Acquisitions and Movies

April 15, 2006

Update #3: (drum­roll) Arno is/was Andy “Malarkey” Clarke. What a crazy — but funny — bloke!

Update #2: Jeremy Keith responds to Arno after receiv­ing a sim­il­iar email, but for perfume.

Update: Arno responds to this post. (read below first if you haven’t already for the full scoop)

You know, I’ve sifted through a truck­load of emails in the past few years about instant credit reports, money-making oppor­tu­ni­ties and not to men­tion sales­peo­ple inter­ested in sell­ing me every­thing from pet rocks to laser-guided golf ball retreivers.

In all this time I’ve never once received a domain acqui­si­tion email, until today of course.

Not more than 8 hours ago, I received an email from an Arno Zim­mer­man in regards to pur­chas­ing, or actu­ally acquir­ing this domain for a “well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio”. The email was a bit hazy, but to keep this on record for future con­ver­sa­tions I’m pre­sent­ing it here in it’s entirety.

Read on as I really can’t make this kind of stuff up:

Dear Mr Sagen,

My sin­cere apolo­gies for writ­ing to you unan­nounced. My name is Arno Zim­mer­man and I am CEO of an Inter­net domain name acqui­si­tions agency based here in Los Ange­les, California.

My agency is cur­rently engaged by a well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio. The stu­dio is pro­duc­ing a new action movie called The Kar­tooner. The movie has an all star cast, includ­ing Bruce Willis in the title role, and will be released in the fall. My client is there­fore very keen to pur­chase the rights to the domain name kartooner.com from you.

I am sure that you will under­stand that I can­not pro­vide you with much in the way of infor­ma­tion about our client at this time. How­ever I can assure you that they are sin­cere in their offer, and that they are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly.

I would be inter­ested to learn how much you would require for this trans­fer of ownership.

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man

Okay, admit­tedly, you caught me off guard Mr. Zim­mer­man. If some­one were to tell me — like you just did — that Bruce Willis would be star­ring in an action movie called The Kar­tooner, I’d be hes­is­tant to believe such a thing.

How­ever, if you want to talk about the green­back, I might be will­ing to budge for about $66,000 dol­lars, give or take.

Let me know, alright? In the mean­time, I’m going to try and fig­ure out what I’d pur­chase with that kind of money.

Arno Responds

Dear Mr. Sagen,

My client’s legal team have informed me of your arti­cle regard­ing our offer to pur­chase your domain name. While I was a lit­tle sur­prised, as I have not yet had a reply from you directly, I do not think that this will cause us a prob­lem as The Kar­tooner is now in full pro­duc­tion, cur­rently shoot­ing live action in Manhattan.

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous email, The Kar­tooner will star Bruce Willis in the title role. Bruce plays an impov­er­ished artist in New York who pays his bills by draw­ing car­toons for the New York Times. Through a series of unfor­tu­nate acci­dents, Bruce’s char­ac­ter mis­tak­enly becomes the tar­get of a Mafia hit squad and must use all his wits (as well as his artis­tic skills) to stay alive. Need­less to say I can­not divulge any fur­ther plot details.

You men­tioned in your arti­cle today that you would be pre­pared to accept a sum of $66,000. Unfor­tu­nately this is over the bud­get that my agency has been autho­rized to pay for the aqui­si­tion of your domain name. How­ever I won­der whether you would accept a smaller sum, in addi­tion to a small walk on part in the movie?

Would you please be so kind as to let us know your deci­sion as my clients are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man
CEO and Inter­net domain name acquisitions

 

19 comments

Erik: Right on, make them pay you what you’re worth! Actu­ally, no — just tell them to go get some­thing like “TheKartoonerMovie.com,” since most other movies have ridicu­lously long URLs like that.

by Nathan Smith on April 15, 2006 at 11:48 pm. Reply #

If a movie is being released in the fall, usu­ally it would be on IMDB by now; as there is no sign of it or any men­tion of Bruce Willis and Kar­tooner in the same sen­tence any­where on t’internet, it sounds like it may be a wind-up/con.

by Matthew Pennell on April 16, 2006 at 4:02 am. Reply #

Right on, right on. I’d like to fig­ure out why you chose $66,000. Why not round it out to a clean $100,000?

by daniel nicolas on April 16, 2006 at 4:11 am. Reply #

Ha! You might be inter­ested in this email I received from one Arno Zim­mer­man. The email starts and ends the same as yours but here’s my mid­dle name:

“My agency is cur­rently engaged by a well-known fra­grance man­u­fac­turer who will soon be launch­ing a new prod­uct range under the brand of Adac­tio. Adac­tio is a new fra­grance for men and will be mar­keted world-wide and on all media, includ­ing of course the Inter­net. My client is there­fore very keen to pur­chase the rights to the domain name adactio.com from you.”

Can’t you just pic­ture it?

Adac­tio. For men.

by Jeremy Keith on April 16, 2006 at 7:25 am. Reply #

Nathan: I was think­ing the very same thing, that one would only need to add “movie” to the URI. No need to actu­ally acquire or buy­out a domain from some­one. Maybe I should reg­is­ter kartoonerthemovie.com, just in case?

Matthew: Actu­ally, I did the same thing, Google’d it. Noth­ing came up, at least asso­ci­at­ing Bruce Willis with The Kar­tooner. Man, this is stu­pid silly.

Daniel: Okay, sure, $100,000.00 sounds even bet­ter. It would prob­a­bly be the largest acqui­si­tion for a C-list blog. :)

Jeremy: Adac­tio has a cer­tain ring to it. I know I’d prob­a­bly buy it, espe­cially if there were a card­board sign with you dis­play­ing it in the palm of your hand, “Jeremy Keith’s Adac­tio. For Men.”

I guess Mr. Zim­mer­man has been busy!

by kartooner on April 16, 2006 at 8:13 am. Reply #

Eheh…i’d like a Bruce Willis’ auto­graph in exchange for my quo­ta­tion! :) [The fra­grance idea wasn’t bad, how­ever: “Developer’s Par­fume. The sweat, in the night.”]

by Marco Rosella on April 16, 2006 at 12:12 pm. Reply #

Dude, I would totally wear an Adac­tio fra­grance, but only if Jeremy’s face was on the bottle.

by Nathan Smith on April 16, 2006 at 1:18 pm. Reply #

I think I’ll write back to Arno and ask if I can be the face of the adver­tis­ing cam­paign. I can just imag­ine the bill­board on Times Square for Adac­tio, pour homme.

by Jeremy Keith on April 16, 2006 at 1:59 pm. Reply #

You’re in luck Jeremy:
Ada­cio for men

by AkaXakA on April 16, 2006 at 2:36 pm. Reply #

I’ve sent my reply:

http://adactio.com/journal/1115/

I’m a-headin’ for the big time, fellas!

by Jeremy Keith on April 16, 2006 at 2:50 pm. Reply #

I’ll give you ten bucks and your own TV show on SPIKE TV.

by Pauly D on April 16, 2006 at 3:30 pm. Reply #

Jeremy: Awe­some! I might be able to get you a walk on role as well. Let me know what your agent says. You too Nathan, James and Paul.

As for Spike TV, can it be called “SO NoERIKus”? Eh, doesn’t work as well.

by kartooner on April 16, 2006 at 3:42 pm. Reply #

I’ll phone my agent and see when I’m available.

by James AkaXakA on April 16, 2006 at 4:41 pm. Reply #

“I love the smell of Adac­tio in the morn­ing. Smells like… web stan­dards.”
(from Jeremy’s)
This is really hilar­i­ous guys! :)

by Matthijs on April 16, 2006 at 5:32 pm. Reply #

I like the 100,000 deal…no less!
– Dad

by Grandpa Bud on April 16, 2006 at 5:58 pm. Reply #

For­get Web 2.0. Domain name acqui­si­tions from blogs means we’re rolling on Web 3.0 now baby! I have a bunch of domain names that I’d not be sorry to part with if some Hol­ly­wood mogul wants to take a chance on them for a decent cut. None of them as sexy as kartooner.com though :D

Just tell us where you are going in case you decide to sur­ren­der to the lure of green cash. Rais­ing and fam­ily and all, it’s easy to see how tempt­ing such an offer is.

by beto on April 17, 2006 at 12:10 pm. Reply #

It’s either a joke or a scam. Bruce Willis is indeed film­ing in Man­hat­ten right now, but the movie is called Per­fect Stranger, not Kar­tooner. Per­fect Stranger is about a woman (Berry) gets caught up in the world of obses­sive love online as she goes under­cover to crack the case of her friend’s murder.

After Per­fect Stranger, Bruce Willis will be filmed for the fol­low­ing movies:
1. Black Water Tran­sit
2. Die Hard 4.0
3. Morgan’s Summit

Before Per­fect Stranger he was filmed for the fol­low­ing movies:
1. The Astro­naut Farmer
2. Over the Hedge

by Scott on April 17, 2006 at 12:53 pm. Reply #

Kar­toon­ists beware!…

I first found ref­er­ence on Mike Industries’s blog which refers to this hilar­i­ous blog at Jeremy Keith’s Adac­tio which all leads back to Erik Sagen at Kartooner

.…..

by iScatterlings on April 17, 2006 at 4:57 pm. Reply #

[…] If you want to see other exam­ples of Arno at work check­out Kar­tooner and […]

by Arno Zimmerman: Businessman, Lover, Friend | Wisdump on September 10, 2010 at 7:49 am. Reply #

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