John Q. Phats Entertainment

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.”

Last night I went through the first cut of Nice Guys Finish Last and made notes on it for Gabe.  I was up pretty late last night.  I slept right through my alarm this morning, which is pretty amazing.  Considering my alarm plays ultra loud metal off of a CD.  I have to say, I was pretty harsh on the edit.  There’s some stuff that I liked and some that I didn’t.  It is what it is.  If Gabe disagrees with me on something, we’ll talk about it and figure it out. 
It’s been awhile since I’ve uploaded something new hasn’t it?  I would really like to try and put something together soon.  I have a quote book of random quotes from friends of mine.  Sometimes I’ll flip through it for inspiration.  For some reason, it always makes me think of quick shorts.  Maybe I’ll do that tonight.  Actually, the quote book inspired both The Train Wreck and Bad Girlfriend.  Caine’s whole speech in Bad Girlfriend about Chris’s girlfriend was something that a friend of mine actually said to someone.  I’m not joking.  It’s always a lot of fun doing those.  It’s just a small crew that usually films something in one night.  Often times, what we filmed gets edited that same night.  We usually start around 8PM and finish editing around 5AM.  It’s always a good time.  I should do something like that while Gabe is making the edits on Nice Guys Finish Last.  Why not, right?

It seems like the hardest thing for me when writing a script is starting.  I don’t know why, it just looks like a very intimidating task.  I think part of it is a fear that I’ll sit there and stare at a blank page for 3 hours with nothing to write.  That hasn’t happened to me once and really it probably wouldn’t be that bad if it did.  So, I should probably just sit down and do it.
I need to do the credits for Nice Guys Finish Last.  That’s something I can work on if the script isn’t working out so well.  I always thought doing credits was kind of fun.  There’s one section that I always have a blast with.  The Special Thanks section.  I can put anything I want in that section.  Once, I listed my cat.  Just because I could.  I always put Gabe’s band Brokedown in there.  Most of the time Gabe plays a pretty big role in the short film so I guess that’s justified.  I’ll put my sister in there sometimes, just for the hell of it.  I have some fun with it.  I usually just list them in some generic font.  I think for Nice Guys Finish Last, I want to do something cool looking though.  I’ll have to see what I can come up with.  Looking at pictures and videos online is actually kind of inspiring.  Ending credits aren’t something you usually think about, but people have done some really cool stuff with it.  I’m finding a lot of stuff on text effects and formatting.  I’m kind of having graphic design school flashbacks.  I had this teacher named Mr. Hanson who was my typography teacher.  That dude was crazy, but his typography was pretty damn amazing.  He used to show us stuff that taggers did like on bridges and walls and stuff.  It was pretty cool.  For NGFL, I think it’s all about finding a logo and a font that matches the context.  We’ll see what I can come up with.

I wrote two new scripts today.  I should probably write more often.  I’m not sure if these two will ever get made, but it was fun to write them all the same.  Since Easter is coming up, this is going to be a busy weekend for everyone, so we probably won’t have any new content up until sometime late next week.  I think somehow, my 3 daily visitors will survive.  Gabe is building an LED light for our next big project.  I don’t know how he’s doing it.  Part of me doesn’t want to ask.  I hear some of the strangest conversations at work.  Our boss, his name is Jed, is a walking Wikipedia.  Today, Gabe asks him
“Hey Jed, you know where I can buy LED’s?” 
And Jed had a fucking answer for him.  Who knows shit like that?!  It’s inhuman.  I wonder what Jed would say if I asked him
“Hey Jed, did Uwe Boll masturbate last night?”
Probably something like
“Twice, once to a victoria secret ad and once to a picture of his Mom.  He was crying while doing it.” 
I’d believe him too.  Jed is more powerful then that creepy bitch that makes the door creaking noise from The Ring.  But yeah, I want to get started on Nice Guys Finish Last and I would like to shoot one of the scripts I wrote tonight.  The first of the two scripts could be done pretty easialy.  All I would need to shoot it is all my equipement, a fan, and a woman who’s morally bankrupt.  I could tell you what it’s about, but the story is probably funnier this way.
Gabe wants to do some green screen tests.  Apparently it’s easy as hell to do.

Right now, it’s kind of a strange eerie calm before the storm that’s about to occur on Friday and Saturday.  I’m going to be running around trying to finish up shooting Nice Guys Finish Last this weekend.  I gave Gabe the footage that I had so far.  It’s weird to let this go like this.  I’ve never had someone else totally edit a short film of mine before.  I think it’s for the best though.
So, I found out that the reason we can’t shoot on Sunday is because the main actress is trying out for American Idol.  Why does American Idol hate independent film makers?  What the hell is their problem?  It really makes me glad that I blogged to God Tuesday to kill the people responsible for tieing my actress up on Sunday.  No offense if you like that show, but that show blows so freaking much.  I tried to watch American Idol a couple times to see what all of the fuss was about.  I would rather punch myself in the face then watch a season finale of that show.  I know true fans of the show who Tivo it and just fast forward through all the crap, just to get to know who won.  I do give them credit for being able to stretch out a 20 second long punch line for 2 mind numbing hours though.  That’s kind of impressive.  Hey, if you like American Idol, that’s cool, but I just don’t get it.  I know, you would expect me to mention Ryan Seacrest at some point in an American Idol rant, but I hear that guy gets more tang then the astronauts.  I would probably douche myself up too, if it got me that much trim.   
Moving along, I figured something out and I can make the scheduling work.  I guess if it were a fight between me and American Idol, American Idol would have won this round and it will probably win the war.  American Idol will probably be around for another 30 years or so.  Whereas, I plan to get famous next year and go out in a glorious blaze of cocaine, brandy, and hookers.

P.S. I was having way to much fun with the tags on this one.