Ha, I've told this story before, but I also used to work with Scott / theforce.net. Scott was in Houston while I was at A&M and he reached out to me after I started a publicly-hosted "scriptment" of Attack of the Clones maybe a year and a half before it hit theaters. Back then, if you knew where to look and who to talk to you, you could dig up quite a bit about the plot as shooting was under way, and I was so plugged in I could even get tiny script excerpts here and there as well. I compiled it all - news, rumors, and script excerpts - into an abridged script of sorts and eventually had the entire movie laid out a year or so before it released. Scott contacted me and asked if I'd like to host it / continue updating it on theforce.net and I agreed. Any time an insider would send me a tip, news would break, or a trailer would drop, I'd add the dialogue and write my own scene descriptions and theforce.net would make a news story out of the update. We kept it going right up until a couple months before the release of the movie. Lucasfilm finally sent us a cease and desist and we had to take it down because it got so accurate.

As much as I hate the prequels, between that whole stint and the Leo thing, I have a very weird and even somewhat publicly influential relationship those movies. In more ways than one, TexAgs has always felt like an extension of that process for me, in the best way.

Man, I miss that era of online movie coverage so much. From 97' to '03 or so was the wild west, and just so fun to track and read about rumors. We had the prequels, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix Trilogy, X-Men, Spider-Man, and so many other titles that each spawned really great, informative, and up-to-date fan sites that tracked every last rumor and news morsel. Not to mention, it was the heyday of Ain't It Cool News, Dark Horizons, and Corona's Coming Attractions, and the way movie rumors were treated in general back then was so different than it is now. For one, script reviews were such a huge thing for projects that were months if not years out. There was also so much more hope and excitement in general, simply because we hadn't yet been burned by disappointment. As long as I live, I will be grateful that I got to be there for all that, basically coming of age as the internet was just starting out. It was such a fun time.

Yeah. I mentioned on the theater attendance thread how nerded up I got waiting for the first X-Men. That was one of the first great online movie marketing schemes I remember being caught up. The other, of course, was The Phantom Menace, though I remember the rumors more than the marketing. I probably read some of your contributions to the TheForce.net. Back when I had to go through a list of dial-up numbers to find the one that would connect me to glorious message board rants until my roommate picked up the phone.

That was also around the time I began reading meltdown threads on the football board and began a long downward spiral in social development.

theforce.net ....

The people on that site make politics board posters look rational.