His MySpace odyssey

It's also prompted a development deal offer from MTVU, broadcast deals with two other television networks, feelers from Hollywood management muckety-mucks, numerous sequels and parodies -- and a complimentary e-mail from MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.

"I've never had stuff go as fast as it is now," said Lehre, a self-taught filmmaker who still lives at home with his parents in the town of Washington, Mich., where much of the "MySpace" film was shot.

Lehre first had the idea for the 11-minute short about two months ago, when he was looking to increase exposure for the films he cranks out almost weekly. Now -- who knows -- he could be in the early wave of unknowns trying to find a new way to break into Hollywood by winning public approval from the ground up and, as a result, gaining attention from top-tier gatekeepers.

It isn't just major media that's cruising the Web for content and talent. As the offerings expand for teens and twentysomethings through emerging platforms -- online, on air, via broadband and with video on demand -- new media outlets are looking for content. And they're finding it among their own Generation Y viewers who are so technologically literate they're almost like a new species -- a new creative species, so familiar with computers and cameras that making videos and uploading them to the Web is about as complicated as walking and chewing gum.

Lehre's movie parodies the habits of the popular social networking site's users.

Told in five scenes, it begins with a shirtless teen narcissistically snapping pictures of himself in the bathroom when his mom barges in. It then segues into a series of moments all linked by MySpace: a blind date with a girl who's got the "angles" -- pictures that show her from every angle but straight on; a user who suffers the consequences when he doesn't pass along a bulletin; a showdown between a boy whose girlfriend insists on using his password to see the incriminating photos on his page; and a raging party that ends up with one partygoer -- an actor playing MySpace's Anderson -- bent over a toilet bowl as friends capture it all on camera, presumably for posting. (Registration is required to watch the movie at myspace.com, but it's available in the video section of youtube.com, under the "most viewed," then "all time" categories.)