Internet Movie Birthday Database (IMBD)

This 4-disc set is only $23 on Amazon and completely unrelated to this post aside from one joke.

As I do on every November 10, I decided to surf over to the web site IMDB to look up Clint Eastwood's directing credits.  The man directed 35 movies in 40 years!  Not to mention he was acting in some of those films, and in a host of others throughout those years.  Having that prolific a career as an actor and director challenges the prolific "scoring" career of Wilt Chamberlain both on and off the court.  Granted, all of Eastwood's movies weren't instant classics, or even worthy of wasting an instant-noodles dinner while watching (looking at you Space Cowboys and Hereafter).  Still, his numbers are impressive and he was Dirty Harry so he gets a pass on some of those.

While visiting the Internet's Movie Database, I came across their "Born Today" section and was amazed at the depth of their Happy Birthday wishes. Their research team would even find a gaffer/coffee boy on the set of the early 90's TV series Dinosaurs and cheer him after he blew out his candles.  Their section today (Nov. 10) honored the living (Ellen Pompeo from Old School), the dead (Brittany Murphy, Roy Scheider the wild-jawed sheriff in Jaws), the crazy (Tracy Morgan), the forgotten (Sinbad), and some guy named Bin Won.  In all, the section gave three cheers for 822 people born on today's date that worked in some capacity for a television show or movie.

That must be have been an incredible amount of work to compile when the IMDB page launched.  Sure, it's easy enough to discover the "stars" birthdays.  For instance, I share my birthday with Mike Myers, Sir Ian McKellen and Dmitri Martin.  I hope to see all of my readers at our joint birthday celebration this May in Dubai.  But how much time must it have taken to research just the birthday of the Aladdin soundtrack guy, Tim Rice?  Don't misunderstand me, Aladdin was a classic, but never did I ever wonder the birth date for the guy who put the music in the film together.  I was fine just assuming he didn't even exist.  In my 8-year-old mind, the songs from that movie were never written.  Instead, the cameras just happened to capture the characters as they sang these catchy tunes off the top of their heads.

All I can say is I am astounded by how much pointless work it must have been for this web site to inform me that today Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure director Stephen Herek was born.  You would have thought Bill and Ted could have launched Stephen Herek to become a household name.  Very similar to how Taxi Driver did for Scorsese, but it didn't work out.  But on his IMDB birthday, Herek's b-day is just as important as Scorsese's.  I just feel that all this work should be rewarded by somebody, since the results won't even be browsed by most.  Just counting to 822 would be a daunting task for me, let alone finding that many people with the same birthday.