New Information Movie Highway?

When the history of the Sundance Film Festival is written, 2000 will be the year of the dot-com invasion.

At ShowBizData.com and Entertaindom’s Interactive Lounge on Main Street, which is the asphalt spine of the festival, an online pitch contest is videotaping filmmakers’ movie ideas and putting them up on the Web for sale to the highest bidder.

A few doors down, at ReelPlay.com’s rented storefront, the promise of free coffee, free e-mail and a free Web site to promote your film (made to order, while you wait) is luring filmmakers in from the cold.

And across the street, at Dolly’s Bookstore, there’s IFILM.com, one of a few new online film distributors. Drop off a copy of your film and they promise to launch it on their Web site right away.

Maybe this is the inevitable legacy of the Blair Witch. A year after the low-budget horror flick (and Sundance entrant) “The Blair Witch Project” used the Internet to fuel a $140-million box-office bonanza, the festival that discovered it has been overrun by Internet service providers, online film distributors and the people who write for movie-related Web sites.

In a business where buzz can be as meaningful as reality, the mere arrival of the dot-com community at Sundance is significant, people here say, though few can pinpoint exactly why. Particularly in the wake of the merger of America Online and Time Warner everyone here knows something is happening--they just don’t know what it is.

“It’s sort of like the Beatles coming to America,” David Dinerstein, co-president of Paramount Classics, shouted over the din at the packed IFILM.com party, a hip multimedia bash that was one of the hottest tickets here. “Everyone wants to be a part of it. They just don’t know what the new sound is, exactly.”

For the many Hollywood executives who are stomping around this tiny resort town this week in search of new talent and new product, the influx of companies with names both familiar (Yahoo, EBay and Excite) and not (ReelUniverse.com and GoodStory.com) hasn’t changed life much--at least not yet. People here like to see movies in theaters with live audiences, not on computer screens in private. That, after all, is what film festivals are all about.

“We’re intrigued by the possibilities of alternate systems of distribution, and nobody wants to miss the boat,” said Geoffrey Gilmore, co-director of the Sundance Film Festival, when asked about the avalanche of Internet-related businesses in town this year. “They’re definitely part of the party. But I’m cynical about the hype.”

High-Tech Companies Build Name Recognition

But it’s not the present that has everyone excited, it’s the potential for the future. The Web folks here call it convergence. Others call it opportunism. Either way, there’s no denying that the intersection of high technology and cinema, already evident in the explosion of digital filmmaking, has come to the indie festival circuit.

Some tech companies are clearly here to build brand recognition. Palm Computing, for example, which makes the hand-held Rolodexes and schedulers upon which many in the entertainment industry rely, is here offering to download the entire Sundance film guide into people’s Palm Pilots. Sun Microsystems, meanwhile, whose computer hardware and software helps power the Internet, is here too, though its relationship to the movie industry is vague at best.

But as digital filmmaking enters the mainstream, with established directors like Spike Lee and Mike Figgis making movies for major studios without ever touching a piece of celluloid, Sun Microsystems looks a little less out of place here. As the possibilities for delivering creative content on the Web expand, the movie industry--and Sundance itself--appears poised on the brink of change.

“We’re showing 17 digital films in six venues here, and that’s never been done before,” said Gilmore, who acknowledged that the festival is evolving with the new technology. “That’s a step. What’s it a step to? I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“Hollywood has really woken up to the fact that the Internet exists and can be used as a tool,” said Oliver Eberle, president and CEO of ShowBizData.com. A former movie producer (“Universal Soldier”), Eberle says he created his site--a comprehensive database that tracks film development and production activity and offers daily box-office reports, market share analyses and entertainment headlines--to “really level the playing field for access to high-end Hollywood information.”

ReelPlay.com, meanwhile, is pitching itself as a virtual sales agent for films that lack distribution.

“Let’s say you’re a buyer in Greece,” said Mark Litwak, chairman of ReelPlay.com. “When you go to a film market, you have to walk up and down, looking at what’s available. Now, you can sit there before your trip, search by what genre you want to buy, look at the poster and download the trailer.”

The idea is intriguing, though acquisitions executives here say it doesn’t yet make sense for them. Ask the guys who distributed the movie everyone credits with giving the Internet credibility in Hollywood if they’re visiting any of the Web-related venues here, for example, and they shake their heads.

“What for?” asked Amir Malin, co-president of Artisan Entertainment, which released “Blair Witch.” Stopping for a quick coffee after a screening of director Miguel Arteta’s new film, “Chuck and Buck” (which Artisan later bought), Malin said that while the Internet is a great marketing and information-gathering tool, it still can’t replace the experience of seeing a film in a theater--neither for acquisitions people nor for regular moviegoers.

“For us,” Malin sniffed before heading out to another screening, “this is not an Internet conference.”

Nevertheless, a growing number of Web sites are seeking to bypass the traditional film distribution system altogether.

“Filmmakers, do you want direct access to audiences worldwide?” ask neon yellow flyers (advertising something called FusionXtv.com) that are stapled to seemingly every telephone pole in town. It is a question that most filmmakers would answer in the affirmative, provided, of course, that the audience is really out there.

As broadband technology improves, sites like IFILM.com, an online distribution and information network for filmmakers and industry professionals, are banking on the fact that the audience really exists. And increasingly, they appear to have the corporate and financial muscle to at least put that belief to the test.

“Just like TV represented a big change in the relationship between film and the consumer, the Internet will create a completely different relationship,” predicted Skip Paul, co-chairman and CEO of IFILM.com, which today announced it has secured $35 million in additional financing (see related story in Business section). While Paul acknowledged that established filmmakers may not yet be flocking to his site, “to the 19-year-old [filmmaker] from Shreveport who hasn’t made it yet, the existence of IFILM makes all the difference in the world.”

Web’s Not the Only Place Getting Crowded

For Sundance, meanwhile, the Internet influx has only made things more chaotic. Locals insist that traffic is worse this year than ever before (no one likes getting stuck, for example, behind the Shorts Bus, a huge, VCR-equipped mobile home that is rolling around town promoting an online marketer and distributor of short films, AtomFilms.com).

And the dot-com media is here in droves. Sundance officials credentialed 85 Web journalists this year, up from 45 in 1999. The result: Publicists who book interview time with the creators and stars of films are besieged.

“Three out of four calls we’re getting are from dot-com companies that want time with talent. There aren’t enough hours in the day,” said Laura Kim, vice president of Los Angeles’ MPRM Public Relations, who in desperation created a new form of press event to meet the demand: a “dot-com mingle,” a Web-friendly reception that allows filmmakers to schmooze with more journalists at once than is possible in traditional round-table interviews.

“Half of these outfits aren’t even launched yet,” Kim observed as she flipped through a list of sites you haven’t heard of yet, like the soon-to-be-created MovieIndustry.com. “But their reach [will be] greater than most of the credentialed press, so we can’t ignore them.”