IMDb Finally!!!

My film Tried To . . . was finally listed in IMDb last week. For those who don’t know, IMDb is the definitive movie database. It is considered an essential listing for us lowly filmmakers without distribution deals and major film festival screenings.

After my film started showing at film festivals, I figured that I would send in my request for an IMDb listing because one way to get your film listed is to have the film show at a film festival or screening venue that is approved by the folks at IMDb. I didn’t hear anything back from them. So I started my low-grade harrassment campaign of sending in my listing request every couple of weeks and I still got dissed with no response (I am not counting the automatic response email when one submits something.) I did this for about 2 years (yeah I know, I could have spent all that time writing a new script (whatever!) ) with no response. The submissions at this point had gotten pretty automatic on my part.

Then out of the blue, I get an email from IMDb with the title “IMDb is granting you a Title Page for your film” on April 13th which I thought was a some kind of belated April Fools’ Day joke but alas it was legit. Since I had submitted my film at least a dozen times, it took me all of 5 minutes to fill out the loooong and complicated form.

It turns out that all of my harassment had no effect on their decision to include my film. It was all about the fact that I had submitted Tried To . . . to the film festivals though Withoutabox (a great tool for filmmakers (and that is not just me brown-nosing) ).

So here is the chronology of that. IMDb was created in 1990. Amazon bought IMDb in 1998. Amazon-IMDb bought Withoutabox in 2008. In 2009 those of us who had films accepted to film festivals through Withoutabox got to be listed on IMDb.

I never thought I would say this but – three cheers to corporate mergers and acquisitions. Funny how I am all pro-conglomerates when it is totally self serving.