John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.

So, today is the day that Gabe gets my notes for the first Nice Guys Finish Last cut.  He’s been camping for a week straight.  I hope his arms didn’t get ripped off by a bear or something.  That would suck.  How would he edit?  Now that he’s back though we can really get to work on this thing.
I just realized this weekend that I’ve been referring to Nice Guys Finish Last incorrectly.  The title isn’t Nice Guys Finish Last, it’s Do Nice Guys Finish Last?.  That totally screws up my acronym for it too.  It’s not NGFL, it’s DNGFL.  I like the first acronym better.  Meh, it doesn’t matter.
Right now in LA, the Crazy 4 Cult art show is going on.  It’s all art that people have done based off of cult classic films.  Check out the web site here.  There’s all kinds of stuff there.  If you check the web site, you can see what’s for sale.  Prices range quite a bit.  There’s stuff for the casual enthusiast for like $25 and stuff for the hard core art collector for like $4000.  I haven’t checked it out yet, but I hope to make it out there sometime this week.  I’m a big fan of cult classic movies.  Fight Club is my absolute favorite movie of all time.  What actually defines a movie as “Cult Classic” though?  I suppose it’s a movie with a small, but loyal following.  I guess it’s like comparing Transformers to The Big Lebowski.  Transformers made a shit load of money, but nobody really talked about it after it was released.  The Big Lebowski has Lebowski Fest, which happened in Long Beach this year, which I attended.  The Big Lebowski was released in 1998.  Ten years later, they are still holding a festival to celebrate it’s release.  In ten years will anybody really even be talking about Transformers?  No, probably not.  Some cult classics actually bomb in theaters.  Fight Club, Super Troopers, and Donnie Darko are all good examples.  All bombed in theaters, but look at them now.  I think I’ve had 4 hour long conversations about Donnie Darko before.  That movie is amazing, for that very reason.  It only made $517,375 in theaters.  It probably killed in DVD sales.  I bet it did so shitty in theaters because, really, how do you explain that movie to someone? 
“OK, there’s this kid and this guy dressed as a rabbit and he can possibly see in to the future.  He’s taking medication and because he sleep walks the plane engine that falls through the roof of his house doesn’t kill him and then he meets the guy in the rabbit suit….  No, wait, the rabbit tells him to sleep walk, so he knew the rabbit before that…..Or something.”
After trying to explain that movie like 3 times I finally gave up and now if someone asks me what it’s about, I just say
“Just see it, it’s an awesome movie.”
Maybe what saved it is it’s movie channel debut.  That’s where I first saw it.  It has some really interesting shots.  The first time I flipped to it, it was at the point where Donnie is looking in the bathroom mirror and stabbing it with a knife.  After watching that scene for like 20 seconds, I immediately went to my On Demand thing and started from the beginning.  That one scene just brought up way too many questions.  I couldn’t resist.
I ordered Dexter Season 3 from Amazon on Sunday.  It’s on sale right now for $21.49.  It’s not out yet, but I preordered it.  I love that show so much.  I will see Gamer just because Michael C. Hall is in.  When he’s playing Dexter he plays it with a touch of sarcasm when he’s hiding who he really is.  It’s also a touch of “I’m acting.”  Not acting, like acting on a show, like putting on an act just to please everyone else.  It’s very subtle, but I think it makes the show.  If you came in mid show and started watching it at a point where Dexter is in front of normal people you would probably think “something is up with that guy.”  It makes it, because something is up with him.  He’s a serial killer.
Directing actors is always my favorite part of film making.  It’s never the same experience.  You’re always trying to convey something differently.  I bet Martin Brest(director) had a giant grin on his face when he was directing Al Pacino in the scene from Scent of a Woman where he’s in the auditorium.  That is without a doubt on my list of top 3 monologues ever performed.  One of the other ones on my top 3 is the scene in The Devils Advocate where Al Pacino is giving that speech about mankind and God.  At one point during that scene I actually thought to myself “Wow….  I never knew that Al Pacino was the Devil.  That’s awesome.”

So, I’ve started reading Chuck Palahniuk’s new book, Pygmy.  It’s written from a first person perspective in broken English as if someone is writing a field report.  For example:
“For official record, have no yet violated secure entry host sister vagina.”  Sort of like writing something in a translator in English, translating it to Japanese, and then translating it back to English again.  From what I can tell, the entire book is written this way.  Aside from quotes from other characters in the book and historical figures.  Now, I think Chuck Palahniuk is a genius.  The book Fight Club fundamentally changed my views on society.  His book Rant had probably one of the most clever concepts I’ve ever read.  Choke is my favorite book of all time and a damn good movie.  Pygmy, so far is insanely entertaining to read.  A lot it is sort of like figuring out a puzzle.  I’m constantly asking myself “What the hell is he talking about?”  Three to four sentence later, I figure it out.  I know, it sounds frustrating, but for some reason, it’s not.  After the first couple of pages you start to get the hang of it. 
I’m not really sure what Chuck Palahniuk is trying to accomplish by writing the story in broken English as if it’s a field report.  Maybe it will be revealed at the end of the book.  Maybe he wanted people to really have to think about those little details that readers might pass up.  Either way, it’s entertaining all the same.  It does however, make explaining the book to other people extremely difficult.  When I say “it’s written from the first person perspective in broken English and laid out like a field report”  They look at me like I’m high. 
I’m only 60 pages in and there have already been a couple sections that have made me want to shower afterwards.  But what the hell did I expect from a Chuck Palahniuk book, rainbows and farts? 
Naturally, being in to film making made me try to imagine the book as a movie.  What I thought up, was sort of like an acid trip in fast forward.  Could be fun. 
It might be fun to pick a couple pages and make a scene from it.  Like I said, acid trip in fast forward.  Let me tell you, if someone announced a movie based off of this book, I would line up to watch it at midnight the night it came out.  Partially because I don’t sleep but mainly because it would be something so different.  I would just want to see how they would do it.  I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming though.  Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever see the glorious acid trip in fast forward that Pygmy could be.

So, I’m in the home stretch of Nice Guys Finish Last.  We shot some good stuff last night.  I’m starting to get the feeling that a lot of actors and actresses tone things down a bit too low.  Whenever I’ve told actors to go a bit over the top, I get some really good stuff out of it.  Of course, I could just be lucky.  I think I have a pretty good system worked out.  I try to do everything by the script exactly.  When I feel like the actor is comfortable with the dialogue, I make slight adjustments in tone here and there.  Then, if I feel like I need to, I make adjustments in the dialogue.  When I feel like I have what I want, I tell the actor for the last take to go crazy and to do whatever they want.  It’s worked for me so far.
My next project is going to be pretty big and I’m going to need to shoot it in HD.  Does anyone want to let me borrow $5000 for an HD camera?  By “let me borrow” I mean, “let me steal.”  Because, I probably wont be paying you back.  I think it’s a sound investment though.  If I ever get famous you can tell everyone
“Fuck that guy, he stole $5000 from me!” 
Think about it.  If I become the next David Fincher, it would be the same as if someone told you today that David Fincher stole $5000 from them.  It’s a conversation starter.
“Hi, how’s it going?  Did you know that David Fincher stole $5000 from me once?”
I think $5000 for a conversation starter is pretty cheap.  Even if I don’t become famous, you could say something like
“Some asshole who thought he was going to be the next David Fincher stole $5000 from me.  What an asshole that guy was.  Stupid asshole.”
Anyway, give me money. 
In other news, the spammers hit me pretty hard last night.  14 comments in one night.  That’s a new record.  So, if anyone wants cheap Viagra or V1agra, whichever you prefer, I got the hook ups.