A throwaway porn gag from About A Boy has spawned a 20-year internet quirk – we got in touch with its creator.
If you’ve seen 2002’s rather lovely About A Boy, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the website supermodelswithseethroughtops.com.
In the film, it appears on Will (Hugh Grant)’s computer as he demonstrates his “web-based research” technique. These days, it’s become a movie marketing staple to register these domain names and fill them with nifty press shots before a film’s release. Back in 2002, though, it seems no-one at Universal thought to check it out.
Head over to the website today, though, and you’ll find supermodelswithseethroughtops.com very much exists. It’s got a picture of the Popemobile on it, and a form to explain how you found it. We spoke to the website’s creator, J.R., who’s been keeping the site (and, remarkably, monitoring its email address) for 20 years.
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Credit: Universal
“When the film About a Boy came out, I saw a preview and it included a shot of a screen with this URL being typed,” J.R. said.
“I checked to see if it was a real site, and I was surprised that it wasn’t registered. I don’t know if the filmmakers thought it was too long to be real or just didn’t care. I registered it.”
“At first there was nothing there because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. I considered putting some joke about a Hugh Grant scandal, but then thought the Pope has a super model of car with a see through top so I put up the popemobile.”
“I checked later and it was getting a lot of visits. So, I added a form to check why people were coming. At first it was mostly due to the film, but later it spread on some forums where people would post it to trick others. Eventually someone told me it had been added to the IMDB entry for the film in the trivia section, and I guess it makes the filmmakers seem slightly more clever than they actually were.”
“I thought maybe I could make money with ads on it, but it just seemed too pure of a joke to spoil with anything additional, so it’s just been out there on the internet as a public service for 20 years now.”
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