Star links revisited: Insiders, Nia Vardalos, Tori Spelling by Mark Ebner

Brad and Angie are tired of traditional offline Hollywood coverage too.

by Screenmancer Staff
Way before streaming was an industry, before MySpace, Facebook, or any social media turned everybody into a publisher, Screenmancer was already building a virtual movie studio and talking directly to the people making films. Founded in 1997 as “a gathering place for people who make movies,” pieces of that first-generation web experiment are still alive—original HTML, interviews, investigations and wonderfully vintage URLs that somehow survived nearly three decades of internet extinction events.

Screenmancer Contributor Mark Ebner, Back in The Day with his beloved pitbulls Po’boy and Roxie.

Here are ten worth opening now.

Mark Ebner: What Makes Ronnie Run? — 1997
Ron Bass, his unusual six-woman development operation, Hollywood screenwriting economics—and a young Christopher McQuarrie appearing in the conversation.  https://screenmancer.tv/atlarge/Bass.htm

Nia Vardalos: Before My Big Fat Greek Wedding Was a Movie — 1998
Screenmancer’s Robinson Rea interviewed Vardalos when My Big Fat Greek Wedding was still her one-woman show—not yet the $368 million movie phenomenon.  https://screenmancer.tv/screentalk/vardalos/

Mark Ebner Interviews Tori Spelling
An original Screenmancer exclusive around The House of Yes, with excerpts subsequently appearing in Neon and BlackBook.  https://screenmancer.tv/atlarge/Tori.htm

Screenmancer remembers old Hollywood – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, staff favorite film by far.

Marc Norman: Before the Oscar — 1999
Ebner talks storytelling, Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino, Boogie Nights and Y2K with the Shakespeare in Love screenwriter. https://screenmancer.tv/atlarge/MarcNorman.htm

Words Into Pictures ’99
Callie Khouri, Shane Black, Jim Sheridan, Geoff Gilmore, Albert Brooks, James L. Brooks, Janeane Garofalo and more—a snapshot of Hollywood writers and filmmakers at the end of the millennium.  https://screenmancer.tv/atlarge/WordsIntoPics99.htm

Hollyweird High
Ebner goes inside Santa Monica’s Crossroads School and the strange intersection of Hollywood, celebrity children, privilege and education.  https://screenmancer.tv/atlarge/high.htm

Pamela Gray: The Making of The Blouse Man
Early Screenmancer talking craft with the Samuel Goldwyn Award-winning screenwriter.  https://screenmancer.tv/screentalk/PamGray.htm

Dawn Hudson: IFP West
A vintage conversation with the future Academy CEO, now Emeritus, during her independent-film years—another interesting Screenmancer “before what came next.” https://screenmancer.tv/screentalk/hudson.htm

Screenmancer’s Virtual Movie Studio
The archaeological evidence: Screenmancer describing itself as a “virtual movie studio” while much of today’s online filmmaking infrastructure was still science fiction.  https://screenmancer.tv/intro.shtml

VMovies: “Upload Your Movie”
Screenmancer experimenting with online movie distribution and filmmaker uploads long before uploading movies became an ordinary sentence.  https://screenmancer.tv/vmovies.htm

BONUS: Rare Max Von Sydow interview from our achives, best known in depth US interview circa 1993 for venice magazine: https://screenmancer.tv/screentalk/max-von-sydow-in-hell-la/

In case you’re curious, here’s Mark Ebner’s biography.

Still clicking after all these years.

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