DIGITAL L.A. : MAKE YOUR PITCH ON THE WEB; WANNA-BES CAN PEN PART OF SCI-FI SCRIPT.

Byline: David Bloom 

So, you figure Curtis Hanson and those slacker boys, Affleck and Damon, got lucky when they won Best Screenplay Oscars this year, huh?

Think you could do better but didn't have the money to option a James Ellroy novel and forgot about your boy-genius buddy from the projects who ended up at MIT until you saw ``Good Will Hunting''?

Well, this is Hollywood, so your confidence in your abilities, however well-placed, is far from unique. But now you and other budding screenwriters can show off at least a tad of talent online in the Rough Cut Screenplay Challenge.

At the Rough Cut Web site, screenwriter David Goyer - who has written such films as ``Dark City'' and ``The Crow: City of Angels'' - will post the first 10 pages of a new science-fiction screenplay beginning Friday.

Then each week, people can submit five to 10 pages of their version of the script's next chapter through the Web site.

The Rough Cut staff will cull through the entries and post the best one each week until the tale reaches a suitable size and plot resolution, typically at around 100 to 120 pages. Then Goyer will pen the concluding several pages, tying together the script's loose ends.

``We don't know how it's going to work either; that's the beauty of it,'' said Andy Jones, Rough Cut's editor in chief. ``It is all a very brave new world, which is what the Internet is all about.''

Each week's winning entry earns its writer $100, a pretty good chance of winning a grand prize drawing for a laptop computer and, most importantly, an official writing credit if the screenplay is made into a movie, Jones said.

Writers are encouraged to be wildly creative with their plot twists and to make casting suggestions as well, said Jones, who described the script's premise so far as ``very much a `Blade Runner'-esque meets `Dark City' experience so far.''

``It starts out with a character who has an ability to change appearances and uses a lot of gadgets,'' Jones said. ``All we know is, he wants to have himself killed off.''

OK, ladies and gentlemen, start your word processors.

Submission rules and all the other fine print are available at www.roughcut.com. Rough Cut is the film-oriented Web site for the TNT cable channel.

Net magazines

Two well-done new magazines have hit the stands covering aspects of the Internet, though from very different directions.

One is Business 2.0, Imagine Media's business-minded successor to the ``suspended'' Internet magazine the Net. Business 2.0 focuses, unsurprisingly, on e-commerce and other financial aspects of the wired world. But there are nuggets to be gleaned from the biz talk that are of interest to a broader audience.

One story focuses on movie studios' use of Web sites to build pre-release buzz for films, mentioning how Dean Devlin used the long-running ``Godzilla'' site as a key part of the mega-buildup for the movie, which wasn't as good as the Net site. Another terrific (and still-running) site mentioned in the story is ``Starship Troopers.''

Another story detailing the ``25 most intriguing minds of the new economy'' includes the founder of Bangladesh's revolutionary Grameen Bank and Los Angeles Kings co-owner Philip Anschutz, who also started Qwest Communications, the upstart company whose state-of-the-art fiber-optic network and dirt-cheap prices are threatening to turn the long-distance phone business upside down.

And a regular page of Internet statistics includes some eye-popping numbers: The number of World Wide Web sites quadrupled between January 1997 and April 1998 to 2.3 million, while the number of U.S. adults online increased from 31.5 million to 41.5 million between July and December of last year. And the ratio of women to men is now close to even.

The other magazine of note is Brill's Content, which focuses on all things ``nonfiction,'' including the Internet, which has earned a reputation for somewhat woozy distinctions for veracity.

The magazine, run by the great journalist Steven Brill, made a splash recently for Brill's own devastating detailing of corner-cutting journalists and problematic prosecutors in l'affaire Monica Lewinsky.

But the magazine has much else to recommend it, including good stories on the struggle for survival by Salon, the terrific online magazine, and how Internet ``portal'' sites such as Yahoo! are being paid big money to give other sites prime spots on their front pages while competitors aren't even indexed.

Music on the wires

Fast-moving changes in the music business caused by the Internet and new recording technology will be the subject of a panel discussion called ``Downloadable Music: Revolution or Revitalization,'' 7 p.m. July 23 at the Hotel Nikko in Beverly Hills.

The panelists include David Kessel, president of IUMA/Offline Records, and Wendy Hafner, marketing manager for Intel's music division.

The event costs $25 for the general public, and tickets must be purchased in advance. For more information, call [phone], Ext. 214.

UCLA's digital open house

UCLA's Extension program will hold a free career day and open house on its new media and digital creation programs on Aug. 29 in Dodd Hall on the UCLA campus.

Among the scheduled guest speakers are specialists in digital effects, interactive writing, compositing and more from companies such as AutoCAD, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Cinesite, Area 51 and others.

For more information, contact UCLA Extension, [phone], or check www.unex.ucla.edu on the Web.

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