John Q. Phats Entertainment

I had a bad dream about one of the villains in Red Hood last night.  This is a great sign.  I want the villains to be memorable and intimidating.  I got stuck on a bit of dialogue last night.  But that’s ok, I’m sure it will come to me.  Strangely, I’m starting to get ideas for Red Hood 2.  Too soon?  I could write it as one long piece and then just split it in half.  Red Hood has a final destination.  I know where she has to end up, I’ve known for awhile.  Since the beginning, Red Hood’s ending has had sort of an open ending, leaving room for a sequel.  So, it’s kind of like I’m writing one four hour movie.  Red Hood would work just fine without a sequel.  But that’s not what I had in mind.  It was important for me to make it work on it’s own.  One script is hard enough to sell.
I’ve come to realize that I really do enjoy writing.  I’ll make an excuse to write anything.  Like anything though it’s tough to get started.  The only advice I can give to someone having this issue is to stop being a pussy and just do it.  Write something terrible, who cares?  You know how many horrible movies have not only been written, but actually made? 
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls-  Tons of money spent making it and I would say it was kind of a dud. 
Contact- You wait the whole fucking movie to see the god damned alien and then it uses some stupid mind shit to appear as her father.  Then in so many words tells her they’re going to send her back with absolutely no proof what so ever of her encounter for no God damned reason.  I so wanted the main character to pull out a gun and shoot her alien father in the head at the end of that movie. 
Death Bed, The Bed That Eats- Granted, this is one of those movies that’s so bad it comes back around in to awesome.  However the fact that someone actually had to sell this movie to a producer and succeeded is un fucking believable to me.  How the hell did that conversation go?
Writer: So, I got this script, it’s about a bed that eats people.
Producer: ……That’s really funny, seriously, what’s your script about?
If you ever need a quick pick me up head over to the IMDB Bottom 100 list.  Rent some of them, you’ll feel much better about what you write from that point on.  Especially considering these were all movies that were funded, produced, and actually made.  Meanwhile you’re just writing, so who cares if you write something terrible?

So, I did it.  I deleted the three crappy pages that I wrote on Red Hood and replaced it with 1.5 pages of awesome.  It wasn’t so bad and I feel like I can move on from here.  I sort of got stuck at the end of this last scene, but at least I left on a good note.  I’m kind of excited, I get in to the really good stuff soon.  It’s hard for me not to write something funny here and there.  That’s ok to do in a horror. 
Right? 
Right, and you know why, because I said so and it’s my script.  I mean, I’m not writing Schindlers List here, it’s an over the top vigilante flick.  Let the audience have a little fun with it.  Either way, I’m having fun writing it.  It’s great to finally get my idea on paper.
On top of my script updates, I would like to talk about the movie Real Genius.  Apparently, they are doing a remake of it.  At least that’s what it looks like via IMDB and various other internet sources.  In celebration of this, I figured I would discuss the classic 1985 version staring Val Kilmer.  Warning, there will be spoilers.    
Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) is accepted to an insane program for geniuses, focusing around developing some ultimate bad ass laser.  Mitch is all proper and shirt tucked in and shit.  He is partnered with Chris Knight (Val Kilmer) who’s the type of guy that would show up to a math class in a bathrobe.  When asked to do some crazy math shit, would yawn, scratch himself inappropriately, and then lazily stumble to the board and mathematically prove there was no Jesus while sending a text message.  They didn’t have text messages back then, so I don’t know, he would send a Morris code?  Fuck, who cares, you get the point.  Anyway, hilarity ensues.  Now in the beginning of the movie we’re lead to believe that Mitch is smarter than Chris Knight.  We soon find out that this is total bullshit.  While Chris Knight fucks beauticians, Mitch falls in love with some crazy OCD broad that power sands her floor at 3AM.  In fact Chris pretty much does everything better than Mitch and he’s cooler.
Lets move on to Kent.  Kent is the tool of the film and boy is he ever a tool.  The only thing is, he’s not very threatening.  I’ve never been able to take a grown man with braces seriously.  Why nobody punches him in the face is beyond me.  You can tell just by looking at him, he’s a little bitch.  He wouldn’t do anything, he would just run off crying.  Then when you passed him the halls his bottom lip would quiver and he would avoid eye contact.  At one point they put an antenna in this guys mouth and through a microphone convince him they are Jesus.  Here it is revealed that Kent masturbates.  I could have told you that before that scene.  That guy couldn’t get laid if he were a rug.  Still, hilarious all the same though.  After Mitch and Chris build the ultimate bad ass laser, after Kent fucks up their first one, cause he’s a dick.  The bomb is dropped that the laser is actually being developed as a weapon!  No shit?!  I’m sorry, but I assumed it was a weapon from the beginning of the movie.  What the fuck else are you going to do with a laser that blasts through concrete walls and statues and shit?  You’re going to blow shit up with it.  Mainly people.  As you can imagine Chris and Mitch are pretty pissed about this.  So, they hack the Gibson (kudos if you understand this) and use the laser to pop a bunch of popcorn in the main bad guys house to the point where the house splits in half.  Seriously, that’s what happens.  It’s pretty awesome.  
While I’m curious to see how they remake Real Genius, part of me want’s them to leave it alone.  It’s a great movie as is.  Who knows though, maybe the remake will be even better.  It’s old enough and wasn’t popular enough for enough people to remember it.  So, I doubt they’ll piss off much of a fan base if they screw it up.  And really, I wouldn’t care if they screwed it up.  The 1986 version would still be good.

*WARNING*
If you have not watched True Blood, season 3, episode 33 don’t read this. It contains spoilers.
*END WARNING*
If you haven’t seen True Blood or listened to The Heavy, you should do both immediately. If you watch Episode 33, for a short amount of time, you could do both. How often do you find two awesome performances working so well together? You can imagine my excitement when I heard a song by The Heavy playing in the background of a scene in Episode 33 of True Blood. It was in the scene where Russel kills the male prostitute. Granted it was just background music, but still. It worked with the scene and it’s exciting to see The Heavy getting some much needed exposure in the US. I love it when that happens. When two of your favorite things at the time mix.
I’m not going to go too much in to detail about True Blood. I could write 4 pages on it easy. All I’ll say is that it’s a damn entertaining show. Plus I think I’m in love with Deborah Ann Woll. Allow me to explain this. I used to be in love with Milla Jovovich. I thought she was an awesome actress and she’s gorgeous. But, then I saw .45.  Milla Jovovich is naked for probably about 30% of that movie. Well, that sort of killed it for me. The mystery was gone. I had seen it all. What else was there to wonder about? It wasn’t her fault, we just grew apart. For the longest time, I’ve been searching for a replacement for Milla Jovovich. Selma Blaire sort of pinch hit for about 3 months there. I’m sort of picky about which actress gets my love. It has to be a combination of amazing acting skill and sort of flying under the radar. I can’t love an actress that’s in the center of the hollywood stage, what the hells the point of admiring someone if they are surrounded by admiration twenty four hours a day anyway? That would be like donating a nickle to Bill Gates. I’m sure he would put up a front of appreciation, but really, he would be thinking you could go fuck yourself for wasting his time. And who could blame him? Deborah Ann Woll fits my strict standards. She’s amazing on True Blood and if you said “Deborah Ann Woll” at a party you would probably get a “Who the fuck is Deborah Ann Woll?” look from at least 8 out of 10 people. Then you would say “Jessica….. From True Blood.” And everyone would say “Ooooooooo.” So, Deborah Ann Woll gets my love. However, I’m not sure how long our love can last. Her popularity will skyrocket and then she’ll Bill Gates the fuck out of me if I see her in person and tell her I thought she was great on True Blood. Such a cruel world. Lets just try to enjoy our time together while it’s still here.

Switching gears here, I saw The Expendables. It’s pretty much exactly what you expect it to be. There’s some crazy ass fight scenes, shit explodes, hundreds of bad guys get shot, and there are tons of cheesy one liners. It’s pretty awesome. It’s the only movie that has the most terrible story line but is somehow still an amazing movie. Which doesn’t really make sense to me. How the hell do you go right by going left? Whatever, it works.  Entertaining flick.

I’m currently writing a horror type film titled Red Hood. So, I’ve been watching things that help inspire me. I rented Paranormal Activity last night and watched it alone in the dark. I’m hardcore like that. I know I’m about a year too late, but it didn’t really interest me when I saw the previews. There was a lot of hype when Blaire Witch came out and I didn’t really care for Blaire Witch. It was different, I’ll give it that. The only problem I can see with mixing the mocumentary and horror genre is at some point someone in the audience is probably going to ask “Why the hell are you still filming you fucking moron?” People tend to get pulled out of a scene if the characters do things that don’t seem real. Especially in a movie that’s trying to look as real as possible. Paranormal Activity had a little bit of that, but it wasn’t to guilty of it too often. It does suffer from the horrible fate that most horror movies suffer from. One of the characters is a complete moron. This character usually inflates his/her chest and then proceeds to have a dick measuring contest with all of the other more rational characters in the movie. This character does not react like real people would. Instead they do the exact opposite of what real people would do.
Most of the time, I’m somewhat satisfied when this character dies. Mainly because they pretty much deserve it. I actually really enjoyed Paranormal Activity though. The character, Mica is that annoying character. You spend most of the movie wondering we he’s such an asshat. A horror movie should put you on the edge of your seat and Paranormal Activity did that pretty well. The dead camera in the room was pretty genius. The fact that the camera doesn’t move just adds to the tension. On top of that, the time lapses were great. Time would speed up and then slow down. When the time slowed down, the audience knew something was going to happen. They had no idea what, but they knew it was going to be something. It was sort of a form of psychological conditioning. After the first scene like that the audience knew that time slowing down to normal speed meant something scary was going to happen. I really liked how time would slow down 10 – 15 seconds before anything actually happened. That just made it all the more suspenseful.
Paranormal Activity did a really good job of inspiring me. I cranked out about 5 pages last night in under an hour. That’s a pretty good pace for me. I find that the deeper I get in to this project the easier it’s getting. Caine is helping me write it. I’m not making things very easy on him though. I have a pretty specific vision in mind and I think it’s tough for him to match that. It would be tough for anybody.

I’m sorry for the leave of absence everyone.  I’ve sort of been stuck in writing.  I’m not sure how this happened, but I seriously can’t think of anything to write.  That doesn’t make for a very exciting blog.  “Today, I sat and starred at a blank Final Draft document for an hour, then I watched The Simpsons and played NHL10 for 3 hours.”  It’s hard for me to force inspiration, because my inspiration comes from all over the place.  Sometimes a song can jump start things and sometimes it’s a commercial for maxi pads.  True story by the way, I once wrote a short film based off of an idea that I got after seeing a tampon commercial.  When I’m stuck, I’m not really sure where to go to unstick myself.  I tried doing a writing exercise that’s supposed to help with writers block.  It lead me to a wonderful place called Jack Shit Ville.  It’s lovely in the spring.  My problem is doubt.  I’m doubting everything that I write.  You start out excited about an idea and then all of a sudden doubt creeps in and then it’s a horrible idea.
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of movies and listening to a lot of music to try and get over this.  I’ve watched some great movies.  In Bruges was absolutely amazing and I was angry with myself for waiting that long to see it.  With a mixture of that and some of the music I’ve been listening to, I think I’ve got something.  I found this band because they have a song that’s in a Kia commercial and I thought it was a pretty awesome song.  The CD is absolutely amazing.  This isn’t the song that inspired me, but it’s what lead me to the band to begin with:

So, I will be writing something tonight and I’ll let you guys know how it goes.
By the way, I got accepted to the New York Film Academy Masters Program.

P.S. If writers block were a person, he/she would every annoying human trait imaginable.

The Do Nice Guys Finish Last showing was absolutely awesome.  Aside from the weird guy that showed up that everyone feared was going to rape them.  Other then that though, the entire thing went off without a hitch.  I did a little Q & A after the short film which is always fun to me.  While I’m nervous as hell in front of a crowd, I do pretty good.  In my college speech class a girl made a comment on my speech that I get nervous and as a self defense mechanism, I start to tell jokes and try to make people laugh.  Which she said works really well for me.  I don’t get many compliments, so I have to hold on to whatever I can get.  After the short film and the Q & A we had the theater for another 2 hours, so we watched Hot Fuzz.  That movie is even more glorious on the big screen.  I thanked Simon Pegg and Nick Frost via Twitter for Hot Fuzz but they never responded….  Fuckers.  Just kidding.  I’m sure those guys get at least a million tweets thrown their way every day.  I got some good constructive criticism from Kristen Carter (Censored).  She said it wasn’t long enough in some scenes and was too long in others and overall, it probably could have been shorter.  I can agree with that.  Nobody had anything horribly bad to say about it though.  In fact when I told the crowd that someone told me it was the most offensive thing they had ever seen, I got quite a big round of applause.  Thanks to everyone for that and for coming.  It was insanely fun.  I hope to see you guys at the next one, because there will be a next one. 

P.S. I’m two rejection letters away from posting Do Nice Guys Finish Last online.  Come on festivals, do the right thing, reject my ass.  It has a narrow audience and it’s too long to program.

Probably the only movie I’ve ever seen that is actually better because you’ve read the book that precedes it.  I had read Tucker Max’s book long before I had seen the movie.  The book doesn’t really follow the standard story telling format.  It’s a series of short stories about the adventures of Tucker Max, a self proclaimed alcoholic asshole.  Throughout the book he pretty much goes to bars, drinks himself stupid, and insults women.  The result is him seeing more ass then a toilet seat or more tang then the astronauts.  Which ever you prefer.  When I heard that a movie was being made and that he was writing the script, I was pretty excited.  The book is pretty damn entertaining after all.  I also wasn’t sure what to expect.  I was half expecting this to be a series of short films based off of the best of his book.  While there are several instances with parts from the book, it’s actually laid out in the standard format of a movie. 
Tucker Max (played by Matt Czuchry) takes his soon to be married best friend 250 miles away to go to a strip club.  Dragged along is Drew (played by Jesse Bradford).  A fresh from break up and bitter cynicist (I made up that word).  In order to go, Tucker Max drags Dan (played by Geoff Stults) in to a lie so his fiancée will let them go.  While Tucker pursues a hilarious sexual interest of his own, Dan finds himself bleeding, insanely drunk, and in jail.
The only downfall of this movie is that it’s much more enjoyable if you’ve read the book.  Knowing that a lot of the events are based off of true stories makes them that much more amazing.  That’s kind of the fun in the book, is that you’re reading these stories and you can’t believe these things really happened to someone or that someone could actually be that much of an asshole.  The movie has the same charm, but only if you’ve read the book.  I can see someone who hadn’t read the book saying “That would never happen.”  Regardless of all of that though, the dialogue is extremely Kevin Smithesq.  Not that it’s a rip off of Kevin Smith’s style, it’s just very comparable.  That’s absolutely a compliment.  The dialogue in this movie is great.  Especially Jesse Bradford’s character, Drew.   
“Oh, I’m onto your game, De Nils. Diamonds are worthless other than the value attached to them by the silly tramps you have brain washed into thinking that diamonds equal love. Guess what, sluts? Your quest for the perfect princess cut supports terrorism and genocide. Congratulations, your avarice has managed to destroy an entire continent!”
Just one of the many gems that comes from this character.  See what I did there?  He’s talking about diamonds and I called it a gem.  Shit, I’m clever.  Anyway, I can see why reviewers weren’t so favorable to I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.  I don’t agree with them.  Reviewers usually take things out of context.  If you go in to I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell expecting an Emmy nominated masterpiece, you’re going to be disappointed.  It’s a raunchy comedy, plain and simple.  When comparing it to The Shawshank Redemption, sure it’s a piece of shit.  But comparing it to say There’s Something About Marry or American Pie, it holds up really well. 
I hope you decide to give I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell a shot maybe reading the book isn’t necessary.  Just know that a lot of what occurs in that movie is based off of the real adventures of a self proclaimed asshole, Tucker Max.  I hope this isn’t Tucker Max’s last script.  His gift for writing dialogue is a rare and amazing talent.
P.S.  I made up like 3 words while writing this.  I’m off to forward this to historical journalism society.  Apparently, standard Enlglish just isn’t enough for me.

So, I’ve been in China and Japan for the past two weeks.  It was all amazing but there were those long periods in airports and on airplanes that I had to deal with.  I got The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on my Kindle during the trip.  It was a free download via the Kindle store.  I am pretty hooked on it now.  Those are some great stories.  It inspired me to buy The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection.  It was only like $4 through the Kindle store and for a 900+ page book, I think that’s pretty good.  Sherlock Holmes is just a brilliantly designed character.  Bill Waterson, the guy who did Calvin and Hobbes said that he liked writing Calvin and Hobbes because all he needed to know was what a little kid knew.  What the hell did Arthur Conan Doyle have to know to write Sherlock Holmes?  Sherlock Holmes is a genius.  How hard was it to write for a character like that?  Some of the solutions are some what easy to see, yet they are still entertaining to read all the same.  How did he do that?  It’s interesting how sometimes you can already know the ending of a story, yet the journey there is still just as entertaining.  Sort of like a movie that starts off showing the last scene.  Like Fight Club.  You know right from the first scene that the main character ends up with a gun in his mouth near the top of a sky rise.  You don’t know the specifics, but you know where it’s going to end up.  A lot like most romantic comedies.  It’s painfully obvious that the two main characters are at one point going to be driven apart and then in the end, it’s all going to work out.  They’re going to fall in love and blah blah blah .  Example: 50 First Dates.  See also: The Money Pit.  See also: Saving Silverman.  See also: The Break Up.  Which actually started out with the two characters not getting back together or talking to each other.  It tested poorly though so they changed the ending.  Which I think is pretty lame.  I’ll continue to study Sherlock Holmes, maybe something will come to me as to why it’s so entertaining.  Maybe it’s just because, the character is just so absolutely clever and amazing.  By the way, I had no clue that in the original stories, Sherlock Holmes was addicted to cocaine.  They make several references in the book to him going on binges and staring off in to space for hours on end.
I saw Clash of the Titans last night.  I liked it.  It was pretty much exactly what I expected.  Just a cool action flick based around Greek mythology.  It didn’t have to make sense, it didn’t have to win an Emmy.  It just had to be that.  Mission accomplished.  I was satisfied.

As I find myself writing more and more I find my process changing dramatically.  I’ve read a lot of books on writing screen plays and everyone seems to have a different process.  So I guess the best thing to do is to sort of cherry pick what you like from each book.  I’ll tell you flat out, outlines do not work for me.  I end up having this outline with no clue how to translate it in to a script.  When I’ve tried, I just end up questioning the outline and trying to go a different direction.  It all goes down hill from there.  I find myself taking the Stephen King approach more and more.  I read a great book by Stephen King, titled “On Writing.”  First off, no wonder that guy wrote horror so well.  He lived a terrifying life.  Second of all, he wrote some amazing books and made an extremely lucrative living off of writing.  Thirdly, this book itself is written amazingly well.  The points he makes and the things he points out are all reinforced through stories of his experiences as a writer.  If you start to tell me a story, I want to know the ending and I’m going to listen.  One of the main things I took from that book was something he called “writing with options.”  You know what’s going to be the final result, but in the beginning you write things that give you options along the way.  For example, lets say you are writing about a burglar breaking in to a house.  You would start off with the woman in her house and maybe she starts to boil some water for tea.  Does she use the boiling water as a defense against the intruder?  I don’t know, but it gives you something to think about.  It’s an option.  That’s how I write.  I just sit down and start to write and see what happens.  Think of that first sit down though as just laying out the ground work.  I pay attention to detail, but I don’t judge what I’ve written.  Not yet anyway.  I suppose essentially, my first draft is my outline.  Most outlines are roughly a page or two.  My outlines are 120 pages.  Sue me.  After the first draft, I go through it and delete parts that I don’t like or I rewrite them.  Then I do that again, then again, then 3 or 4 more times just for good measure.  Then again and again.  Then I’m done after I go over it a couple more times.  Each time I go over it, it goes faster and faster.  There are parts that I’m comfortable with that I can start to skip after awhile.  The final run through takes me about 20 minutes.  Now it’s time to have someone else read it.  I get their opinions and this is the tricky part.  Finding someone who’s going to be brutally honest and being able to deal with that brutal honesty is not easy.  The natural reaction is to defend yourself.  But it’s not an attack on you, it’s on your script.  Ultimately, it’s to make it better.  Whenever I start to feel defensive, I identify it, and I say absolutely nothing.  Sometimes I’ll nod and say “Hmmmmm.”  This is my alternative.  I really try to think about the criticism, rather then immediately defend myself against it.  If I can justify it, I’ll discuss it.  If the person counters and makes good points that I can’t dispute, I change it.  After about 4 or 5 people read it and I make the adjustments I need to, I’m done…..  After a couple more rewrites here and there.  And that’s my writing process.  It works for me, but it’s probably not for everybody.
I saw Shutter Island on Sunday.  Kind of predictable, but I liked it all the same.  I can’t really think of anything else to say about it.  Martin Scorsese is awesome.

Caine Crockett will now be posting here.  I’ve pretty much given him the freedom to talk about whatever he wants to.  You may have seen him in some of the shorts on the website (Censored, Not Walter, Bad Girlfriend, etc…).  He’s mostly an actor.  So, it should be interesting to get experiences from an actors perspective on shoots.
Sometimes, as a little treat to myself, I enjoy wallowing in the pits of human existence.  Where would I go to do that?  YouTube of course.  YouTube in this case is sort of like the dealer and sometimes, I need a fix badly.  So, I start my search for street fights in the basement of human civilization.  Once you wade through the crap where middle schoolers are just trying to get views by staging an obvious fake fight, you get to the good stuff.
“Hmmmm, Skater vs Rollerblader?  OK.  Punk vs Gangster?  Yes please.  Two Drunk Girls Fighting?!  Hello subscribe button!”
I’m not really looking to see someone get hurt.  Well, maybe a little, but really what I’m looking for is awkward situations that I can laugh at.  During one of my kicks I came across this gem:

I’m not sure if this is staged or not, I pray that it’s not, because I would really like to believe that life really is this awesome.  I don’t know what’s funnier, the fact that a fight breaks out right in the middle of a wedding or the fact that all of the other wedding guests just stand around watching as the bride gets what appears to be sexually assaulted.  Of course, I can’t blame them.  The only thing I would probably be able to do was lean to the person closest to me and say “Holy shit!  This is awesome!”  I love how the groom just kind of stands there with a not so bright look on his face as this biker chick just grabs his bride and pulls her off stage to kick the crap out of her.  Then there’s the photographer snapping pictures in the background.  Because that’s something you would want to remember on your wedding day.
“Hey honey, you remember when that butch chick dragged me off stage and beat the shit out of me in the middle of the ceremony?” 
“No, I don’t remember that.  Was that our wedding?”
“Yeah, hold on, let me pull out the wedding book, I’ll show you.  Better yet, go get your lap top, fire up YouTube.”
Absolutely amazing.