John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.

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.

I’ve been writing a lot lately.  I’ve written 47 pages in roughly 5 days.  I had an idea and I just started writing it.  I didn’t do an outline or anything like that.  Which I’m sure is a mortal sin in the world of script writing, but whatever.  I’m really enjoying this so far.  It’s kind of fun to lay out the story this way.  It’s almost like reading a book.  Especially because I’m not sure how this script is going to end yet.  Writing an outline seemed to be very detrimental to me in the past.  It just made me over think everything.  Maybe this is what will work for me.  Just writing and then going through to revise later.  I wonder if any other writers use that same process.  I’m not letting anything stop me either.  I always just go with my gut, weather I think it’s bad or not.  I figure when I’m done, I’ll go through it a million times and revise it every time.  Right now it’s sort of a sci fi action comedy.  By the end of my revisions it will probably be a tragedy about pie.  Whatever, I like what I’ve written so far.  I’ve been telling people the story as I develop it and they seem to genuinely be interested.  They’ve been asking me “have you written any more of your script yet?  What happened?”  I think that’s a good sign.  Weather it’s good or not, I’m having a really good time writing it.  At first I was averaging about 2 pages a night.  Then I started averaging 5 pages a night.  Now I’m doing between 8-10 pages a night.  If this trend continues, I’ll probably hit about 15 pages a night before I’m done.  An average movie script (according to a Google search) is 95 – 125 pages.  If my script were going to be 95 pages I’m half a page shy of being half way done.  A movie script in less than 10 days isn’t too shabby.  Granted, it will be a shitty movie script that needs revision, but still.  I think that’s kind of an accomplishment.  Not really though.  I’m sure anyone could write a shitty script in 10 days.  When I finish it, I’m going to enter it in to as many script writing festivals as I can find.  Seriously, those are so freaking easy.  You sign up, pay the $15 entry fee and then E-Mail them a PDF.  I could enter 10 festivals in like 20 minutes.  I’ve never entered a script writing festival, only short film festivals.  Film festivals are kind of a pain in the ass.  You have to sign up online, pay online, and then get the tracking number.  Print out a DVD label with the tracking number on it, affix it to the DVD.  Then you have to print out a label and put it on the case that the DVD is in.  Then you have to print out another label to ship it.  I suppose you don’t have to print it, but when I was a programmer, nothing made me more skeptical about a short like a hand written DVD cover that I could barely read.  I didn’t even mention the part about burning the DVD and making sure that it’s the right region and that it actually plays correctly.  Then there’s the worry that the festival will have a picky DVD player and it won’t even play.  Even if I have to ship a script out, it’s already 10 times easier then shipping out a short film.  It’s paper, you read it.  Not much can go wrong with that.  Unless someone spills a cup of coffee on it or something, but that’s hardly my fault.

Dexter, season 4 starts on Sunday.  Rather then buy the DVD’s (Which I will probably do anyway) I think I’ll just watch the show this season like a normal person.  See, most people like the waiting and being left on a cliff hanger.  I absolutely hate it.  That’s why I usually wait for the DVD’s.  It just works out better for me.  That way, when an episode ends on a cliffhanger, I can just hit “Next Episode” on the DVD menu and be fine.  I’m very tempted to read the Dexter books, but I love that show way too much.  I’m afraid it might give something away.  I’ll read them when the show is over.  I’ve said this before, but Jennifer Carpenter is amazing on that show.  There’s an actress that has what seems to be an unlimited amount of potential.  The only movie I’ve seen with her has been The Exorcism of Emily Rose.  She was amazing in that.  I’ll probably watch her other stuff one of these days.  Apparently she has a movie coming out in 2011 called The Factory that takes place in Buffalo New York.  That’s kind of awesome.  I have somewhat of a connection to Buffalo New York.  First off the Buffalo Sabres are from there and my Dad grew up there.  While I’m a Ducks fan at heart, I certainly wouldn’t mind the Sabres winning the cup.  My Dad is a die hard Sabres fan.  If it ever came down to the Sabres vs the Ducks for the Stanley Cup, it would be a brutal couple of weeks for my family.  We would have to go to the games of course.  Which would mean traveling between Buffalo and Anaheim.  The games would be very tense.  We have gone to two regular season games where it’s been Buffalo vs Anaheim, once in Buffalo and once in Anaheim.  Both times the Ducks slaughtered the Sabres.  I was a little torn honestly.  On one hand my Dad was being somewhat destroyed, but on the other, the Ducks were winning.  The first goal, I did my usual stand up and cheer.  At around the third it just started to get sad, so I reserved myself to just clapping from my seat, shrugging, and saying “Sorry Dad.”  There were a couple smart ass comments from my Dad.  But they were all in good fun.  “So when are they going to do the flying v?” was something that was all in good fun.  I don’t want to know what would be said if we were in the Stanley Cup Final.  The Emilio Estevez cracks and The Mighty Ducks movie comments would probably turn in to “You’re a fucking disgrace to this family and you were adopted!”  I wouldn’t be surprised if a fist fight broke out.  I’ve got a slight reach advantage, so I could probably keep him at bay with some quick jabs, but my Dad was in the Coast Guard.  I bet he could probably grind me out till the later rounds and then move in for the kill.  You know, that isn’t a bad idea for a script.  A father and son have to deal with their respective teams going to the Stanley Cup.  I should look in to that.  There really aren’t enough hockey movies out there.  What the hell was I talking about?  Jennifer Carpenter?  How did I get on a fist fight with my Dad and hockey?  Anyway, Dexter season 4 is going to be awesome, Jennifer Carpenter is awesome, Ducks are awesome, and The Sabres are awesome. 
I should be doing the transitions with Gabe on Do Nice Guys Finish Last this weekend.  Probably Sunday.

I went on a bit of a writing binge last night.  For some reason a script I had an idea for has been popping in to my head a lot.  So, I sat down and started writing it last night.  The whole entire thing has sort of a smart ass tone to it.  I meant for it to be a series, but it’s kind of shaping up in to a movie.  It’s called Dead Girl and it’s kind of fun to write because I haven’t planned anything.  I just sort of sit down and write what ever comes to mind.  I’m not putting any pressure on myself to make it spectacular.  I’m just writing it.  It would be nice to have a full on movie script.  If I were a script writer, I would submit scripts to festivals like crazy.  Printing a script out costs you maybe a dollar.  In fact, I think a lot of festivals will accept an E-Mailed PDF.  Which is no shipping cost, no printing cost, and more importantly no production cost.  Plus, I can’t think of a better way to get a script out there.  If I finish Dead Girl, I’ll send it out to every script writing competition I can find.  Why not, right?
Censored was rejected from the Gangrene Film Festival yesterday.  This is only it’s 2nd rejection and it really only brought me down for roughly 20 seconds.  Mainly because there are about a million festivals out there and if I really wanted to, I could probably get in to another 4 by next month.  However, my focus is on Do Nice Guys Finish Last right now, which honestly, will probably have a much higher rejection rate then Censored.  So, it’s probably a good thing to be developing this tough skin at this stage.  The first rejection letter I got, really got to me.  I was upset about it for like a week.  This time it was 20 seconds.  Maybe next time, I won’t feel a thing.  It’s not that I don’t think Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be great when it’s done, it’s just that it’s sort of fighting an uphill battle.  It’s 15 minutes long and very offensive.  That’s pretty long for a short film and I’m guessing that film festivals want to appeal to a wider audience, so they kind of attempt to stay in the PG-13 area.  It doesn’t really matter to me though.  We made the film that we set out to make.  Worst case scenario?  I have a short film that I’m proud of to post on my web site.  Plus, I still have the SoCal Film Festival to look forward to.
By the way, Gabe just threw (literally) me edit six of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I think this might be our final cut.  We’ll see.  I’ll have to check it out tonight.  I really want it to be our final cut.  The last edit had very minor changes in it.  So, I’m pretty sure it’s almost there.

The Internet at my house is back up.  I’m not sure how it broke, or what was wrong with it, but the Internet company had to send a signal through to fix it.  When you’re someone like me, losing Internet is one of the worst things that can happen.  Seriously, it was really bad yesterday.  Last night, I’m sitting there messing with it and a couple times in the middle of it I thought to myself “I can fix this, I just need to look it up on the inter-  …..O yeah.”
I have a lot to talk about today.  Mainly, I want to talk about the new cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  The way me and Gabe have been working on this is that he gives me the cut, I make notes on it, then hand them back to him to make the changes or corrections.  We are currently on draft number 4, soon to be on 5.  I have the 4th cut with notes on it all ready for him.  Once we have a final cut, we’ll do some color correction, and then transitions.  Transitioning from 1 scene to another is a big deal for this short film.  There are some scenes that make huge jumps in time in the same setting.  The only way to show that jump of time is through a transition.  It if goes from a straight cut, people are left sitting there thinking “What the hell just happened?”  I’m going to be doing some research on transitions later on this week.  I showed Do Nice Guys Finish Last to someone besides me and Gabe yesterday.  I was very happy to see that she laughed at all the right times.  She actually made a comment that really just pin pointed what I was going for.  She said “It was really funny, but it’s kind of true.”  That is exactly what I was looking for with this short film.  I wanted people to watch it and not only laugh because it was funny, but laugh because it was true.  Almost like a George Carlin stand up act.  What he says is hysterical, but the main reason it’s so hysterical is because it’s sort of true.  That’s what I was looking for.  I think maybe Do Nice Guys Finish Last is going to be better then I originally thought.  The audio and lighting are already all a step above everything else we’ve done.  I’m really looking forward to this being done and I can’t wait to start sending it to festivals.
On to the Project X news.  I got a script from the script writer last night.  I haven’t read it yet.  Something went wrong with the file format so I can’t exactly open it just yet.  But it’s awesome that I got it.  I should be getting another copy of it sometime today or tonight.  If this works out, this will be the first time I’ve directed something that someone else has written.  Actually, that’s not true.  I’ve directed one other thing that someone else wrote, but nothing really came of it.  So, it doesn’t really count. 
I’m still waiting to hear back from 3 other festivals.  I’m getting a little nervous.  The screening dates for those are pretty close already.  I figured I would have gotten some sort of rejection or acceptance letter by now.  I suppose if the film festival happens and my short film doesn’t play there, then it was rejected.

Me and my girlfriend have been slowly watching the True Blood series on DVD recently.  The general story is that vampires have come out and admitted that they exist and that there’s this product called True Blood that vampires drink instead of feeding on people.  The main characters are straight out of hicksville USA, so the show sort of has a racial undertone.  There’s people who are for vampire rights and people who are against them.  Here’s what I’m saying though.  I don’t hate the vampires because they’re vampires.  I hate them because they are dicks.  Pretty much every vampire on that show is a gigantic douche.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great show, but I can relate when a character wants to bash a vampire in the face with a shovel.  Of course I’m only like 5 episodes in, so maybe my opinion will change.  I think it’s an awesome show.  I’m somewhat addicted to it. 
About a week ago, I found an old thumb drive that I’ve been looking for.  On it were a bunch of somewhat old scripts.  Some of them were kind of funny.  One of them was really dirty, without really being dirty at all.  The title of it was Foodophile.  Here it is:
EXT. PARK – DAY
DAVID sits down on a park bench with food in hand ready to eat.  He’s holding a box full of chicken wings.
As soon as he sits down VALERIE sits down next to him.  They both look at each other and smile.  VALERIE has a Weinerschnitzle bag. 
DAVID picks up a wing and eats all of the meat off of it.  He looks over and realizes that VALERIE is seductively licking a french fry. 
DAVID stops and starts to slowly stick his finger between the opening of the two bones.
VALERIE pulls a hotdog out of the bag and begins to stroke it as if it were a penis.
DAVID puts the bones to his mouth and starts to lick in between them as if it is a vagina.
VALERIE puts the hotdog in her mouth as if she is giving a blowjob. 
DAVID smiles and continues stimulating the fake chicken clit.
VALERIE grabs a handful of chocolate milk shake and smears it in to her mouth and face.
DAVID stops dead in his tracks.  He stares at her in shock.  He gets up and walks away.

I’m not sure what I think of it.  It’s kind of sick, wrong, and awesome all at the same time.  I had some other stuff on there that I think I wrote when I was drunk or something.  One was about a woman having sex with a blender.  Don’t ask. 
In other news, my web designer added a new add on to the site which filters out spam.  JQP Entertainment- 1, Spammers- 0.  Also, internet at my house is out.  I’ll try to find a computer to update on this weekend, but I make no guarantees.

Last night, on the way home, 3 ideas for short films came to me.  I told myself that I would write them out after I was done working out.  I finished working out and out of habit I turned on NHL 09 for Playstation3.  Midway through it’s start up, I realized that I wasn’t supposed to be playing NHL 09 and that I was supposed to be writing out some scripts.  I convinced myself to play just one game, which usually turns in to roughly 5 games.  I am so addicted to NHL 09, it’s not even funny.  Seriously, I’ve been playing that game for a year and I can’t stop.  NHL 10 comes out in 2 months and then it will all start all over again.  So, I start to play and I’m playing goalie mode and I’m not joking you, the computer scored like 4 goals on me in the time span of 1 real life minute.  Which is like 20 seconds in game time.  If you were in my kitchen at the time you would have heard:
“damn it………son of a bitch………SHIT!……….MOTHER FU- Screw this!”
 With that, I turned off the system and went upstairs and started writing.
I got a lot more out of writing those scripts then I would have gotten from playing NHL 09 for 4 hours.  I immediately sent one script to Chris and he really liked it.  It seriously is, the perfect short film for festivals.  It would run about a minute long, it’s funny, it’s quick, it’s clever, and it’s PG-13.  The best part is, is that I could probably shoot it in one day and edit it the next.  It’s a really simplistic and clever concept.  Maybe it will be something that I can pull off in between Do Nice Guys Finish Last and Project X.  I got the ball rolling on Project X.  Which needed to be done.  I looked at all of the information I had and just put it all together and sort of wrote out an outline.  Then I E-Mailed that to the script writer.  I’m excited to see how it comes out.  Also, I just got the new cut from Gabe, of Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Needless to say, I’m glad that I suck at NHL 09 and that the computer saw it fit to destroy me.

You may have noticed by now, but I posted some out takes from the re shoot on Do Nice Guys Finish Last in the Shorts sections.  The Shorts section has now sort of become the Videos section.  Whatever works.  Really, who doesn’t like out takes?  One of my favorites ever is from a short film I did a long time ago called The Wake Up.  It was about two women who wake up in bed together.  One is straight and one is gay and they are both naked.  Of course I don’t show anything, but it’s implied.  Anyway, at one point both of the characters say “I’ve got a handcuff key in my bag” at the same time.  So, Kristen says it but the other actress, Jessica missed her line and didn’t say it.  Kristen without missing a beat says
“I’ve got a handcuff key in my bag and you didn’t say it, you God damned bitch!  I know you got one!”
I still have that footage somewhere.
The Wake Up isn’t posted here.  It’s not that I don’t like it.  It’s just that it was a very early short film in my film making “career.”  It was shot on a shitty little camcorder that I got on the Internet for like $200, the lighting, and color balance in each shot changes.  My directing skills weren’t quite there yet.  This was a really tough film for me.  I was a straight male writing about gay women.  I didn’t want to be offensive at all.  I wanted to tell a funny, kind of weird story.  Plus, finding actresses was tough.  It was a tough sell.
“Hey, I need you to appear to be naked, kiss another girl and fondle her a little bit.  Then I’m going to film it on a crappy little camcorder and possibly post it on the Internet.  O yeah, and I can’t pay you.”
After I did The Wake Up though, I realized that I could pull people together for anything.  The Wake Up has a lot of negatives, but there are some positives as well.  I think the beginning sequence is fantastic, some of the acting is great (I messed up directing wise a couple of times), and I actually really did like some of the cinematography.  I also think the story is pretty decent.  If I had written some better dialogue I think it would have been great.  This was only my second short film, so I think all is forgiven.  Here is the short film if you want to check out some of my early work.  You’ll also get a look at my very crappy 1st logo:
The Wake Up
Watching it again, I’ve actually changed quite a bit.  I wasn’t so biased about hand held camera work at the time and I actually kind of like it.  Maybe it will change my mind on how I feel about handheld stuff in the future.
 I started off talking about the out takes of Do Nice Guys Finish Last and ended up on a totally different topic all together.  That’s pretty typical for me.  Check out the Shorts section if you want to see the Do Nice Guys Finish Last out takes.