While there are plenty of people in the industry who seem to believe in the draw of star power (many of whom, perhaps not coincidentally, come from Hollywood), there is another school of thought that says that the Net isn't very much interested in stars at all.

Atom Films, in fact, has made a conscious choice not to pander to celebrity-driven content -- simply because its executives don't think online audiences care about that kind of thing. The star-studded short films it has acquired -- which feature names like Neve Campbell, Cate Blanchett, Matthew McConaughey and George Clooney -- haven't proven nearly as popular as the site's Bikini Bandit series (featuring scantily clad women with big guns), or the animated shorts by "Chicken Run" creators Aardman Animations or the Joe Cartoon clips where you get to mutilate gerbils.

"Certainly there's an audience that always goes to see Julia Roberts. That will always be true," explains Matt Hulett, chief online officer of Atom Films. "We'll be doing things with stars, but our focus is to not do traditional Hollywood content. We're getting 3 million streams that don't have anything to do with celebrity content -- that's all on-demand content that doesn't have a lot of star power."

Perhaps it's a disconnect between the Hollywood Way and the Internet Way. Consider, for example, the process that you have to go through just to get in touch with a Hollywood celebrity who is "going online." You'll have to call both her agents and publicists, neither of whom you'll actually speak to (they are consistently "on conference calls," their assistants will tell you); your phone calls will go ignored and unanswered. If, by the grace of God, a publicist does deign to respond, you'll typically be informed that the celebrity doesn't speak to the press, though they might answer e-mail. E-mails will then be vetted through public relations officers (God forbid you be given their actual e-mail address), and the chances are quite high that you'll never get any kind of a response at all.

It's a far cry from the rough-and-tumble realm of the Net, where interactivity is critical and no one who "gets it" is ever more than an e-mail away. Although the Net has produced few real celebrities, the stars of the Net -- Mahir the Turkish stud, Jenni Ringley of JenniCam, the "most downloaded" cyberbabe Cindy Margolis, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News -- all share a certain closeness to their fans. They maintain their own Web sites, host chats, offer live "cams" and generally respond personally to fan e-mails or reporters' calls.

So, which would online fans rather do: stare at a static page with information about Griffith's personal trainer or an advice column from Crawford that answers one question once a week or participate in an online chat with a dynamic Net personality? There's a good reason why JenniCam is so popular that she had to charge subscription fees to members just to pay her bandwidth costs and OneWorldLive is merely a blip on our Net-celebrity radar. Fans online want stars to come down to their level.

Fried explains it aptly: "What people online want is choice, and a voice and interactivity. Hollywood is generally a closed environment -- if you drove up to a movie studio the first thing you notice is a big wall. It's a closed in environment, not inherently used to interacting with people. It's a community that has a way of telling, or providing entertainment," he says. "The Net is interactive, and interactivity is different than the traditional entertainment Hollywood is used to creating."

There are some stars who do recognize that communication is key in this medium. Chuck D, for example, started his online company Rapstation.com as a power-to-the-people endeavor, and is out on the Net trying to convert listeners to his down-with-the-labels gospel. Courtney Love similarly maintains her own Web site with the help of a 19-year-old webmistress, engaging in daily chats with her fans and posting ad-hoc photos of herself chumming around with her friends. Her Web site, Holemusic.com, is popular partly because she will do things like post unauthorized photos from her upcoming movie "Julie Johnson" without first getting permission from the hierarchy of promotions and marketing executives -- an action that recently sent the film's publicist into convulsions.

"I think that there's 'official channels' that you're supposed to go through: the Official Celebrity Channel," explains Love. "But I think those official channels have to do with old-school marketing and a subscription to big media, as well as furthering one's 'mystique' and creating a bigger lie of a persona. I think celebrity culture is about to have a nervous breakdown and I'd love to help it along."

Are the celebrities coming to the Net willing to dismantle those walls, get their hands really dirty in the day-to-day of a dot-com, or even, yes, publish their e-mail addresses so that the madding crowd can get in touch? The pedestals that keep fans at a safe distance aren't relevant online, where e-mail and chat rooms replace red carpet and television cameras. The celebrity dot-com is just another boring dot-com unless the star chooses to get down with those fans and evangelize interactively.

And that it seems, will take a long, long time to change. It's hard to imagine Melanie and Michael and Pam sending midnight e-mails to their fans and uploading snapshots of their cat. "Would Julia Roberts do this?" Love ponders. "No. Not now. But she should."

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