MINTING CHILD STARS

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2007 VARIETY.COM/YOUTHIMPACT ■ A31
WEB WIZARDS
The aspiring actress had abruptly fled her May
2006 meeting with the producers at a West
L.A. organic tea shop.
But when she got outside and answered her
cell phone, 20-year-old New Zealand native Jessica
Rose, a recent Universal Studios film school grad
with no credits yet to speak of, was lured back into
the project with a simple reassurance:
“It’s not porn.”
Indeed, “The Children of
Anchor Cove” wasn’t a feature
film, conceded Miles
Beckett, who at 27 was in
the process of tossing away
Beckett
four years of med school —
and borrowing money from
his parents — to produce a
viral video series focused on a mysterious
teenager named Bree, aka Lonelygirl15.
(“Jewish plastic surgeon becomes bum living
in an apartment making a video,” is how he
describes what was then a bleak scenario.)
However, Beckett contended, the mysterious
YouTube sudser he and his partners
were planning — which, at least initially,
would be successfully shrouded
as vloggings of a real-life 16-year-old
— would attract industry buzz and
lead to bigger things for everyone involved.
By the Fourth of July, Rose had be-
LONELYGIRL15
Jessica Rose
come the first megastar of the Internet video age, and
“Lonelygirl15” had become its first original hit, with the
seminal “My Parents Suck” episode drawing an audience
of more than half a million viewers — on par with cable
TV — and eventually national sponsors such as Neutrogena
to the skein.
For Rose, Bree was finally killed off over this past
summer, but the role led her to starring on the successful
ABC Family series “Greek.”
As for Beckett and his business partner,
Greg Goodfried, “Lonelygirl15” ended up becoming
its own big thing. “We
were taken around to the
biggest TV networks and
studios, and we were offered
typical Hollywood development
deals,” recalls Goodfried,
who initially ob-
Proudly congratulates
Tom Lynch
tained CAA representation
for Lonelygirl15 by
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Goodfried
centery using his wife’s employee access.
Ultimately, these connections
weren’t really needed — launching
LG15 Studios, Beckett and Goodfried
decided to keep “Lonelygirl15” where
it started, on the Internet, and have
branched off their operation to London,
where they’re now shooting a second
viral vid series, “KateModern.”
— Daniel Frankel
Brian Ach/WireImage.com
Recent breakthrough: On
Aug. 3, the season one
finale of “Lonelygirl15”
— which involved 12
short videos uploaded
exclusively to MySpace
within the span of 12
hours — produced the
skein’s biggest one-day
viewership. In fact, a
highlight video designed
to catch viewers
up generated 1 million
views all on its own.
Role model: Co-creator
Miles Beckett cites
early podcasters Tiki-
BarTV as providing
key inspiration for
“Lonelygirl15.”
What’s next: “Lonelygirl15”
lives on even
though its seminal
character, Bree, was
just killed off. The
founders are now producing
another Web
series in London,
“KateModern,” that
also targets a femaleskewingtwentysomething
demographic.