The latest buzz in the blogosphere is about the
weblog of 'Rance,' an anonymous blogger who claims to be a well-known, A-list, Hollywood celebrity. Or as he coyly puts it on his weblog,
"I can tell you what it's like to see your picture on the magazine rack every now and again when you pay for groceries." For a couple of months he's been dishing up dirt on life in Hollywood, and he's succeeded in attracting a huge following. He even got
interviewed (anonymously) by Reuters last week. But of course, he won't reveal who he is... which just makes everyone crazy to find out the secret. Is Rance really a celebrity, or is he just an average schmuck pretending to be a celebrity?
There have been quite a few theories about his identity. Xeni Jardin, over at BoingBoing
posted a rumor that he was Owen Wilson, though she conceded he could just as easily be George Clooney or Mr. Potato Head. The Defamer weblog
posted a clever theory from one of their readers that an LA-based ad agency named
Butler, Shine, Stern, and Partners is secretly behind Rance's weblog. Their reasoning was that Rance's url is captainhoof.tripod.com, and the ad agency has a mascot called Captain Hoofers. Defamer also has suggested that
Rance is really Ben Affleck, because Rance once made a reference to the initials 'OV,' and Ben has 'OV' tattooed on his back (seems like a bit of a stretch to me).
Anyway, I got hooked by the mystery and decided to see if I could find out anything about the identity of Rance, and I now have a lead suspect of my own. I think Rance is a cartoonist/filmmaker/screenwriter named Keith Thomson.
Here's my reasoning. What immediately struck me about Rance's weblog was that it attracted a very high number of comments from very early on. Within two hours after Rance
posted his first entry on December 29, 2003, four people had left comments on his site. Most weblogs, by contrast, struggle to get anyone to read them, let alone leave comments. So how was he attracting so many visitors to his site straight off the bat?
What I discovered was that immediately after Rance posted his first entry on Dec. 29 at 4:49 EST, someone going by the screen name 'InvaderFromPluto' began posting messages about his weblog on various fan discussion groups. For instance, at 5:52, about one hour after Rance had posted his first entry, a
message from InvaderFromPluto appears on Yahoo's thematthewperryplace message board. It reads:
i read slate reported a famous tv actor keeping a weblog under
pseudonym "rance" at http://captainhoof.tripod.com/blog/
it's hard to know if it is him, but it might be as it is funny and
seems witty in his sort of way
Obviously Slate hadn't written anything about Rance's weblog. Rance's weblog, at that time, was only an hour old. So how did InvaderFromPluto know about Rance's weblog so quickly, and why was he so interested in promoting it? Perhaps InvaderFromPluto was Rance himself. Makes sense to me.
InvaderFromPluto can be found promoting Rance's weblog in other discussion groups.
Here he is with the same message over at HugeHughGrantFans.
So how can we find out who InvaderFromPluto is? A
simple Google search revealed that throughout 2002 and 2003 InvaderFromPluto was
busy on various message boards
promoting the cartoon work of Keith Thomson. He even promoted
what seems to be an early Keith Thomson hoax: an
online petition trying to stop Britney Spears's lawyers from suing him (even though Spears's lawyers don't seem to have had any intention to sue him).
So I think it's very likely that InvaderFromPluto is Keith Thomson (who else would be so tirelessly promoting his work). Therefore, by extension, Keith Thomson is also Rance. To put it in mathematical form: Rance = InvaderFromPluto = Keith Thomson.
Or, if Rance isn't Keith Thomson, then, at the very least, Thomson seems to be involved somehow.
Here's
a bio of Keith Thomson from the atomfilms site:
Keith Thomson played a season of semi-professional baseball in Europe before becoming a political cartoonist for New York Newsday. His work appeared in many other publications, including GQ and Howard Stern's book Miss America. His short film, "Cupidity," played at Sundance and can now be seen on Atomshockwave. He has since written feature film screenplays for Imagine, Paramount and Sony. He also wrote for Bill Plympton's animated MTV show, "Helter Shelter." Thomson is represented by Nick Reed of ICM.
So Thomson is a guy who knows Hollywood. Plus he has a sense of humor. Sounds a lot like Rance to me.
Update: David Emery just emailed me some more evidence linking Keith Thomson to Rance. Check out the
screen name ("Captain Hoof") on this
2002 newsgroup post that links to a Keith Thomson video.
Update 2: Another theory to consider is that the person using the screen name InvaderFromPluto wasn't Keith Thomson. It could have been Thomson's agent at ICM, Nick Reed (Reed gets a 'co-created by' credit on Thomson's films, so he would be just as likely to promote the films as Thomson). If this is the case, then Rance could be Nick Reed. Or he could be one of Reed's other clients.
Update 3: I just posted some
second thoughts about the Keith Thomson/Rance connection. I still think Thomson is a prime suspect, but I'm not 100% sure.
Comments
It's possible that some firm or agent created the InvaderFromPluto persona for any number of reasons, used it to promote Keith's work, either for pay or because they were friends, and then used it again for this Rance thing for someone else. Maybe Keith, Rance, and the real IFP are all friends and Rance was telling Keith and IFP about the plan to make this blog and IFP offered to help by astroturfing it all over the place. Maybe 'Rance' is part of some marketing project.
Just remember that "Heaven Hills Mall" episode of the Simpsons.
I have never been to a grocery store and seen HIS name on a tabloid!
I think your theory, while very good, is off somewhat. Also, how does this guy know so much about Hollywood if he is a cartoonist?
X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 66.218.66.83
From: "invaderfrompluto" <invaderfrompluto@a...>
X-Originating-IP: 171.64.128.249
Subject: Matthew's secret weblog?
You don't want the eGroups Remote IP. You want X-Originating IP. Run that IP number through:
http://www.kloth.net/nslookup.php
or
http://www.samspade.org
and you should find that it links to a Stanford IP. I'm not up on detecting forged IPs, and it could be forged. However, the IP generally tells you where the computer is if it's not forged.
Some of Rance's "friend"'s posts came through an AOL IP. I find those to be nearly impossible to trace unless you're an AOL insider.
Good luck!
Anyone know if Stanford has public Internet terminals? Seems like a smart place to start anonymous blogging from....
Also, how does this guy know so much about Hollywood if he is a cartoonist?
NEVER underestimate the powers of a cartoonist!
http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-13118
but then again maybe it isn't.......maybe you should check out what i found......i posted it at this blog and theirs more to come....
I checked his site, he doesn't appear to have his own blog. Also, couldn't locate details re: location for shoot, etc. but he is involved with a documentary called, "Reel Paradise," shot in Fiji (reference to an earlier poster who traced a rance post to New Zealand). ?? -Marty