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Photo By Jon Hughes/photopresse.com
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The Kids in Mind family outside a Clifton Theater; Lori
Pearson holds son Alexandros, her husband Aris
Christofides holds daughter Eleni, and Don Prues and
his wife Jennifer Lile.
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The seats are filled. The house lights fade to darkness. Finally, after T-shirt giveaways and promotional announcements, the movie is about to start. A young crowd has gathered at a suburban Cincinnati multiplex for a preview of the romantic comedy Boys and Girls. Most of them have come to see teen heartthrob Freddie Prinze Jr. Others are more interested in Prinze's mismatched love interest, pretty Claire Forlani. Either way, it's a free night at the movies.
The audience reacts favorably to the film's will-they-or-won't-they bedroom antics. And, through it all, from the opening titles to the closing credits, Kids-in-Mind Executive Editor Jennifer Lile scribbles into a reporter's notepad.
Few people pay the bookish Lile much attention. She's a petite 27-year-old with short strawberry-blonde hair and a freckled face. Glasses rest on her tiny nose.
As Boys and Girl's comic hijinks begin to falter, Lile sinks deeper into her seat. Before long, you barely see her at all.
There's nothing unordinary about a film critic taking notes at an advance movie screening. But Lile isn't a critic per se, and she's not preparing to write a published review.
Lile's notes are a list of check marks, Xs and Os. She's listing instances of profanity and keeping track of sexual content and moments of nudity. She counts scenes of violence and gore.
Lile is writing a Kids-in-Mind content review, an objective rating of a film's story based on three categories: Sex & Nudity, Violence & Gore and Profanity. After the screening, she'll leave the multiplex and join her 32-year-old husband, Kids-in-Mind Managing Editor Don Prues, at their Norwood apartment. There, she'll assign a numerical rating, based on a 1-10 scale, for each of the three categories.
Lile then will compile the Adult Issues, a list of topics from the film that might elicit questions from kids. She'll also finish the Kids-in-Mind review by writing the Messages section, the one subjective portion of her piece. Here, Lile and Prues collaborate to determine the "adult issues" they feel Boys and Girls is trying to convey.
"It's not like a critical review where you can share your insights and have an opinion," Prues says, speaking at his Norwood apartment. "This is just cataloguing stuff."
Boys and Girls Review
Berkeley student Ryan (Freddie Prinze Jr.) never thought of Jennifer (Claire Forlani) romantically. She's his best friend. They see each other constantly. They tell each other tales of their failed romances. But a late night of drunken partying at a local disco gets their hormones racing. By morning, Ryan and Jennifer are also sharing a bed.
Boys and Girls review: Sex & Nudity Rating: 5. Profanity Rating: 4. Violence & Gore Rating: 2. Adult Issues: One night stands. Messages: The right person for you might be right in front of you.
It Happened in Cincinnati
Kids-in-Mind is the first and largest searchable Web site database of parents' movie reviews. It was started in Cincinnati in 1991 as Critics' Choice on the now defunct Delphi On-line Service by co-founders Aris Christofides and his wife, Lori Pearson. In 1992, Critics Choice became an exclusive content partner for America Online, where they established the Kids-in-Mind reviews.
It wasn't long before the couple's Reading apartment became the makeshift headquarters of an untested Internet start-up.
Kids-in-Mind moved to the Internet in December 1998 at www.kids-in-mind.com after Lile and Prues joined the company, Critics Inc., as partners. Other Web sites were created -- links to numerous film reviews can be found at www.critics.com and home cinema reviews are located www.mediascreen.com -- but Kids-in-Mind remains Critics Inc.'s main franchise.
The site accounts for an average of 2 million monthly visits. A constant flurry of e-mails confirms Kids-in-Mind's growing fan base. More importantly, at a time when the MPAA ratings have come under attack for being too vague, Kids-in-Mind's content reviews promote themselves as the intelligent alternative to the current ratings system.
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Photo By Jon Hughes/photopresse.com
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"The MPAA ratings are prohibitive," Christofides says. "And ratings shouldn't be a policeman. The MPAA has taken the easy way out. They don't give you any information. If someone thinks they can do a better movie service, then they should go ahead and do it. Let the marketplace decide."
The marketplace has been slow to respond to Kids-in-Mind and its four partners. The company is generating little ad revenue -- June's $648 was a record.
At a time of dot.com frenzy, Kids-in-Mind is desperate for investment capital or a merger with another online firm. The partners have plans on franchising the ratings system into movie theaters and video stores.
Of course, they need money to make things happen. They've given the company through the fall but, basically, can't afford to wait any longer.
Overnight and the Following Morning
It's a little after midnight on a Friday morning in June, and Prues and Lile are just beginning their days. They need to finish reviews for kids-in-mind.com and create the rate card of assorted reviews for critics.com.
Over the next four hours, the couple will establish links with various newspapers and Internet magazines. They'll stare into their computer screens, copying, cutting, pasting and doing various tasks. A short nap is planned for sometime around 4 a.m.
Later, at 7 a.m., they'll get up and finish gathering the reviews from West Coast newspapers for films opening later that day. Once the work is finished, the text is sent to Christofides at his Reading apartment, where it'll be put up on the Web sites.
Prues and Lile work quietly in the computer room off of their apartment kitchen. Their desks face adjoining walls. The only sound is the constant clickity-click-click-click of their computer keyboards.
The work is a monotonous series of repeated computer functions, but they stay busy. It's important that critics.com is updated as early as possible on Friday, the day that movies open nationwide. The goal is to send all the material to Christofides by late morning.
"You sure get a variety of opinions and you soon realize who's knowledgeable and who's not," Prues says, laughing.
Prues met Lile while they both worked as editors at F&W; Publishing. Co-workers predicted that the two of them would eventually get together. On March, 1998, they left F&W; for an extended trip in Europe. Prues proposed while overseas. After returning home, they got married Sept. 1999.
Prues is a Norwood boy through and through. His father, Donald Prues, was Mayor of Norwood from 1976 through 1984. His mother worked in the bursar's office at Xavier University, so free tuition enabled Prues, one of 11 kids in a large Catholic family, to attend Xavier and earn a Master's Degree in English.
He accepted a job at nearby F&W; Publishing immediately after graduation. It was inevitable that his first apartment would be located in Norwood. Basically, Prues takes his Norwood ties seriously.
Prues is the type of quiet, unassuming man you'd expect to see hunched over a computer screen. Everything about him is low-key. His thinning hair is clipped short to the scalp. He keeps pushing his glasses against the bridge of his nose. He's an academic type who's comfortable editing text for a living.
He rambles back and forth from his desk to the kitchen in shorts and a T-shirt. He retrieves a cup of coffee on one trip. On another, he's holding a bottle of beer. Prues is a self-confirmed insomniac, so the requisite overnight hours don't bother him much.
For Lile, who was raised in the small town of New Philadelphia, Ohio, life in Norwood was a dramatic change of pace. She prefers a more typical sleeping regime. But working into the early morning hours is a small price to pay if the Web sites are to become successful.
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Photo By Jon Hughes/photopresse.com
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Mission: Impossible 2 Review
Impossible Mission agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) returns to fight Sean Ambrose, a renegade spy intent on destroying the world with a lethal virus. Their face off explodes into a slow-mo series of kicks to the head and non-stop gunfire. Cruise has never been so bruised, beaten and bloodied.
Mission: Impossible 2 review:
Sex & Nudity Rating: 3. Profanity Rating: 4. Violence & Gore Rating: 6. Adult Issues: Casual Sex and misogyny. Messages: No Mission is impossible.
The Need to Know
The flip side of the Kids-in-Mind equation takes place in a cluttered room inside a non-descript Reading apartment. In a makeshift office, a room filled with cardboard boxes, press kits and computer games, Christofides, 44, sits wedged into a corner surrounded by computers.
This is where the Web sites for kids-in-mind.com, critics.com and mediascreen.com are maintained. Most of the computers have been replaced with newer models. But Christofides likes having the old machines around -- they remind him of how fast Kids-in-Mind has grown.
"While I like order, I'm not able to maintain it," he says.
A lot has happened since Christofides left Athens in 1984. He lived in New York City and Columbus before moving to Cincinnati in 1987. He met and married Lori Pearson, and they have two children, Eleni, 4, and Alexandros, 18 months.
It was while earning a Master's Degree at Xavier that Christofides first became friends with Prues. Christofides had already failed at trying to establish a monthly entertainment magazine called Critics Choice in 1989. But his core idea of categorized entertainment coverage soon blossomed on the Talking Yellow Pages.
It wasn't long before he took the content online. The money was minuscule -- their first commission check was for $11.33. The idea took off once they partnered with America Online. But the biggest development would occur during a trip to the Blue Ash library.
"I was in the Blue Ash library and a woman was in front of me renting a video," Pearson says. "This woman was asking the librarian if the video was appropriate for her 8-year-old son. I remember the librarian telling her that she didn't know except to say what the MPAA rating is. Well, when I got back to the car, I told Aris, and there was an immediate spark."
Kids-in-Mind's scales and categories were quickly decided, and its reviews became their most popular feature on America Online. The company became lucrative. With a fee scale based on usage, monthly checks grew to $9,000.
"Knowing what I know now," Christofides says, "once you start making money, you hire a PR guy and a marketing guy. You start to build the business."
The revenue vanished once America Online established a flat fee in 1998. Christofides always knew he wanted to take Kids-in-Mind to the Web, and America Online made the decision a financial necessity.
Christofides' days revolve around his computer. He wakes up early before his family, generally around 5 a.m. He makes coffee and answers his e-mail. He gets a few hours of work accomplished before the family gets up.
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Photo By Jon Hughes/photopresse.com
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Executive Editor Jennifer Lile works the daily grind to
maintain film web-site Kids-in-Mind
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During the day, Christofides, a tall, dark and boisterous man, takes time to swim and play with his children. There's a brief siesta before he resumes work. His workday continues through to midnight.
The last thing Christofides does is check his e-mail. Then, after five hours of sleep, he begins another day.
A Continuing Debate
The controversy over what types of films young adults should see continues to gain momentum. The battle, at least for Kids-in-Mind, is to help guide parents to the films they believe their children should see.
Criticism of the entertainment industry continues to percolate in the aftermath of the 1999 lethal outburst of two Colorado high school students at Columbine. It wasn't long before nervous theater owners issued a firm statement: "R means restricted, and we intend to keep it that way. Theater employees will check IDs."
Congratulations were offered for Hollywood's sudden civic-mindedness. Business went back to normal.
At a recent screening in the auditorium of a Cincinnati multiplex, a packed audience watched Mel Gibson's Revolutionary War epic, The Patriot. Here was an intentionally graphic war film.
During a brutal scene where a cannonball tears through an American soldier, infants began to cry. Children ran down the aisle. It was clear that The Patriot wasn't a film for young viewers.
Out in the lobby, a large poster promoted the MPAA ratings: "Attention Parents -- The System Works." In Cincinnati, editorials in the morning newspaper advocate a stricter ratings code. Recently, the MPAA announced plans to require that print advertising, point-of-sale materials and billboards carry not just a film's rating but the reason for the rating.
The MPAA has been under attack before. Their handling of the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut and the animated film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut turned into public relations nightmares. Critics felt that the MPAA was drowning under its own hypocrisy.
A decision to give more information to the consumer has been the core philosophy of Kids-in-Mind since its inception. Their editorial goal is to explain to consumers why one movie is PG-13 and another R. Moviegoers would be able to make an informed decision regarding sexual themes and violent content.
"But we're against censorship," Christofides says. "Information is what keeps censorship away. Of course, we do have users who just don't get it. We don't moralize or make judgments of content. This is not a Christian movie review site. We don't have a holier-than-thou attitude."
Average Joe Moviegoer doesn't know that the MPAA is the lobbying arm for the seven major studios -- Paramount, Buena Vista (Disney), Warner Bros., MGM, Sony, Fox and Universal. The ratings board has two explicit goals: to provide parents with information regarding movie content and to maximize the creative freedom of filmmakers.
So the MPAA's mysterious 12 judges -- everyday people, all parents -- gather in an Encino, Calif., screening room and assign the copyrighted symbols G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 to films.
There are a few guidelines. For instance, drug use in a film requires at least a PG-13 rating. But most decisions are purely subjective, and they've often been puzzling.
All the controversy, however, has brought Kids-in-Mind some impressive media attention. Here in Cincinnati, in the center of America's heartland, the service offers an alternative to the MPAA.
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Photo By Jon Hughes/photopresse.com
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Kids-in-Mind proposes that its movie ratings could be an asset for building a true rating system that limits the access to movie violence in these increasingly violent times. They can create an accurate guide for parents to direct their kids. They can depict appropriate movies for appropriate adult audiences.
These are the possibilities. When you think about it, then, the current system feels like censorship.
Major newspapers like USA Today and The Houston Chronicle have rated kids-in-mind.com as an excellent resource. Kids-in-Mind has been mentioned in Time Magazine and the Journal of American Medicine.
The attention is gratifying. Still, Kids-in-Mind is at the do-or-die stage of needing to become solvent.
Give It a Year
The financial hardships of maintaining Kids-in-Mind and its sister sites are beginning to take a toll. Christofides took a job at a local Web design firm to make ends meet.
"I just discovered today that based on the money I'm making we're listed below the poverty line," he says.
Lile has started working as a receptionist at her brother-in-law's video production company. None of the Kids-in-Mind partners have health insurance. It's difficult to remain optimistic.
In a cluttered living room filled with videos, DVDs and laserdiscs, the Kids-in-Mind team discuss their future. They've come to the conclusion that they have to set a specific deadline for the company.
"In fall 1998, we said that we'd give it a year," Prues says. "If we weren't able to make any money, then we were going to give it up. But we signed on with DoubleClick to sell ads earlier this year. Our revenue keeps increasing. We earned $600 in June. Our usage is up. After we received some interest from an investor in Chicago, it was hard not to get excited."
Me, Myself & Irene Review
Rhode Island Trooper Charlie Baileygate (Jim Carrey) is a nice guy who snaps and develops a split personality named Hank. Of course, this "bad cop" is the source of non-stop gross-out gags. It's hard not to laugh when Carrey starts breastfeeding from an unsuspecting woman.
Me, Myself & Irene review: Sex & Nudity Rating: 6. Profanity Rating: 10. Violence & Gore Rating: 6. Adult Issues: Schizophrenia and adultery. Messages: There are many different facets to each person's personality.
Local Internet Outcasts
Cincinnati's Digital Rhine gold rush has passed Kids-in-Mind. The dot.com list of local start-up companies keeps growing, becoming a true phenomenon in December 1999, when Main Street Ventures was formed as a non-profit incubator to support e-commerce companies.
Digital Rhine can already claim one success story: Up4Sale, a Web auction site, was sold to ebay for $85 million. This news alone grabs the attention of Kids-in-Mind's struggling partners.
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Photo By Jon Hughes/photopresse.com
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Kids-in-Mind Managing Editor Don Prues catches the
reflection off of his computer
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The problem is that no one has contacted Kids-in-Mind. Then again, Kids-in-Mind has done nothing to reach out into Cincinnati's Internet community. The day-to-day activities keep them too busy.
Christofides is reluctant to spend what little money he has on a professional business plan. When it comes right down to it, Kids-in-Mind is too inexperienced to figure how to seek out these new companies.
There's only so much publicity and advertising one can do on a limited budget. Prues and Lile saw the perfect opportunity to promote Kids-in-Mind at the May 14 Million Mom March in Washington, D.C., so they printed 10,000 fliers at a nearby PrintZone. They made one large sign and a couple of Kids-in-Mind T-shirts. Everything was tossed into their car, and they headed for Washington.
Prues and Lile were able to distribute most of the leaflets. Its message was simple and direct: "Parents who care about what their children watch rely on kids-in-mind.com." Attempts to contact Rosie O'Donnell backstage were unsuccessful. They're not even sure if they ended up on TV. Still, the trip to the Million Mom March confirmed the obvious: Kids-in-Mind needs to spread the word.
"There is so much we need to do," Prues says. "It's just a matter of time."
The race is on for Kids-in-Mind to beat other online review sites like www.screenit.com to franchise their content away from the Internet. They want to make their reviews available in movie theaters and video stores through computer terminals.
"What they'll (theaters) end up with is a lot of satisfied customers instead of people going in and getting offended and demanding their money back," Christofides says.
Prues is putting the finishing touches on a book proposal for a Kids-in-Mind video guide. Now, all they need is the investment capital to act on their ideas.
There are a couple of plans. Kids-in-Mind could merge with a retail Internet site such as Film.com or BigStarz.com. They could merge with a large entertainment conglomerate like Viacom. Basically, they would do whatever it takes to capitalize on their Internet foundation and build awareness.
"Our plan from the very beginning was to use the Internet to distribute content," Lile says. "But the goal was never to stop there. We want in movie theaters and video stores."
Ultimately, Kids-in-Mind would review popular music and video games. They'd also increase their archive of old film reviews. They have no limit of great ideas. Now it's a question of convincing people other than themselves.
The irony is that a successful Kids-in-Mind would probably be forced to leave Cincinnati. Christofides feels confident that a film Web site needs to be based in a major U.S. city. Tentative sites for new headquarters would include Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. Such a move would provide access to early film screenings. More importantly, the company would gain additional credibility.
"I think we would be in a totally different place right now if we were located in a different place like New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles," Christofides says. "If we had support from local publicists, if we had someone who would intercede on our behalf and talk to the movie studios, that would make an absolute difference. You would think someone local would be excited about this new medium."
Uncertain Future
There's a solid chance that Kids-in-Mind will fade away. A recent downturn in e-commerce has made business pundits pessimistic about dot.com start-ups.
The retail site Petstore.com was recently shuttered. The cry of "We're all gonna be rich!" is no longer heard.
But hope springs eternal after Web retailer Amazon.com bought the Internet Movie Database -- proof that large retail sites want the traffic that content sites like Kids-in-Mind provide. The problem is that the industry seems to be entrenched in turmoil.
"Nobody has a clue," Christofides says. "One of the problems with the industry is it's totally unprecedented. I have no idea where it's going ... it keeps shifting every few months. Things are changing so rapidly. I don't think we know, and I don't think anyone knows. The interesting thing about the Internet is that there are no parallels. There has never been a marketplace without scarcity. You need scarcity for a marketplace.
"But no one has figured out how to make money. We know that we have a product that people want, that people really want."
Newspaper reports from just six months ago declared that e-commerce was going to rule the world. Now, Kids-in-Mind continues to look for a worthy investor.
"Nobody writes Amazon.com and says, 'I love your site and I bookmarked your site,' " Lile says. "I think Kids-in-Mind does inspire passion. Fan e-mails are great, but money would be better."
While other film sites like Aint-It-Cool-News.com increase in popularity, Christofides predicts that a future Internet will be nothing more than an abundance of personal sites. He's confident that survival on the Internet is impossible without strategic agreements.
As ad rates in general continue to decline, it's apparent that making money solely on Web-based ad revenue is becoming more and more difficult.
Kids-in-Mind has no business agent. It has no strict business plans. More importantly, it has no brand identity. There's no cute sock puppet to guide people to the site.
A recent proposal from a Chicago investor failed to meet the partners' financial requirements. For now, their plan is to sit back and wait.
"We have spent a lot of time on these Web sites for no money," Prues says. "But I just feel that excitement that we're finally going to have some money. We're going to get some advertising, and maybe Jen and I can finally go out for dinner." ©
