Every few days a 26-year-old self-proclaimed movie geek, fat boy, and slacker compiles reams of secret Hollywood information for publication on the World Wide Web. His name is Harry Knowles, and his website, Ain't It Cool News (www.aint-it-cool-news.com) has become one of the hottest on the Internet.
A community college dropout, Knowles runs his site from the back bedroom of a house he shares with his father and younger sister. Despite its humble origins, Ain't It Cool News has an audience enviable many Internet news services.
Knowles is regularly recognized in public, by fans, by studio executives and by actual Hollywood stars. Actors from Dennis Hopper to Matthew McConaughey have told Harry how much they love the site. Harry's fame has brought him the friendship of such auteurs as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
How did all of this happen to a 300 pound dropout? Harry's unique style and incredible network of spies make his page unlike anything else on the Net. His site is always informal and irreverent, bowing to no conventions.
His reviews are unlike typical ones in that no plot details are revealed. Instead, Harry tells his readers about his day and the mood he was in when he saw the movie. His sheer joy in movie-watching is infectious and his reviews are extremely convincing in their earnestness.
At first, Knowles relied on recycled gossip from other sites such as Matt Drudge's celebrated site, The Drudge Report. As time went on and his fan base grew, Knowles began attracting readers actually involved in Hollywood.
Whether a ranking executive or a lowly hairdresser or even a mere extra, these readers began contributing the gossip that was to make Ain't It Cool News a real force on the Net. Harry also began receiving scripts and rough cuts of movies in the mail.
However, what really made his site take off and attract the attention (and ire) of top studio execs was when he began sending spies into top-secret movie screenings.
For years now, studios have relied on top-secret test screenings, held for regular movie-going folk, that showed a rough cut of a film due out in a couple months. The audience gives the studio an idea of what works, what doesn't, and whether the film can hit the theaters untouched.
These screenings are crucial to studios because they provide an unparalleled chance to take the pulse of ordinary people without allowing the press a look at an upcoming film months in advance. That is, until Knowles came along. Now, when Knowles hears of a secret screening in some city somewhere, he tells his readers to find the screening, attend it and to report back.
Harry had spies in a "Titanic" screening in July. He just posted a review of Disney's 1998 musical, "Mulan," not due in theaters for four months. These early notices drew in the readers like never before and made the studio execs sit up and take notice.
The review that created the initial stir among the powers-that-be was a monumental slam of this summer's (and possibly this year's) biggest stinker, "Batman and Robin." Knowles published a pre-release review that was, to say the least, unflattering. His deadliest quote: "No matter how bad you have heard this film is, nothing can prepare you for the sheer glorious travesty of the 200-megaton bomb of a film this is."
Studio executives blamed Knowles in part for the bad buzz and weaker-than-expected opening. They felt that he was corrupting the process of the advance screening and misrepresenting rough cuts of films as the final product. At first the studios tried to oppose him with cease and desist orders and the like, but nothing could stop Knowles' spies from getting into screenings.
Now the studios are taking the opposite approach and are attempting to co-opt Harry. Sony flew him to the L.A. premiere of "Starship Troopers." He was one of the select few people invited to the closed set of Bruce Willis' upcoming "Armageddon."
Harry straddles an awkward line between industry insider and die-hard outsider. Still, he continues to publish his reviews and send out his spies, keeping his site one of the most informative and entertaining of the web.
