John Q. Phats Entertainment

I’ve been holding out posting till I was done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  But I’ve come to the realization that it’s never going to be done.  It’s just going to be that unfinished project that eats away at my brain and will one day be one of the factors that drives me to go absolutely insane.  I’m probably going to be crazy when I’m older.  My grandfather on my Dad’s side is pretty crazy, but he’s one of those indestructible bastards that will live to be like 140.  Despite the fact that his diet is terrible and he falls down every hour or so.  My Dad is probably going to be crazy when he’s older and I’ll be the one chasing after him making sure he doesn’t steal batteries from Radio Shack or try to carry left over soup home from a restaurant in a napkin. 
In all seriousness, DNGFL will be done eventually, it’s just that we are dealing with a lot of set backs right now.  If it’s not one issue it’s another.  Right now we are dealing with frame rate issues.  Our final came out jumpy, which means that something went wrong in exporting, which means that Gabe has to do the color correction again.  O well, I should be getting the somewhat final from him either today or tomorrow.  I still have to add the transitions and all that, but that’s no big deal.  That shouldn’t take me that long.  Either way, I’ll keep plugging away.  Maybe I’ll be done by the end of this week.  That’s a big maybe though.

Sorry about not posting yesterday, I was in a Benadryl induced haze.  It’s actually kind of fun being in that state of mind at work, makes the day fly by.  Some stuff to talk about, not much but a little.  The whole healing of my leg thing isn’t really going so great.  I thought I would be able to make it to the SoCal Film Festival last night, but my leg was killing me, so I decided to stay home.  I’ll probably have to stay home tonight too.  Sorry for everyone that looked for me on Tuesday.  As punishment, I’ll tell you the story of how I actually injured my leg.  It really does a good job of highlighting my stupidity.  On Saturday, I decided for the first time in over two years to drink.  This wasn’t really a planned out endeavor.  They were playing beer pong and it looked like fun.  So, I lost at beer pong.  Since I haven’t drank in over 2 years, I had the tolerance of an 11 year old girl.  I ended up getting trashed.  Apparently I stepped on my friends girlfriends face and somehow ended up on the roof of the house I was drinking at.  I wouldn’t have believed them if they hadn’t shown me pictures of both.  I also left a message that a lot of people laughed at on a co workers cell phone.  I actually found that kind if hilarious myself.  At one point, I get the brilliant idea to give a friend of mine a piggy back ride. 
“I’m drunk!  I can do anything! :flex:”
So, he gets on my back, he’s much bigger then me, which isn’t saying much, I weigh like 155.  So, then I get the idea that I’m going to run with him on my back.  I get up to a good speed and then I’m laying on the ground.  That’s how I hurt my leg.  I tore a muscle in my hip region so now I look really funny when I walk.  This wouldn’t suck so much if every 5 seconds someone at work didn’t say “O my God!  What happened to your leg?!”
I’ve been just saying “It’s a long story.  I hurt my leg.”  
They keep bugging me for details.  Maybe I should just make something up that makes them uncomfortable so they won’t ask for details.  Maybe:
“Vibrator malfunction”
would work.  It’s simple, could work.  Anyway, on with the show.
Do Nice Guys Finish Last is so close to being done.  The file is huge.  It’s like 25 gigs.  After Effects really added all of that.  I think it’s all the filters and effects we used for color correction.  Either way, we can deal with it.  We are so close to being done.  All we need is transitions and that’s it.  I already finished the credits.  Everything is all set.  It’s frustrating to be this close.  I still want to submit to Sundance. 
Every once in awhile YouTube has something of value to offer.  Not always, in fact almost never.  Most of it is some emo kid sitting in front of a web cam talking about Kanye West or Brittney Spears.  I found this great channel that has all sort so of film making tips and tricks.
http://www.youtube.com/user/videomaker
I’m actually kind of amazed that these are free.  Seriously, if these were available on DVD, I would probably buy them.  No bullshit, just straight up “You want to do this?  Here’s how you do it.”
I also found:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Mr360Games
Nothing really film maker wise, but I’m impressed with the video quality of his stuff.  For video game footage, that’s awesome.  Most of the time, especially on YouTube, it’s just a camcorder propped up in front of a television.  Lame.  This is actually high quality stuff.
I’ve also never mentioned this before, but being such a hockey fan this is probably my favorite web site:
http://www.battleofcali.com/
All those writers are hilarious.  They should write a hockey based script.  Seriously, they really seem to have a good grip on hockey culture.  I could see them writting something like the original Slapshot.  Vulgar as hell, but entertaining and awesome.

Last night, I made a very bad decision.  I started to paint my ex room mates room.  As always I started with a coat of primer.  So, I’m going around the room and all of a sudden, I get the brilliant idea to paint the inside of the closet.  About 5 seconds in to this endeavor, I realize that I’ve made a horrible mistake.  Somehow, the builder of the house managed to put more corners in that closet then in the entire house.  I think it took me like 2 hours alone, just to primer the closet.  Stupid closet.  For $550 a month, my next room mate could have probably dealt with an unpainted closet. 
Every time I paint, I can’t help but think of the possibilities of turning a room in my house in to a set.  It would just be way too easy.  I have this space available with walls begging to be painted.  I could paint them any color I want.  With low budget film making, you don’t always have that option.  You usually have to deal with the color the wall already is.  I’ve always wanted to do a very art direction esq short film.  Something where every shot has clashing colors or the entire film has a specific range of color.  I actually didn’t even know that they did this, until I read the Grindhouse book.  Robert Rodriguez was talking about the colors that he chose for Planet Terror.  When I watched Planet Terror again, I started to notice it.  I always thought French cinema had great art direction in them.  Every single French film I’ve seen has been very artistic either in story itself, costume design, or background design.  Of course, you mention French cinema and the first thing that comes to most people’s minds is Amélie.  I like Amélie, it’s a great movie, but there is a lot more to French cinema.  Angel-A or  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are both awesome films.  Ok, I’m done with my French cinema rant.  As I mentioned yesterday, color correction for Do Nice Guys Finish Last is done.  I was either going to work on the audio for it yesterday or paint that room.  I was really hoping to work on the audio but Gabe was busy that night.  I don’t expect the audio to take me that long.  I’m not really looking to do anything fancy.  I want to keep it sort of rough, to fit in with the amateur documentary feel that we are going for.  Things have been crazy lately, but I really want to get to work on my next project.  For my next project I really want to use a rack focus.  I’ve actually thought up scripts that would require the entire thing to be shot with one shot while we rack focus back and fourth between like 3 characters.  That’s either an awesome idea, or a horrible idea.  I haven’t decided yet.  Either the audience would all go “Woooooow” or it would just give them all a massive headache.

Gabe gave me the Do Nice Guys Finish Last color correction version.  It looked really good.  It’s weird to see it in a somewhat polished state.  Next we are going to work on the audio.  I’m still debating how much I want to do to the audio.  Part of me wants to clean it up completely and another part of me wants it to stay sort of rough.  Some aspects of Do Nice Guys Finish Last are polished and other aspects are left rough on purpose.  For example, the camera work was left rough on purpose.  The lighting was set up and polished though.  Mainly because we could do that and get away with it.  It’s one of those things that we can slip past the audience that would make it look a little bit better.  Audio is a big part of this.  I really do want the audience to feel like they are watching a documentary done by a bunch of amateurs.  But how far is too far?  Is keeping the audio somewhat rough forgivable here?  I’m going to have to figure that out tonight.  After the audio, we’ll probably do the transitions and then we’ll be done.  I already put the credits together so all I have to do is tack those on the end when the transitions are done and call it a day.  With credits, Do Nice Guys Finish Last will wind up being just under 16 minutes.  I can live with that.  I think for a 16 minute film, it’s pretty fat free.  I’ve seen short films that are 20 minutes that could have easily been cut down to 10.  I don’t think this is the case with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I think it’s 15 minutes, because it needs to be 15 minutes.  We cut a lot out that was in the original script.  Not just to get it under 15 minutes, but because the parts we cut out weren’t necessary.  If you can get the point across in 1 scene, then why show 2?  Or if you can get the point across in a scene that’s 30 seconds long, why would you show a scene that’s 2 minutes long?  Of course, I think this all changes when shooting a movie.  For a short film there is a totally different set of rules.  With a movie, you have time for a set up and you can take your time here and there.  With a short film there almost shouldn’t be a setup.  The characters should already be past the setup and on to the point of the short film by the time it starts.  For example, there’s a scene where Chris calls one of the girls and nervously asks her for a date.  We could have shown him pacing back and fourth nervously while biting his finger nails and starring at his phone, but why?  He makes it blatantly obvious by the tone in his voice that he’s nervous.  It would be taking twice as long to illustrate the same exact point.  As an audience member, I think it’s a little insulting actually.  If we had shown the pacing scene it would sort of be like:
“He’s nervous….  You see how nervous he is?  He’s really nervous.  Look at how he’s pacing, he’s nervous.  Man is he nervous.”
Kind of annoying, isn’t it?  I think, a lot of short films fall in to this trap.  The audience is smarter then you think.  They can figure it out.

Today Gabe might have the color corrected Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  We’ll see what happens.  It will either be today or sometime, early this week.  After color correction we’ll be working on transitions.  I don’t think that will take us too long.  Then we’ll do some slight corrections in audio.  I’m really not too concerned about the audio.  Mainly because I want it to have sort of a rough feeling to it.  Like an inexperienced boom mic operator was just chasing people around not really sure what he was doing.  It fits for this short film and I actually think it sort of adds to it.  As long as I’m aware of it, I think it’s ok.  I’m very excited about being done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I always have a hard time telling everyone to just wait for the edit to be done.  I hate telling people to wait for us to be done editing.  Editing takes a long time and nobody except for me and Gabe sees the progress.  Of course, I can talk about it and post screen shots.  But you can’t really show anyone the short film until it’s done.  It’s a little frustrating, but I’ll live.
I saw Inglorious Bastards yesterday.  I loved that freaking movie.  I thought it was great.  You never quite know what you are going to get with Quentin Tarantino.  That’s what I like though.  His style is always changing and evolving, but his movies always have that Quentin Tarantino feel to them.  If you showed me a 100 unreleased films and one of them were a Quentin Tarantino film, I could probably tell you which one was the Tarantino film without looking at the credits.  Whenever I see a Quentin Tarantino film it remindes me to always make a Carl Keitz film.  Basically, make the short film or movie that I want to make.  What makes a Quentin Tarantino film so good, is that it’s a Quentin Tarantino film.  He always makes the movie that he wants to make.  That’s probably what every film maker should do.

Yesterday, while delivering something for work, I saw a sign that said “Dexter” with an arrow on it pointing in the direction I was going.  I stayed on course and just kept going.  Then I had to make a right and there was another sign, right before my turn with an arrow pointing to the right.  I still just kept going.  Then I saw an arrow leading in to a parking lot that said “Dexter Crew.”  My first thought was “no freaking way.”  On my way back from my delivery I stopped off in the parking lot just to see it was true or not.  Low and behold, there were several wardrobe and equipment trucks parked near the back.  I didn’t run on set or anything or even get out of my car.  I just wanted to confirm that they were shooting my favorite TV show of all time a stones throw from where I was.  I drove back to work and then went back to the place again on my lunch break this time determined to talk to someone.  The first person I saw was a security guard.  I asked him if they needed any extras, or extra crew or anything.  He said no, so I got in my car and went back to my stupid job.  So many thoughts went through my head before I approached that security guard.  What would I have done if he said yes?  Would I have called my job and told them I wasn’t coming back from lunch?  Absolutely.  What if they had said that I couldn’t do that?  Would I have let them fire me?  Probably.  After my conversation with the guard, a million other thoughts hit me.  Why am I not applying to work on crews on weekends?  What the hell am I doing here?  Here’s where it gets a bit stalkerish.  On my way home from work, there were basically two routes I could take.  One that drove me right past the Dexter shoot and one that didn’t.  I fully intended to just go home, but something made me drive by one more time.  I wanted to give my card to somebody.  Even if it was just the security guard.  So, I approached the same security guard once again and after telling him I was sorry for bothering him handed him my card and asked if he could please hand it off to someone.  He told me he would.  Several things could have happened here.  The most likely is that it went to the security guards pocket and that’s where it stayed.  It will be there until the security guard either washes his pants or empties his pockets and throws it out along with some gum wrappers and receipts.  Another possibility is that he did actually hand it off to someone.  Where it’s now sitting in their pocket until they wash their pants or throw it out along with some gum wrappers and receipts.  This is pretty likely as well.  The unlikeliest of scenarios is that he did hand it off, the person he gave it to looked at it and thought to themselves “Maybe I’ll give this guy a call.”  Or maybe they took that card and filled it under “P” for Psycho.  I have to say, going there for the third time did make me feel a little bit like a stalker.  I wasn’t disruptive or anything though.  I didn’t try to break on to the set or talk my way in.  I wasn’t trying to steal any wardrobe, I was really just looking for an opportunity.  An opportunity to see how a big time production operates and to help out with that.  Dexter is my favorite show, of course I would take any long shot chance presented to me to work on it.  On my way to the Dexter shoot after work, I couldn’t help but think that it was fate.  That maybe something would come out of it.  It doesn’t end with that security guard though.  I think this was a wake up call, that what I want to do is right in my backyard and all I have to do is try.  What are the odds that I would have to do a delivery that day and that my delivery would pass right by a shoot of one of my favorite shows of all time?  Fate or not, it was a wake up call for me.
On to other things though, right?  Just because I passed by a Dexter shoot in my car doesn’t mean my world stops.  Last night I was up pretty late getting some screen shots from Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I’m trying to put a press kit together.  I got about 40 screen captures for it.  Here are a few of my favorites.  Keep in mind that these are pre color correction:
       
I think they look pretty good.  I really like that behind the scenes one with the clacker.  I just think that’s a really cool picture.  The press kit is well on its way.
An update on the Censored showing at the SoCal Film Festival.  The festival has an updated list of which program has the best ticket sales.  Censored is in Program 10 and Program 10 is listed as third.  Clearly that’s all because of me.  The six or seven visitors my site gets must have gone to town on those tickets sales.  Again, here is the info of where you can buy tickets:
SoCal Film Fest Tickets
Censored is playing in Program 10 on Friday 9/18/2009 at 7:20 PM.  It should be a good time.  There are lots of other short films playing there.  I’ll definitely be there. 
Sooner then that though, I’ll be down near the Huntington Beach Pier this Thursday to watch Finding Nemo at the SoCal Movies by the pier event.  Partially to try to get people to see Censored, but mainly because that event sounds kind of awesome.  Stop by and say hello if you’re in the area.

I finished up watching season one of True Blood last weekend.  Really awesome show.  I’ve also been watching Dexter, Season 3.  Is it possibly for that show to be any more awesome then it already is?  Every single season I expect that show to be not as good as the previous season and that doesn’t happen.  It’s very strange.  Somehow, none of the characters are getting stale at all.  It’s just strange, because the show goes against everything that I know.  Jennifer Carpenter is amazing on that show.  She plays Dexter’s sister.  She was also in The Exorcism of Emily Rose.  She played Emily Rose in that movie and there are a couple scenes where she goes insane.  She nails it.  The first time I watched that movie was with a friend of mine that never shuts the hell up.  Between the two of us there’s some sort of constant noise at all times when we are together.  I think the only thing said throughout that entire movie was “…..O shit.”  She’s really good at playing afraid.  While she’s been great in what she’s done, I’m sure we haven’t seen what she can really do quite yet.
Still waiting on the color correction for Do Nice Guys Finish Last from Gabe.  I did get an update from the SoCal Film Festival.  Apparently they are having a competition to see which program can sell the most tickets.  I’m not really in to all of this competitive stuff.  Now go buy some tickets so my program can break in to the top 6.  Again, Censored is playing in Program 10.  You can buy tickets here.  Dooooo it.

The search for a mascot continues.  Current discussions focused around what exactly the mascot would mean and why I was doing this.  We also discussed squirrels and mice as possible mascots.  Wow, that all sounds so official.  I suppose this is part of me taking a break after finishing filming for Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I usually do that.  I wish I didn’t have to, but it does make everything more exciting when I start on my next project.  I have been writing here and there, but I haven’t really worked on anything major.  I really want to shoot in HD next.  I keep telling myself that once I get an HD camera that shoots 24 FPS I’ll be good from then on.  I know that’s not the case though.  As I have said in previous posts, I’ll always be chasing some new billion dollar thing that does something better then my current equipment.  I like to consider myself a budget friendly film maker.  I usually make what I have work.  That doesn’t really come out of ingenuity though, it’s more of a necessity.  Like when we built the jib arm for Red Hood.  I could have rented one for $2500, but I didn’t have that kind of budget.  So, I built one for just over $100.  It worked and now I have a jib arm.  Building stuff is always a cheap way out.  Plus, it’s kind of interesting to see what Gabe can come up with.  Or some random guy who posts blue prints on the Internet.  We built a steady cam off of the Internet.  We called it the Raminator.  It worked pretty good.  It’s kind of heavy and weird, but that’s kind of the point.  It’s supposed to add weight to the camera at a lower point to help stabilize it.  It worked for what we wanted to use it for.  Back to my original point, the mascot.  The mascot has to do with changing the name of the company.  Also, I want something kind of fun to put at the end of the credits that people will remember.  That’s pretty much it.  I really thought that there was more to it then that, but I guess not. 
Gabe tells me that the color correction for Do Nice Guys Finish Last is tedious, but he’s making progress.  Once the color correction is done the transitions will be a snap.  The credits are all ready to go.  So, we’re not too far off.  There’s not that much color correction to be done.  For a lot of the scenes, Gabe stuck with one camera.  It just flowed better that way. 
I watched a bunch more of the first season of True Blood last night.  Awesome series, but I stand by my belief that vampires are dicks.  I also got Dexter Season 3 on DVD earlier this week.  I’ve only watched the first episode, but holy shit that show is awesome.  I can’t stand watching shows on TV, I have to wait for them on DVD.  I think it’s the cliff hangers that really aggravate me.  There have been a couple times in True Blood, where if I wasn’t able to go to the next episode immediately, I would have lost my freaking mind.  Same with Dexter, although Dexter usually has a pretty good ending to each episode that leaves you satisfied.  Heroes plays the cliff hanger game a lot.  The worst by though is Lost.  I watched season 1 on DVD and decided to watch season 2 on television.  Every single episode I watched ended with me yelling “Jesus Christ!  What the fuck?!”  I only watched like 4 of them before I finally gave up and just waited for the DVD’s.  The thing with Lost is, is that they show you a preview the week before and you’re excited to see this one thing in the preview, then you watch it, and of course, that one thing is at the end of the episode.  But then that’s all it is.  There’s no explanation of it.  It just sort of happens.  Then you have to wait for an entire week to see every ones reaction to that one thing, which is what you wanted to see last week.  Season 5 comes out in December and I’ve been keeping up with it.  I love that show, I think it’s great, but screw those writers.

We’re done cutting Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Now it’s on to working out all of the little kinks.  Color correction, audio adjustments, and transitions.  It feel like an accomplishment to have cut it.  It’s come a long way.  From 18 minutes to just under 15.  Me and Chris talked about it this weekend and we’re not expecting it to get in to any festivals.  I think we established that from the beginning though.  It doesn’t make it a bad short film.  I think it’s a great short film.  I should say, it’s going to be a great short film.  There’s still a lot to work on.  I still am very surprised by how much you can get away with in the mockumentary format.  You don’t need a tripod, it doesn’t matter if there are mistakes here and there, and actors can stumble over their lines and get away with it.  It’s a fun format, but I think I’m going to be moving on to the next thing now.  I don’t see another mockumentary in my near future.  Although, it has changed my opinion on hand held camera work.  Even though we didn’t use a tripod we still got some really nice cinematography.  Maybe I’ll open up and use it in my next short film.  My main problem with it was that in short films it became a “style.”  I’ve heard film makers asked why they went hand held on their entire short film and they would say “That’s just my style.”  No, that isn’t you’re style.  %90 of the time it’s because they were either too lazy or low on cash to use a tripod.  I’m totally cool with both of those excuses.  But to cover it up with this rouse of “That’s just my style” is pretty lame.  Call it what it is.  I know low budget films don’t have access to fancy dollies or equipment.  But there are ways around that.  I feel like I’ve put cameras on everything.  Wheel chairs, roller blades, office chairs, at least 3 different home made dollys, carts, ect…  Whatever works.  Am I total hypocrite for shooting Do Nice Guys Finish Last all in hand held?  Probably, but that was my style, so piss off.  In actuality, I wanted to shoot all in hand held, I chose to shoot all in hand held, and I left my very awesome tripod at home on purpose.  Do Nice Guys Finish Last is a mockumentary, which means that it’s essentially a fake documentary.  In this case, I felt like hand held was necessary.  I really tried to think of how an amateur documentary film maker would film something like this and that’s why I chose to go all hand held.  Basically, I was trying to mimic the style of someone who didn’t know what they were doing.  Which actually was a lot of fun.  Kind of like when we built the murder chair for Red Hood.  That was a blast.  We built the entire thing out of wooden pallets.  What was awesome about it was that we got to put our selves in the place of how the main character would build something like this.  It was a total hack and slash job.  When something wasn’t holding we either attached another piece of wood to it with about 6 screws or we just tore it off and started again.  We figured the main character wasn’t a carpenter and she didn’t need it to look pretty.  It was purely functional.  I actually have a picture of it:

It’s not pretty, but it’s functional.  You can sit in it, it will support your weight, but it’s absolutely not comfortable.  This was a chair that the main character used to torture people in, so none of that really mattered.
I kind of strayed from my original point, but whatever.  My point is that sometimes bad camera work or shady craftsmanship is called for in a film.  As long as the audience knows it’s intentional.  With hand held, it’s very difficult to make it look like it was necessary and very easy to make it look like you as a film maker were just lazy.  That’s not to say that I haven’t seen films that were well done all in hand held.  I just feel like that “style” is extremely over used because it’s an easy out.
I saw two movies this week.  District 9 and Ponyo.  I’ll start off with Ponyo.  Ponyo is an anime movie by Studio Ghibli.  A guy named Hayao Miyazaki did Ponyo and he has somewhat of a cult following.  In fact Studio Ghibli itself has somewhat of a cult following.  I went in to the theater not knowing anything about the movie.  All I knew is that my girlfriend really wanted to see it.  I’ve only seen one other anime by Hayao Miyazaki and that was My Neighbor Totoro.  My Neighbor Totoro was an acid trip.  Much like Ponyo, only Ponyo seemed to be catered more for children.  I suppose My Neighbor Totoro was for kids too, but for some reason it seemed darker.  I’m not even going to begin to try and explain the story line to Ponyo.  You probably wouldn’t believe me anyway, if I did.  It’s just one of those things you have to see.  I thought it was great.  If I was a parent, I would roll up a joint, smoke it in the mini van on the way to the theater, buy three packages of milk duds in the lobby, and go away to the land of Ponyo for 4+ hours.  The movie is only 2 hours long but I would be sitting in the theater after the credits rolled either asleep or absolutely out of my freaking mind based on what I had just seen.  It’s probably a good thing I’m not a parent.  Awesome visuals in Ponyo and a story line that made me say out loud “Who the hell thinks of that?”  It’s incredibly imaginative and unique.  But you don’t need to be high to enjoy it.  I enjoyed it and I wasn’t high at all.  If I was high though it probably would have been a life changing experience.  Just know what you’re getting in to.  It’s an anime catered towards children, that’s an acid trip.
District 9 was absolutely awesome.  I loved that freaking movie.  I am totally going to see that in theaters again.  I’m a sucker for the horror sci fi genre, so maybe I can’t give the same opinion as the everyday movie watcher, but I thought it was great.  I was entertained throughout that entire movie.  The actors were all phenomenal in it, the cinematography was great, the special effects were awesome, the story line had me hooked from the very beginning, and the characters development throughout the story was amazing.  If you’re in to this sort of movie, go see it, it’s awesome.

You know you’re done editing when you feel like if you watch your short film one more time, you might have a mental break down.  It’s mainly just frustrating because we are so close to being done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  I made my notes on the 5th cut last night and I was seriously considering telling Gabe to just start on color correction when he was done making the edits.  But, I can’t do that.  You know why?  Because when it’s done, there will be one tiny thing that irritates me that could have been fixed in 2 seconds if I had known it was there.  However if I do look at the draft before we get in to color correction, nothing will be wrong with it and it will be fine.  That’s just how it goes. 
So, about a week ago, a friend of mine is telling me about her good friend that shot a documentary on 5 of these cameras.  She didn’t know what they were called, but she told me they were the newest and best digital cameras out there.  So I said
“Ask you’re friend if I can borrow it for like a week or so.”
She laughed and I laughed but then I said
“I’m serious.”
So, she did and from what she told me he laughed, said no, but admired me for asking.  Works for me.  It was worth a shot, right?  Imagine if he had said yes?  I would have had access to a really awesome camera.  For free.  It never hurts to ask.  You would be surprised at what you could get for free by just asking.  Not that I’m a greedy beggar or anything, but when you’re making films anything you can get for free, you probably should. 
District 9 comes out tomorrow.  I’ve really wanted to see this movie ever since I saw the previews.  It looks a little bit like Cloverfield, which I thought was pretty good.  District 9 looks awesome.  I love these sort of creepy sci fi pictures.  I’m not sure what really draws me to them.  I’m not a sci fi or horror film buff, but for some reason this sort of combination is usually something I really enjoy.  I’m probably going to check it out this Sunday.  I’ll let you guys know how it is.
In a totally unrelated topic, Tropic Thunder was an awesome movie.  I have been quoting that movie all week and laughing just thinking about it.  Tom Cruise was hands down the most entertaining I have ever seen him in any movie he’s ever done.  Every single time his character was on screen I laughed my ass off.
“Now I want you to take a step back… and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!”
Robert Downey Jr. kills it in that movie too.  The
“I’m a lead farmer mother fucker!”
line always cracks me up.  Maybe because it’s just so damn cliche action movie.