Spoof! An Insider's Guide to Short Film Success

Movie parodies like George Lucas in Love and Troops all but gave birth to the online short-film trendlet. Now the e-mail mini-hits that spawned a Web industry get a giant raspberry in Spoof! An Insider's Guide to Short Film Success (ifilm.com), a mockumentary about aspiring filmmakers who seek their three-year development-deal fortune by making Eyes Shagged Shut (funny titles, it turns out, get you halfway to the pitch meeting). Spoof! starts too slowly but recovers by casting a Steven Spielberg look-alike, revealing the secret to hype (''Internet + Smoke & Mirrors''), and adding naked outtakes. When the crew finally does get a meeting with the Gersh Agency, the short-film world's vapidity is exposed. Will Spoof! earn directors Jason Shuman and William Sherak (son of 20th Century Fox Domestic Film Group chairman Tom Sherak) a real shot at feature-film making? Hell, it got them this far. B