It's Just Movies

— by SEAN GERSKI —

In his book “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” legendary screenwriter William Goldman famously wrote: “Nobody knows anything … Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess.”

What I do know is that right about now, there are a lot of major stars making some pretty major movies. These are the kinds of movies one might expect people to look for on movie sites. And they may well do just that, but since It’s Just Movies started, two things have happened that have been very surprising to me.

I regularly check the site’s numbers in Google Analytics. It’s important, because it tells me where the site’s visitors come from and what they are reading. And the first surprising thing I have discovered is that every day we get anywhere from dozens to hundreds of people coming to the site looking for information on “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” EVERY DAY.

There is no doubt that it looks like a movie that could be very good, but we aren’t talking about “Avatar” or “New Moon” here.

The second surprising thing is that no matter what story we put up on the site, the story called Six Clips From ‘Stan Helsing’ has become an unstoppable juggernaut. How popular is it? The story has been the top-ranked story on the site in terms of views for five consecutive days and it is on top right now (for a sixth consecutive day) as I write this.

What does it mean? I have no idea. It may or may not prove to be a popular movie in any way shape or form (it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page), but it further proves what Goldman wrote: “Nobody knows anything.”

“Stan Helsing” will be available on DVD starting Oct. 27.

Follow It’s Just Movies on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ItsJustMovies.