In the Beginning...
I’ve been thinking the past few days about what started all this in the first place way back when. I guess it can be answered in two words: Sleepy Hollow.
It wasn’t even the movie that attracted my attention; it was the trailer. I remember clearly seeing it on TV one day and thinking it looked beautifully stylish and creepy. And then there was Ichabod Crane, looking like he stepped right out of an old-time horror film with that dark, dark hair and stark, pale skin and that expressive face like a silent movie star. When the announcer said his name, I almost didn’t believe it. I remember even saying it out loud: "That’s Johnny Depp?”
My kids were small and money was tight, so we didn’t see it in the theatre. I actually didn’t see the movie until it came out on video, and it turned out to be a lot different than the trailer let on. It was stylish and creepy, certainly, but it was also Burtonesque. It was funny. And Johnny Depp wasn’t the narc on that high school show anymore. He was surprising. From that night on, I was hooked.
At the time, though, I didn’t know exactly what I was hooked on. Depp Impact literally began as a single web page devoted to Sleepy Hollow, and that was it. I must have watched that movie a dozen times until I knew practically every word by heart. Here I was, almost 40 years old, and I wrote fan fiction about it, for crying out loud! I pounded out Katrina’s Smile in about 15 minutes one night… (okay, it helped that the dialogue was already there, because it’s basically just a novelization of one of my favorite scenes, but still… ) Later, I did Return to Sleepy Hollow because I couldn’t get Ichabod out of my head. I’m surprised I actually finished it, because I rarely do. It was just there, and it worked, and it’s of absolutely no value to anyone but me. LOL
I don’t think a week went by, though, until I saw my brother-in-law and asked him if he’d seen Sleepy Hollow yet. He said no, but he liked Johnny Depp. “You saw Gilbert Grape, right?”
I said, “Yeah, why? Is he in that?” LOL!
He looked at me like I was retarded. “Duh! He was Gilbert.”
No way!
I bought every DVD I could lay my hands on and borrowed the ones I couldn’t, and suddenly Depp Impact was born. And all along, it was that element of surprise that drew me in and kept me here. Just when I thought he could do anything except be a romantic leading man, along came Don Juan DeMarco. Surprise! Just when I thought he couldn’t possibly be a convincing bad guy, along comes Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. Damn. And then, of course, I’m expecting Errol Flynn and along comes Captain Jack. Does it get more surprising than that? LOL
And that’s when it exploded, in July of 2003, when millions of people finally discovered what I had just a few years before. The yahoogroups went from 30 or 40 messages a month to 3 or 4 thousand — each. I was spending almost every waking moment fielding e-mails and updating news stories and uploading new photos, and all the while desperately trying to scrape together the money just to keep the site up and running from day to day. Before POTC, 6 gigs of bandwidth a month was more than enough; within days of the movie’s release, it was running through that in a matter of hours. I had to move the entire site just to keep up with the traffic and keep myself from going broke in the process. It was insane.
It still is — and 6 gigs of bandwidth is definitely history. So far this month alone, the site has used 913 gigs — we’re talking GIGS – of bandwidth and averages about 25 million hits a month. It has definitely been a wild ride.
And to think it all started with Ichabod Crane, Girl Detective. LOL! To this day, I still laugh when Ichabod faints, and my husband still looks at me like I’m an idiot. And to this day, whenever someone asks, “What’s your favorite movie?”, I never hesitate with my response.
It wasn’t even the movie that attracted my attention; it was the trailer. I remember clearly seeing it on TV one day and thinking it looked beautifully stylish and creepy. And then there was Ichabod Crane, looking like he stepped right out of an old-time horror film with that dark, dark hair and stark, pale skin and that expressive face like a silent movie star. When the announcer said his name, I almost didn’t believe it. I remember even saying it out loud: "That’s Johnny Depp?”
My kids were small and money was tight, so we didn’t see it in the theatre. I actually didn’t see the movie until it came out on video, and it turned out to be a lot different than the trailer let on. It was stylish and creepy, certainly, but it was also Burtonesque. It was funny. And Johnny Depp wasn’t the narc on that high school show anymore. He was surprising. From that night on, I was hooked.
At the time, though, I didn’t know exactly what I was hooked on. Depp Impact literally began as a single web page devoted to Sleepy Hollow, and that was it. I must have watched that movie a dozen times until I knew practically every word by heart. Here I was, almost 40 years old, and I wrote fan fiction about it, for crying out loud! I pounded out Katrina’s Smile in about 15 minutes one night… (okay, it helped that the dialogue was already there, because it’s basically just a novelization of one of my favorite scenes, but still… ) Later, I did Return to Sleepy Hollow because I couldn’t get Ichabod out of my head. I’m surprised I actually finished it, because I rarely do. It was just there, and it worked, and it’s of absolutely no value to anyone but me. LOL
I don’t think a week went by, though, until I saw my brother-in-law and asked him if he’d seen Sleepy Hollow yet. He said no, but he liked Johnny Depp. “You saw Gilbert Grape, right?”
I said, “Yeah, why? Is he in that?” LOL!
He looked at me like I was retarded. “Duh! He was Gilbert.”
No way!
I bought every DVD I could lay my hands on and borrowed the ones I couldn’t, and suddenly Depp Impact was born. And all along, it was that element of surprise that drew me in and kept me here. Just when I thought he could do anything except be a romantic leading man, along came Don Juan DeMarco. Surprise! Just when I thought he couldn’t possibly be a convincing bad guy, along comes Sheldon Jeffrey Sands. Damn. And then, of course, I’m expecting Errol Flynn and along comes Captain Jack. Does it get more surprising than that? LOL
And that’s when it exploded, in July of 2003, when millions of people finally discovered what I had just a few years before. The yahoogroups went from 30 or 40 messages a month to 3 or 4 thousand — each. I was spending almost every waking moment fielding e-mails and updating news stories and uploading new photos, and all the while desperately trying to scrape together the money just to keep the site up and running from day to day. Before POTC, 6 gigs of bandwidth a month was more than enough; within days of the movie’s release, it was running through that in a matter of hours. I had to move the entire site just to keep up with the traffic and keep myself from going broke in the process. It was insane.
It still is — and 6 gigs of bandwidth is definitely history. So far this month alone, the site has used 913 gigs — we’re talking GIGS – of bandwidth and averages about 25 million hits a month. It has definitely been a wild ride.
And to think it all started with Ichabod Crane, Girl Detective. LOL! To this day, I still laugh when Ichabod faints, and my husband still looks at me like I’m an idiot. And to this day, whenever someone asks, “What’s your favorite movie?”, I never hesitate with my response.
posted by Trish Bennett at
9:33 PM
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