"To do so, Mr. Anschutz chose to come to New York, the town that gave birth to the independent film industry, where small companies are marching well ahead of Hollywood toward digital filmmaking and exhibition—most of them with the idea of getting more and better distribution for smaller-budget, so-called art-house films. Some are betting that the technology of downloadable or satellite-beamed movies will make theater ownership profitable again. But Mr. Anschutz, many believe, also wants to personally influence mass entertainment—to decide what gets shown at his movie theaters, when and how often."

"The 34-year-old computer whiz in Silver Lake got a phone call from the friend of a friend--the head of publicity for a movie studio. The offer was $10,000 a week for an Internet "project." Was he interested? Absolutely. Details quickly followed from the studio's department of new media. The computer whiz discovered he would soon be "purposely forgetting everything I knew about design." The job was to construct a phony fan Web site for a new movie. "