Feature

Tech 2001 /
The Truth Is Really Out There

11. Writing Business Plans Is Very, Very Tedious
Here's the stark reality: After six years as an all-over-the-map cyber mogul, Nye has decided to bet his horse -- indeed, his entire stable of horses -- on the reality-based online-video business model. No more music videos, no more games for Microsoft, no more theaters, no more indie movies -- even though, Nye and Morisano say, the sundry Sunshine divisions taken altogether finally had a bunch of break-even quarters over the past couple of years.

"I had been writing a tactical business plan since March 1999," Morisano says. "It started out as an interactive television play, and then as we reevaluated the market, that didn't really make sense, and the business plan kept evolving. And then one day, Tim just talked about the business plan as this -- oh! -- reality-based online broadcast platform. And I lost it. I said, 'Tim, if you want to rewrite the business plan, feel free, but I am not rewriting it again.'

"This was probably August of last year, so we had four months' or five months' work put into the business plan -- and I don't know if you have ever written a business plan, but it is very, very tedious. It took him probably a week to convince me to rewrite the business plan. And then all of a sudden, all the meetings were about Alltrue.com."

For Nye, Morisano's arrival in 1995 was another Oh, shit, time to get serious moment -- just like Cornell. "I have to be respectful that I'm not just becoming a dilettante to John," says Nye. "He's not going to come here till nine o'clock at night to just basically tread water. He wants his career path to be continuously moving forward, too. I have this vivid imagination and a diverse plane of interests, and I think Alltrue -- well, let's look at it as sort of nonfiction and fiction. We're cutting out half of the creative direction that we can move in, but the other 50 percent is still pretty big."

12. Cheap Bastard
Yeah, Tim Nye, art guy, can get worked up about the information architecture, the technological underpinnings, and the cybercommunity aspects of Alltrue. "We've got an amazing back end," he says -- and in fact, the site's mission statement is big on that sort of thing: "Alltrue-exclusive features allow users to collect, save, and share compilations of their favorite videos, invent a community identity based on personal viewing preferences, and connect with like-minded users."

And really, the tools at Alltrue that enable those kinds of connections -- the built-in, on-site instant messaging, the drag-and-drop video palettes that let you create your own personal online library of favorite clips -- are really impressive, and totally state-of-the-art. Alltrue's digital team, lead by Chris Torella, has definitely kicked ass.

What it comes down to in the end, though: Alltrue is all about star power -- a different kind of star power from what, say, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon bring to their new multi-platform broadband-ready video company, LivePlanet -- but star power nonetheless. Seriously cool technological back end aside, Tim Nye is counting on having a few good old-fashioned breakout hits. Ones that can blow up big without costing him a lot of money.

13. Alltrue's Killer App
Meet Frankie Tartaglia, Alltrue's star-in-the-making. A few months ago -- acting on a tip from a friend of a friend -- this tousled-haired, stocky 23-year-old veteran of Manhattan and Philadelphia cable-access television walked into Alltrue's offices and offered his services. Which, it turned out, happened to be hilarious, Allen Funt-ish Candid Camera-style sidewalk improv involving oblivious passers-by. When Nye and Alltrue editor-in-chief Dewey Thompson saw what Frankie could do -- like his deadpan sidewalk shtick wherein he fearlessly runs up to people and says, "Oh, shit, I can't believe it's you! Oh, man, how have you been?!" (prompting wary, befuddled hugs from total strangers) -- they put him on Alltrue's payroll.

Today, just a couple of weeks before Alltrue's launch, Frankie's outside the Starbucks at Astor Place, posing as a security guard. Never mind Pop.com's yearlong stillborn approach to producing video content. This is Internet Time, baby. Clips gleaned from this afternoon's improv will be edited and posted at Alltrue within days. Frankie's wearing jeans, a black security T-shirt, and a wireless headset that's secretly broadcasting to a hidden digital video camera that Alltrue producer Adam Steinman is manning while senior producer Jennifer Cohen supervises the proceedings. Frankie approaches and stops a fat guy in a blue Yankees T-shirt who's walking by.

Frankie firmly: You holding?

Fat guy: Holding?

Frankie: You packing?

Fat guy bewildered: Packing?

Frankie looking away, touching his earpiece, and speaking into the mouthpiece of his headset, ostensibly to some unseen security-command center: Okay, this ain't the guy.

Pause.

Fat guy laughing: I'm carrying a piece of cheesecake.

Frankie: You're carrying a piece of cheesecake?

Pause.

Fat guy: Can I ask you a question? Who would tell you they're packing?

Frankie: Well, we hope people would be honest.

Pause.

Fat guy launching into an extended discourse on what he thinks is the proper way to scan a crowd for gun-toting troublemakers: You know what? I think you're going about it all wrong . . .

When it's edited down and combined with other man-in-the-street segments, Frankie and the Fat Guy's little street-theater piece comes off as a thoroughly winning 60-second treatise on the odd, hilarious sweetness of real people. If Tim Nye can't slap together a cable distribution deal for his Alltrue programming anytime soon, you can count on MTV to give Frankie his own show.

14. The Perfect Picasso
"Some of the clips we've acquired," says Nye, "like 'Donkey Ass,'" -- wherein a panicked, half-naked guy in a field is chased, then mounted, by a donkey with romantic intentions -- "have almost become branded. You mention the 'Donkey Ass' clip and people know what you're talking about at this point. It has become such an intense underground culture that I look at part of the site's mission to almost be a museum for these clips. There's a whole series called 'Lovers Caught on Tape' that you never really quite know if they're fake. Well, they probably are fake. Like, a couple is in a garage and they have clearly sort of parked themselves in front of the surveillance camera and then they pretend to go through, sort of, 'Should we have sex?' 'No, we're going to get caught.' Then, next thing you know, they are having sex in crazy positions. And then there's one 'Lovers Caught on Tape' clip in particular that's guys having sex with a piñata. That, out of the whole series, is the crucial one. It's kind of like getting the perfect Picasso. It's like moma, you know, where maybe you don't have a deep collection of every artist, but you do have one seminal piece from every artist."

15. The Little Picture
"When I describe the knife-in-the-head clip to somebody," says Tim Nye, the original Silicon Alley poster boy for Attention Deficit Disorder in this most ADD-addled of industries, "I'm like, 'And the most amazing thing is, he totally recovers.' There's the sensationalistic hook -- there's this guy in an emergency room with a knife in his head -- and then there's the heartwarming ending to the story. To me, that's the quintessential perfect clip -- it's got that narrative arc. It's got that total payoff. All in 30 seconds."