Internet Movie Database is Hollywood truth-telling device

LOS ANGELES -- It's getting harder to lie on your resume in Hollywood.

The Internet Movie Database, a Web site started by a film fan so he wouldn't rent the same movie twice, has become a powerful show business tool with details on virtually every living being ever credited on a film or TV show.

IMDb.com can change the art of the deal from a matter of "who you know" to "what you know" about all their triumphs, failures and quirks.

"I use it constantly, sometimes in the middle of a phone conversation," said "Moulin Rouge" producer Fred Baron, production chief for 20th Century Fox. "Someone's coming in for a meeting? Who is this person? I type it into IMDb and I find out 'who,' 'what,' 'where,' 'when' and sometimes 'how.'"

It works the other way, too. People have praised him for his television productions like "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Caroline in the City" but "then they realize they looked up another Fred Barron. But at least I know they tried to do their homework," Baron said with a laugh.

IMDb is no secret to cinephiles, with the free site averaging about 10 million individual users each month. But behind the scenes, the service has become invaluable to the film industry.

Want Marlon Brando's filmography?

Type in his name and you'll get a list of everything he's done on-screen from his 1950 debut in the war-veteran drama "The Men" to last year's heist thriller "The Score."

Various uses

Search for 1939's "Gone with the Wind" to find information spanning from filming locations, budget cost and release dates to lists of filmmaking goofs and trivia. Search for celebrities who share a birthday. Get a list of who was born in Ottawa, Canada. Scan an alphabetized list of famous couples.

Professionals use IMDb so regularly that its creators started a pay service with even more data on everything from a star's salary and agent information to the amount of money their films have earned.

Producers save time scouting locations by searching the database. Little-known actors with a few credits promote themselves by posting their own biographies. Casting directors hunt for background actors that catch their eye in a film.

"Even if they don't have a name or a character, the face resonates with them. So it's good that we usually have pictures, too," said Barnaby Dorfman, a site manager at IMDb's headquarters in Seattle.

Unexpected news

Sometimes filmmakers even learn a little about themselves.

Atom Egoyan, director of 1997's "The Sweet Hereafter," stepped in to settle a copyright dispute over his 1991 thriller "The Adjuster" when he found out on the site that the squabble had restricted the movie's home-video distribution.

Bursting with more facts than any movie encyclopedia, IMDb is sort of a living, growing compendium of information, perpetually updated with new details submitted by visitors.

Early on, this led to a lot of errors -- some of them intentional.

Harry Knowles, host of the movie fan site Aint-It-Cool-News, said pranksters sometimes added his name to cast lists of obscure movies, where it would likely stay unnoticed for a while.

"There was also some confusion because there's a silent-era Harry Knowles," he said, meaning a character actor who died in 1936. "I'm actually listed under Harry Jay Knowles."