited twice in a row:
Several heavy dollops each of sex, celebrities, and the F-word (bleeped or unbleeped, according to taste). The more of each, the richer the result. Mix thoroughly!
Last month we had "I'm [making love with] Matt Damon," in which Sarah Silverman apologizes to boyfriend Kimmel that she's been repeatedly unfaithful to him while on the road. This month, we have Kimmel's spectacular, star-studded revenge -- a tour de force called "I'm [making love with] Ben Affleck" -- in which Kimmel informs Silverman of his own transgression.
Cue Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Harrison Ford, Macy Gray, Robin Williams, Don Cheadle and about a dozen other boldface names, many of whom appear in a "We are the World"-type shot of a studio recording ensemble. There's nothing like mass self-effacement for a good laugh -- it's sort of like the good-natured big brother of mass abasement, the psychosocial crack-fuel of the gossip world.
The Affleck video has torn a hole in YouTube by racking up nearly 500,000 views in its first half-day.
Hey, ABC -- you may be onto something here! Fellas oughta take that recipe to the viral bake-off.
Suicide 'artist' 90DayJane writes back
I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.
Hi David,
Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.
The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.
Damon Wayans debuts on the Web
Damon Wayans' new Web comedy channel, WayOutTV, is rolling out its initial slate of videos, with a little PR wattage from YouTube, which is giving front-page play to Wayans' extremely mildly amusing debut as a YouTube "guest editor."
But this thing is going to need more than a little publicity lipstick. As online comedy, WayOutTV, like most of the "professional" efforts before it, is way off.
Beginning with the channel's overuse of Wayans & Co.'s stand-up footage, the content -- mostly quick-and-dirty spoofs of movies and TV commercials -- is something worse than not funny: It's not webby.
