EBNER, Mark

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Home—Venice, CA. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 111 River St., 5th Fl., Hoboken, NJ 07030. E-mail—contact@drasticmedia.com.

CAREER: Hosted Drastic Radio with Mark Ebner, 2000; television journalist and producer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Genesis Award, 1996, for newspaper article, "Pit Bullies."

WRITINGS:

(With Harry Knowles and Paul Cullum) Ain't It Cool?: Hollywood's Redheaded Stepchild Speaks Out, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Andrew Breitbart) Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon—The Case against Celebrity, Wiley (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Spy, Details, Salon.com, Spin, New Times, and Premiere.

SIDELIGHTS: Mark Ebner is a journalist whose first book, Ain't It Cool?: Hollywood's Redheaded Stepchild Speaks Out, is coauthored with Harry Knowles and Paul Cullum. The title comes from a John Travolta line in Broken Arrow. Knowles's memoir, the book documents how an unfortunate accident changed his life. Knowles was an overweight, twenty-something movie fan in the 1990s, when he was hit by a dolly bearing movie memorabilia and posters in an Austin, Texas, parking lot. The bedridden Knowles, who had a collection of approximately 5,000 videos, passed the time during his recovery by setting up a Web site, Ain't It Cool News, where he posted movie news and commentary. His spies infiltrated studios, reporting back to him on script development and other inside news, which he posted on the site, often infuriating the studios and resulting in at least one restraining order. He also wrote about movie trivia and history, and added his own tributes to his favorite celebrities.

Ain't It Cool? is, a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote, "valuable as a record of the Web's early entrepreneur-driven years." The Web site has survived and grown, and Knowles continues to provide scoops. In some cases, these scoops have been to the benefit of upcoming films, as when he wrote a glowing review of a Star Wars episode after being offered a screening. David Edelstein commented in the New York Times Book Review that Ain't It Cool News "has proven a popular place to stop in and vituperate."

With Andrew Breitbart, Ebner wrote Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon—The Case against Celebrity, offering up gossip on Michael Jackson, Hugh Hefner, Eddie Murphy, and Shirley MacLaine. Some of the comments about celebrity drug use are not new, others—sometimes gleaned from such sources as celebrities' nannies—are. Rob Long wrote in the Wall Street Journal that readers "also take a detour through the bizarre religious faith of, say, Dyan Cannon … and the silly Kabbalah mutterings of Madonna. There is a lengthy stop in Scientology. In a nutshell, as it were: Kirstie Alley and Tom Cruise paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to be told that we're all beset by ancient alien spirits. And there is a huge section on the lockstep liberals who rule the town's topical debate, all of it spiced with enough sexual gossip and snarky asides to keep you turning the pages."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Spectator, May, 2004, Jesse Walker, review of Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon—The Case against Celebrity, p. 60.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2002, review of Ain't It Cool?: Hollywood's Redheaded Stepchild Speaks Out, p. 87.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 14, 2002, Richard Schickel, review of Ain't It Cool?, p. R2.

New York Times Book Review, April 28, 2002, David Edelstein, review of Ain't It Cool?, p. 26.

Publishers Weekly, February 18, 2002, review of Ain't It Cool?, p. 86; February 2, 2004, review of Hollywood, Interrupted, p. 70.

School Library Journal, September, 2002, Jane S. Drabkin, review of Ain't It Cool?, p. 258.

Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2004, Rob Long, review of Hollywood, Interrupted, p. D8.

ONLINE

Mark Ebner Home Page, http://www.drasticmedia.com (March 31, 2005).

Modesto Bee Online, http://www.modbee.com/ (March 31, 2002), Charles Matthews, review of Ain't It Cool?

Time Warner Books Web site, http://www.twbookmark.com/ (March 31, 2005), "Mark Ebner."