Virtual Path To Stardom

Francis Ford Coppola's invitation to budding writers to submitted screenplays over to him online has already attracted 600 members and 125 screenplays since going live a month ago. And far from being flooded with illiterate geek-orientated stories, the list of titles flooding in to Coppola's Zoetrope Screenplays reveals stories that run the gamut from futuristic alien robots to the private life of President John Quincy Adams. Zoetrope Screenplays follows Zoetrope Stories magazine, launched last year, which invites aspiring writers to submit and critique each others short fiction. For each screenplay a member uploads, s/he must read and review four other members' screenplays. Top-rated scripts will be reviewed by the staff of Coppola's company, American Zoetrope Films, and eventually by the Academy Award-winning guru himself. If it makes that cut, a script will be optioned and perhaps produced in-house by American Zoetrope. "The program to receive screenplays from anyone is tied into a carefully worked out 'workshop' program which tries not only to protect the ownership of the candidate, but provides useful feedback, comments, and evaluation," commented Coppola, "we feel our own program at the screenplay site is in a category of its own." The project allows writers to effectively act as their own agents - putting their own best work forward. Over time, a database of pre-rated stories builds up and the editorial staff need only look at the top rated." Never one to shirk from controversy or new ideas, Coppola reportedly plans to expand the idea to other creative projects. He wants to have composers submit music, designers and photographers post images, and actors and directors upload their reels - all of which will be following the same process of group evaluation and rating. "The screenplay site is the first step to becoming a virtual studio," Coppola said. "Not in the sense of real estate, but a mosaic of thousands of creative people."