There was a time when some Hollywood agents specialized in developing young writers and directors. No longer.
"Most of the smaller and middle-sized agencies that used to focus entirely on the development of young talent have folded," lamented actor Kevin Spacey, who won an Academy Award for his 1999 role in American Beauty. "Not a single agency (currently) has a young, new talent division."
Spacey's new TriggerStreet.com is designed to address that situation. Any aspiring filmmaker or screenwriter can upload a short opus to the site and have it reviewed by their peers, gratis. The top-rated works are ranked daily.
And they might have a shot at catching the eye of Hollywood bigwigs -- including Spacey himself -- who ordinarily wouldn't see a young filmmaker's work because agencies won't bother with it.
"There's absolutely a possibility that we might find a relationship worth getting into," Spacey said in a brief interview. "I'm also hoping other production companies will be interested in looking at the material, too."
Spacey and TriggerStreet co-founder Dana Brunetti, a director, were at Comdex in Las Vegas on Monday to promote the site's first big venture: a six-week online short film festival at Yahoo Movies that kicks off with the early short works of such directors as Martin Scorsese, Ted Demme and Lawrence Guterman. (Scorsese's rarely seen 1967 work, The Big Shave, hints at his violence-laced later movies by showing in three minutes how bloody wrong a simple shave can go.)
The 10 top-ranked submissions to the festival on March 23 will get a second look from the likes of rock star Bono, writer/director Cameron Crowe, actor Mike Myers, actress Annette Bening and actor/producer Danny DeVito, and will be eligible for one of three unspecified prizes.
Unlike Ifilm and other sites that serve up short works from independent artists, TriggerStreet is not out to make a profit, get bought out or launch an IPO.
"There is no business plan, none," Spacey said. "We're not trying to make money."
Spacey takes that charge seriously, saying he's taken a year off from making films to get the venture off the ground.
The site's backers, however, aren't simply good Samaritans. Anheuser-Busch gets its logo aired before every film plays; RealNetworks encodes the video stream; and Yahoo gets exposure for its movies section.
Users pay nothing to use the service and nothing to upload their work. But they must agree to review two works on the site -- including one that hasn't received attention yet -- before they are allowed to upload their own.
Those policies have attracted 10,000 users in the site's first "live" week, and 95 percent of submissions have been reviewed, Brunetti said.
As of Monday, the top-ranked film at the site was Tenth, a three-minute meditation on how the smallest of encounters can change lives forever.
While some filmmakers who submit to TriggerStreet could conceivably win fame and fortune, Spacey says most would be satisfied with far less.
Most independent filmmakers "are not looking for a big three-day weekend," Spacey said. "They're looking for their work to be exposed so that they can build a career -- create smaller films that show in three screens, or one city, rather than thousands of screens. That's the motivation of many of these people: Just give me a chance to show my work."
