Everyone can click on Anyone

Blogger Jones posts list of agents, producers, execs

By STEVEN ZEITCHIK

A new Web site is making it easy to reach everyone who's anyone in Hollywood -- maybe too easy.

An Oregon blogger named Gerard Jones has compiled a list of thousands of agents, producers and execs on a Web site called -- what else? --EveryoneWhosAnyone.com, complete with client lists, email addresses and phone numbers.

It's impossible to quantify how many have visited the site, but the info has been a boon for aspiring screenwriters, who have been using the site as a sort of giant public Rolodex.

But studios are hardly amused.

Universal recently appealed to Dotster, the company that provides Jones his domain service, to remove all email addresses from the site. A letter from a U corporate counsel alleged that Jones was promoting spam to Universal employees and violating their privacy.

"The site encourages would-be screenwriters to inundate our executives with unsolicited submissions, spam, phone calls," the letter read. "Since this material was posted by your customer (Gerard Jones), the amount of spam email our executives have received has skyrocketed, with scores of people sending us ideas for screenplays."

U's move follows legal correspondence from outfits such as the Weinstein Co., CAA and others, all of whom have asked that the listings be removed.

Jones has so far declined, and all the names and contact info remain up on the site. In fact, Jones has in some cases posted the requests and poked fun at them.

Studios say the number and intensity of would-be scribes makes so much easily accessed information a problem. "We don't think he has malicious intent. But you have to look at the results," a Universal rep said.

Jones, who has a similar, older service for the literary world, organizes information in a highly searchable way that has earned raves from aspiring scribes.

EveryoneWhosAnyone.com lists production companies (divided according to "independent" and "gobbed-up") and film agents as well as book editors, with info given on companies ranging from American Zoetrope to Working Title. It's far more user-friendly than print periodicals like Studio Directory. It's also free.

The site also serves another purpose: to sell Jones' indie-press novel to Hollywood. Under many of the agent and producer names are posted funny and sometimes prickly email exchanges.

"I'm just turning the Hollywood system on its ear. Don't advertise to me if you don't want me advertising to you," he told Daily Variety.

The site highlights the ability of private citizens, with the help of Google, to pull the veil off closed media worlds like Hollywood.

While posting personal contact information hasn't always been condoned by the courts, data that can be divined by the public tends to fall under the First Amendment.

"I think he's protected; email addresses are in the public domain," said attorney and free-speech expert Martin Garbus. "If anyone took him to court, he'd probably win."