DIRTY HARRY

The suits in Hollywood hate him. Quentin Tarantino, a fan, calls him “The Wolf Blitzer of the Internet”. Whatever, Harry Knowles, a ginger-haired, 21-stone Texan geek, is now one of the most powerful people in US cinema.

Since he launched it from his ramshackle garage in Austin two years ago, Knowles’s website, ain’t-it-cool-news, has become the bane of Tinseltown and the mainstay of the two million or so film fans who consult it every month.

Knowles, who is 26, has managed to uncover some of the movie industry’s most closely guarded secrets, passing them on to film buffs free on the non-profit-making site.

His network of hundreds of spies both inside and outside Hollywood – from agents and producers to secretaries and extras – supplies him with a constant stream of inside information. He knows about confidential deals and gets reviews from private test screenings.

He claims to have a copy of the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s long-awaited Eyes Wide Shut. He knew Ewan McGregor would be playing Obi Wan Kanobi in the Star Wars prequel long before George Lucas announced it.

Because of the number of people who consult the site, Knowles now has real power. The terrible reviews of major ‘event’ movies like Batman And Robin and Speed 2 on the aint-it-cool-news site have been held as a major reason for their subsequent flopping at the box office. And while none of the writers is exactly Pauline Kael, they are at least honest and don’t mince their words.

“This film is so bad, so awful, so vanity-ridden with horrible, over-the-top performances that nothing I can say can prepare you for it,” ran the review of Batman And Robin. “Do not go to see this movie . . .” began the summing up of Speed 2.

He was right about both of course.

He denies he has much clout or that his negative “word of mouse” was to blame for Batman And Robin’s failure. “Warner Brothers looked around and said, ‘Who created the bad buzz? Aha! It’s that fat redhead in Austin’,” he told US magazine, adding that some movies he had championed, like 187, flopped (and never made it to this side of the Atlantic).

censorship

A total movie buff – he claims to have watched 300 movies a year since he was a toddler – Knowles started the website after his mother was killed in a fire and he used her insurance money to buy a computer. Feeling lost and bereft, he began surfing the net and quickly became addicted to movie newsgroups. After initially contributing film-related news and gossip to another site, the Drudge Report, he decided to begin his own.

In July 1997 he received an anonymous call from a woman about a test screening. “I have searched the twin cities of the earth for Titanic,” she said before abruptly hanging up. Knowles immiediately put a notice on his page urging readers in Minneapolis and St Paul to hunt down screenings of James Cameron’s much-hyped epic. He got 30 people in to see the film, which had been advertised as a screening of the Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Great Expectations and then posted their (overwhelmingly positive) reviews.

The incident shocked Hollywood. Movie execs became apoplectic, claiming that judging a film by a test screening, often before it is properly finished, is unfair to the film-makers. “The idea that this rogue critical reporting is based on some consumer need to know is just bullshit,” said one.

“The Food and Drug Administration goes back into the kitchen to make sure someone is making a good product,” Knowles countered. “That’s all I’m doing. I’m making sure that the studios aren’t putting rat turds in our theatres.”

In response, the studios have tightened security at test screenings. Audiences are now asked to sign a form declaring that they will not discuss the movie through electronic media (not that that’s likely to make any difference) and photographs of Knowles – who with his hefty girth, long red hair and beard and glasses isn’t exactly hard to spot in a crowd – have been circulated.

So far, threats of legal action have backfired. In October 1996 Knowles received a disk containing digital pictures of the alien insects in the then still-to-be-released Paul Verhoeven sci-fi film Starship Troopers. When he posted the pictures on the site he promptly received a cease-and-desist letter from Sony’s lawyers. He took down the pictures but posted the letter complete with links back to the studio website and encouraged readers to “express your heartfelt gratitude for the censorship of information”. Embarrassed, Sony sent him a set of official pictures which he refused to post.

A few months later Knowles was flown to LA to attend the premiere of Starship Troopers as an honoured guest of the studio. He is also reported to have been offered a job by a major studio eager to make a gamekeeper out of this truculent poacher. There are even rumours that some studios are considering aquiring the site.

For the moment though, Knowles seems unlikely to sell.

“My aim is tell people the truth,” he recently told Empire magazine. “You see these ads on TV and they’re fake. The quotes come from newspapers you’ve never heard of, and I hate it when they do that. Families end up paying $40 or $50 dollars to see a bad movie. I’m not out to trash movies, I’m just trying to cut through all the hype.”

• Harry Knowles’s website is at: www.ain’t-it-cool-news.com