John Q. Phats Entertainment

First off, I would like to apologize in advance for this one.  I went on sort of a Harry Potter binge this weekend and watched all five movies over the course of two days and my brain is a little scrambled.  I can’t believe that after five movies, Ron still hasn’t made a move on that Herminy (did I spell that right?  Don’t really care.) chick.  Christ man, what do you need, a written invitation?!  Also, there’s clearly not enough drug use for this to be a movie about a bunch of kids.  Although, I’m convinced that, the divination teacher has got to be on something.  I wonder if there’s a deleted scene where she’s smoking out Dumbledore?  In all seriousness though, for what they are, those movies are amazing.  They are all really well done.  Pretty much every aspect of those movies is at the very least, great.  Anyway, sorry again.
In my last post I talked about an old short film that I did titled The Wake Up.  It really got me thinking about my first short film, Firework De La Muerte.  What a pile of crap that short film was.  It was roughly an eight page script with the same joke told four times.  Really, the joke wasn’t funny the first time and it sure wasn’t funny the 4th time.  For that one we shot in a department store which shall remain nameless, without asking anyone.  We just sort of got somebody with a red shirt and went with it.  That was gorilla film making to the extreme.  To be honest, nobody really cared.  If I was an employee making minimum wage, I don’t think I would really care either.  I think the worst part about Firework De La Muerte is that when it was done, I thought it was great.  But then when other people watched it, they didn’t laugh.  At first I was in denial.  Like there was something wrong with everyone else.  Finally, I realized that it really did just suck something awful.  It was kind of a slap to the face.  But it was necessary.  I remember the first time I watched it, without my head up my ass.  I just sat there watching it in absolute shock at how bad it really was.  After watching it, I actually said out loud.
“O my God……  That sucked.”
There is no place to see Firework De La Muearte, nobody will ever see it.  It belongs in the depths of a hard drive, where nobody will ever find it.  I think I might of actually deleted it off of my external hard drive.  I do still have the prop firework though, made of cardboard, that egg crate stuff you put on a mattress, and duct tape.  The prop was actually kind of glorious, I have to say.  It was a giant somewhat rocket shape covered in duct tape.
While Firework De La Muearte is an awful short film, it really was something that I needed to do, to get where I am.  Now, Censored is playing in festivals all over the place, I’m close to finishing Do Nice Guys Finish Last, and I have a lot of big and exciting projects on the horizon.  This sort of leads in to my next topic.  I finished up fancy new laurels for Censored:
      

Technically, the SoCal Film festival hasn’t happened yet, but we have been selected.

It’s been one disaster after another recently.  Disasters, I can deal with, however, they cost me money.  First, my garage broke.  So I had to get that fixed.  Then my garbage disposal broke.  Weird, but whatever.  It did turn in to kind of a fun adventure installing a new one.  Then, my dishwasher broke.  I still haven’t fixed it.  I imagine it shouldn’t be that difficult.  It’s probably just like replacing a garbage disposal only it’s way heavier.  Fun.  Then, today, while cleaning out my closet, my vacuum broke.  I’m kind of wondering what’s going to be next.  Seriously. 
I bet your asking, why am I reading this bullshit?  Isn’t this a web site about film making?  Yeah, it is.  But when you’re an independent film maker, costs such as these effect your “budgets.”  Censored is playing at midnight on June 12th ith the San Francisco United Film Festival.  I’m still unsure if I’m going or not.  Might be fun, but with everything breaking, I’m not sure if it’s possible right now.  Anyway, if you’re in that area, you can buy tickets here:
San Francisco United Film Festival Tickets
P.S. You know how everyone always finds one random thing in a clutter filled closet?  My random thing was 8 swords.  No clue how they got there.  It gave me a couple ideas for possible scripts though.  Plus, I might be able to sell them to fix some of my broken shit.

I’m not exactly sure what this means, but you read it right.  Censored is now playing at the San Francisco United Film Festival.  I think that’s a good thing.  I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to make it to the showing or not.  I don’t want to go if shooting for Nice Guys Finished Last isn’t all done.  The showing is going to be sometime in mid June.  I should be able to pull it together by then.
The restaurant scene is done (thank Christ) and all of the other scenes are pretty straight forward and simple.  We still have to shoot a scene where one of the girls jumps on Caine and makes out with him.  I told the actress that it’s really less of a kissing thing and more of a mauling his face with her tongue sort of a thing.  I always feel awkward about doing kissing scenes.  I think it’s a lot to ask.  I did it for Say Something and The Train Wreck.
When it really comes down to it though, a kissing scene really isn’t a big deal.  I stressed about the ones that I have done, but really when it’s all said and done it’s 5 seconds of skin touching.  It’s really not a big deal.  As long as everyone is professional about it, it really isn’t a big deal.  Maybe I should just stop worrying so much about them.  I’ve always sort of shyed away from them when writing, I should probably stop doing that.  I guess if I want to make this bigger, I should start walking and talking like a big time company.  And a big time company would have no problems with asking actors to kiss on camera.  Of course big time companies also pay their actors, but screw them, that’s not how I operate.
I’m watching Big, with Tom Hanks.  The memorable piano scene just finished.  Big is one of those movies that never gets old.  Big is also one of the movies that makes me remember why I like movies so much.  Big is essentially a comedy.  But really, what makes it so good, is the fact that it has a pretty deep message associated with it.  Basically, growing up can make people lose touch of what’s really important.  All of that aside, Tom Hanks was fucking brilliant in that movie.  He really does, pull off playing a kid really well.  Plus Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp) from That 70’s Show has a small part in it.  I’m serious, she plays Tom Hanks secretary Miss Patterson.  A little useless movie knowledge for you.  I totally want a pimp ass apartment like Tom Hanks has after he gets that job at the toy company.  With a trampoline and bunk beds and all that cool 80’s shit in it.
Penny Marshall directed Big and then went on to direct Awakenings and A League of Their Own.  Looking at IMDB, she directed one Episode of a TV series called A League of Their Own.  Shit, I don’t remember them turning that in to a series.  I can’t see it without Tom Hanks.
“There’s no crying!  There’s no crying in baseball!”
Tom Hanks is one of the few people on this earth that has a funny yell.  Nobody could have delivered that line better then Tom Hanks.  Anyway, the episode was called Dottie’s Back.  I think a better first episode would have been Evelyn’s Back.  She was the one that you find out died at the end.  It could have been a zombie series.  That would have been awesome.  I’ve never seen a zombie TV series before and giving it an obscure reference such as that would have amused me to no end.  Actually, rereading that, I see that’s a shitty idea.  What the hell is wrong with me?  I feel I’ve gone too far.  I’m just going to go.
I’ll keep you guys updated on the festival.