John Q. Phats Entertainment

Among the various tools in Final Draft are several reports that can be ran and printed out. Most are rather useful to get a feel for which characters are getting the most attention in the script or where most of the script takes place. One however looks like it was just added purely for my amusement. The profanity report. That’s right, a report not only detailing the occurrences of profanity, but on what page in the script they are on, and which character speaks them. The following is a list of the profanity used in my script and how many occurrences of it there are:
“Ass” (10 occurrences)
“Asshole” (5 occurrences)
“Bitch” (9 occurrences)
“Bullshit” (3 occurrences)
“Cock” (4 occurrences)- All spoken by one character.
“Damn” (12 occurrences)
“Dick” (21 occurrences)
“Fuck” (54 occurrences)
“Fucked” (4 occurrences)
“Fucker” (9 occurrences)
“Fucking” (24 occurrences)
“Piss” (1 occurrences)
“Pissed” (1 occurrences)
“Pussy” (8 occurrences)
“Shit” (29 occurrences)
“Tits” (1 occurrences)

I’m a little disappointed by the low occurrences of “shit” and “Bitch.” However, I am proud of myself for including a “tits.” Plus, I think 54 occurrences of “fuck” is something to be proud of. I mean 54 in a two hour span is one fuck every 2.22 minutes. Go me.

I tried something a bit different tonight. I’ve done a video blog. I’ve often scoffed at video blogs, but holy hell, it’s much harder then it looks. Most of the video the bottom portion of my face is cut off. Actually it was a style choice. That’s a lie. I’m just a shitty camera man and was too cheap and lazy to set up a tripod. I promised content, not good content. So, here it is, my video blog premier.

JQP Entertainment Video Blog- 10/4/2011 #1
Please note that if you want to check the video out tonight, Vimeo may still be converting it.

Wait 20 minutes and check back later. If 20 minutes later it’s still not available, read this line of the blog again.

You may have noticed a lack of posting lately. I apologize, but I’ve been working on a movie script. You can understand when the options are work on some new material or bs about old material. I’ve been spending 3+ hours a night working on this script. Lots of late nights and lots of rough days that followed because of those late nights. I do still have a day job that pays the bills. I finished a first draft last week and have been working on nothing but revisions since then. I have read this script at least 50 times. I read it, probably 4-5 times a day. It’s getting to the point where I am tempted skip pages because I have memorized them. So, I’m taking a break tonight and getting a fresh look at it tomorrow. Although, it’s hard not to think about it. Even when I’m not working on it, I’m thinking about what I can change. Give me a minute without any mental stimulation and my mind will wonder to the script. I’m not complaining, it’s actually kind of exciting. My editing sessions are getting shorter and shorter which means I’m getting closer to a final draft. I’ve written movie scripts before, but I’ve never really tinkered with them to the point where I have a final draft that I’m comfortable with.
I think the funniest thing about my edits is that I actually had to have a night where I went through and filtered out about 90% the “fucks” and variations of it. I don’t know what it is, but when I write, I tend to over use the word “fuck” to an insane degree. I’m totally fine with using it in a script but I think it has to have some sort of build up. Like you have to justify using it, instead of throwing it in there randomly as a word filler. I also tend to over use phrases in scenes. I don’t know if my brain just gets stuck on it or what, but there was a scene where I wrote “God job, bud” like 9 times from 5 different characters. I’ll try to write here more often, or maybe I’ll try to get Steven writing. I don’t know, but something is going to happen.

I am extremely behind on my entertainment quota for the week. I haven’t watched any movies, seen the new episode of Dexter or really watched or worked on much of anything since my last post. I told myself that I would work on something tonight. But as you can tell from searching the archives, that’s usually a bitter lie. I’m working on a couple of scripts right now and both of them are at sort of exciting stages.
When I last left Red Hood, she was in the tail end of a bloody battle. I always wondered what fight scenes in actual movie scripts looked like. Does the writer describe each punch and kick? Or is there just some sort of text alluding to a fight scene? Or is there something that references another document (maybe a video) that describes the fight scene in detail?
The following is a small passage from a fight scene in Kill Bill:

“INT. HOUSEWIFE’S NICE HOME – DAY
The white woman and the black woman FLY into the center of the living room, CRASHING onto her coffe table in front of the sofa.
These two wildcats go at each other savagely, TUMBLING OVER the couch, clawing and scratching all the way, landing together on the plush carpet.
The HOUSEWIFE
KICKS The Bride, sending her CRASHING backwards into the small table where the phone, a note pad (for messages), and the mail is kept.

The Housewife scrambles up on her feet, but is caught by a

FLYING TACKLE from behind by The Bride that sends them both into……..
An ornamental iron and tempered-glass bookcase that has framed family photos, display toys, some African art, and a collection of painted commemorative plates depicting the negro experience in the American military. Starting with a plate featuring Cripis Atkins in the revolutionary war, negro troops in union blue during the civil war, Buffalo soldiers fighting Indians, the Jim Crow troops of the first world war, the colored troops of world war two, Korea, Vietnam, and finally Colin Powell….The Bride and The Housewife CRASH THROUGH all this reducing everything to rubble.”

I have to admit, the detail in this is kind of intimidating. Tarantino spends more time describing the surroundings then the actual fight itself. It’s sort of a mixture of describing it kick for kick but leaving it very open for interpretation. This is probably the best way of doing this. I’m guessing Tarantino did it this way because he wanted to leave certain aspects of the fight scene open to the imagination of those helping out on the project, maybe a fight coordinator or a stunt person or maybe even the actors. Or perhaps he just didn’t really care that much about certain details and wrote whatever the hell he wanted. He talks about kicks, but doesn’t really go in to much detail about it. What type of kick is it? Where on her body does she get kicked? I suppose these details don’t matter. We know the action and what the result is:

 “The HOUSEWIFE
KICKS The Bride, sending her CRASHING backwards into the small table…”

Perhaps that’s all you need. But I guess every writer has to find their own way of doing things. As I stumble through my Red Hood fight scenes, my only hope is that I can write something that others can read and make sense out of.
All this talk of fight scenes has me thinking about where I left Red Hood. I’ll probably finish writing that scene when I get home.

Often how I write is a little out of order.  Let’s say for example that I’m writing a 100 page movie.  Often times, I’ll get to page 65, and then write something that corresponds with something that happened on page 25 that I haven’t written yet.  So, I go back to page 25 and fill in the gap.  I started doing that last night and realized how ass backwards that is.  As unnatural as it seems, it’s the workflow that seems the most natural.  I’m actually very excited about writing that scene tonight.  I’ve built up a great moment of tension.  My only problem is that I sort of like having these intense moments with no real payoff at the end of the scene.  Nothing really cheesy like a cat jumping out of a trash can or some shit like that.  I’ll give you an example.  There’s a scene when Red Hood has just started becoming a vigilante.  She’s walking through the park when she sees one of the main villains in the movie sitting on a park bench staring intently at a little girl.  Red Hood freezes and isn’t really sure what to do.  I draw it out for a bit of an awkward stare and then the villain just gets up and walks off.  That’s it.  Shit, looking it now, it seems pretty lame.  O well, it’s a first draft.  I guess the payoff is that later on in the movie the two have a big confrontation.  I won’t give it away, but it’s kind of awesome. 
I’m having mixed feelings about what I’ve written so far.  Some scenes I think are amazing and others are beyond horrible.  I’m just going to power through this 1^st draft and hope I can fix the parts I don’t like later.  My page count should pass 80 by the end of tonight.  I can’t confirm this, but I think this is the furthest I’ve gotten on the Red Hood script.  I’m aiming for 120 pages.  So, I’m getting there.  I may send it off to festivals or I may send it off to producers.  There’s a good possibility I’ll do both.  I haven’t really decided what to do with it yet.  I know that I still have a lot of work to do.

This is something that kind of bugs me.  The final episode of True Blood won’t air this weekend because Monday is a holiday.  What the fuck is that shit?  Like the episode has a right to a three day weekend because it works so hard?  I don’t even understand that.  This is not the first time they’ve pulled this shit either.  They did it earlier this season and I was absolutely shocked when I checked my DVR and it wasn’t there.  Here I was thinking “I get a three day weekend and a new episode of True Blood?  This is going to be awesome.”  I’m not sure what airing an episode entails, but I picture it as someone hitting a giant, basketball sized, glowing play button.  It’s probably much more complicated then that, but still, screw this holiday shit.  Jesus HBO, you may as well let the terrorists win.

P.S. Someone recommended that I boycott the final episode.  Obviously, they are fucking stupid.  That show is amazing and I’m sure the wait will be well worth it.

So, I did it.  I deleted the three crappy pages that I wrote on Red Hood and replaced it with 1.5 pages of awesome.  It wasn’t so bad and I feel like I can move on from here.  I sort of got stuck at the end of this last scene, but at least I left on a good note.  I’m kind of excited, I get in to the really good stuff soon.  It’s hard for me not to write something funny here and there.  That’s ok to do in a horror. 
Right? 
Right, and you know why, because I said so and it’s my script.  I mean, I’m not writing Schindlers List here, it’s an over the top vigilante flick.  Let the audience have a little fun with it.  Either way, I’m having fun writing it.  It’s great to finally get my idea on paper.
On top of my script updates, I would like to talk about the movie Real Genius.  Apparently, they are doing a remake of it.  At least that’s what it looks like via IMDB and various other internet sources.  In celebration of this, I figured I would discuss the classic 1985 version staring Val Kilmer.  Warning, there will be spoilers.    
Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) is accepted to an insane program for geniuses, focusing around developing some ultimate bad ass laser.  Mitch is all proper and shirt tucked in and shit.  He is partnered with Chris Knight (Val Kilmer) who’s the type of guy that would show up to a math class in a bathrobe.  When asked to do some crazy math shit, would yawn, scratch himself inappropriately, and then lazily stumble to the board and mathematically prove there was no Jesus while sending a text message.  They didn’t have text messages back then, so I don’t know, he would send a Morris code?  Fuck, who cares, you get the point.  Anyway, hilarity ensues.  Now in the beginning of the movie we’re lead to believe that Mitch is smarter than Chris Knight.  We soon find out that this is total bullshit.  While Chris Knight fucks beauticians, Mitch falls in love with some crazy OCD broad that power sands her floor at 3AM.  In fact Chris pretty much does everything better than Mitch and he’s cooler.
Lets move on to Kent.  Kent is the tool of the film and boy is he ever a tool.  The only thing is, he’s not very threatening.  I’ve never been able to take a grown man with braces seriously.  Why nobody punches him in the face is beyond me.  You can tell just by looking at him, he’s a little bitch.  He wouldn’t do anything, he would just run off crying.  Then when you passed him the halls his bottom lip would quiver and he would avoid eye contact.  At one point they put an antenna in this guys mouth and through a microphone convince him they are Jesus.  Here it is revealed that Kent masturbates.  I could have told you that before that scene.  That guy couldn’t get laid if he were a rug.  Still, hilarious all the same though.  After Mitch and Chris build the ultimate bad ass laser, after Kent fucks up their first one, cause he’s a dick.  The bomb is dropped that the laser is actually being developed as a weapon!  No shit?!  I’m sorry, but I assumed it was a weapon from the beginning of the movie.  What the fuck else are you going to do with a laser that blasts through concrete walls and statues and shit?  You’re going to blow shit up with it.  Mainly people.  As you can imagine Chris and Mitch are pretty pissed about this.  So, they hack the Gibson (kudos if you understand this) and use the laser to pop a bunch of popcorn in the main bad guys house to the point where the house splits in half.  Seriously, that’s what happens.  It’s pretty awesome.  
While I’m curious to see how they remake Real Genius, part of me want’s them to leave it alone.  It’s a great movie as is.  Who knows though, maybe the remake will be even better.  It’s old enough and wasn’t popular enough for enough people to remember it.  So, I doubt they’ll piss off much of a fan base if they screw it up.  And really, I wouldn’t care if they screwed it up.  The 1986 version would still be good.

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.

So, either we have just 2 years left before the planet destroys itself or like the Y2K hoax nothing is going to happen and life will go on.  Either way, there’s nothing I can do about either of those so it’s time to have some fun and get down to business.  Unless of course John Cusack picks me up in a limo.  Then we can outrun earthquakes and lava.  That scene was absolutely ridicules and I loved every God damned second of it.  Just turn off your brain for movies like that, you’ll love them.  I liked that movie as a mindless action flick.  I got exactly what I expected.
With Do Nice Guys Finish Last all set and making its attempt at a festival run, I’m ready for my next project.  I plan to start 2010 right.  My resolution was to write a script whenever I get an idea.  I had way too many ideas last year that I’ve now forgotten because I never wrote them.  Sometimes they are entire long short films, other times they are just quick scenes.  I actually do really enjoy writing, but the hardest part is getting started.  So, no matter how bad or small the idea is, I am going to stop what I’m doing and write a script for it immediately.  We’ll see how that goes as I seem to get groups of ideas.  Hopefully I can keep up with myself.
Ellen Sandler is doing a seminar on January 23^rd in Los Angeles at The Writers Store.  I’m seriously considering going.  I really like her book.  Only thing holding me back is that it’s $150.  I could be spending that cash on my next short film.  Who knows though, this class might push me in another direction entirely.  For $150 I suppose I could find out.  I’ll keep you guys updated.  It could be a fun Saturday. 

Happy 2010 everyone.  Hopefully you all have a good year.

So, we are still waiting on the judging for Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Again, we gave 2 versions of the short film to 5 people and told them to pick which one they liked best.  We are still waiting on their final word.  Maybe we will have it by the end of today.  Then, we will be done and I will send it off to film festivals.  It’s nerve racking having other people look at your short film for the first time.  O well, that’s why we make them, right?
I’m reading A TV Writers Workbook by Ellen Sandler still.  This book is unbelievable.  I’m loving it so far.  It really does put writing in to a process that’s not so daunting and intimidating.  Plus she’s a writer at heart, so she knows how to put an entertaining twist on everything she says.  I remember a long time ago, I read a book on short film making.  I forgot what it was called or who wrote it.  It had loads of great information in it, but my God was it boring to read.  It was like reading VCR instructions.  I’m actually kind of excited whenever I read A TV Writers Workbook.  I want to know what she has to say.  I’m taking my time with it and actually doing the exercises in the book as I go.  Sometimes I read chapters over again, just to put the information to memory.  Even if you don’t want to get involved in writing for TV, I would recommend it.  It’s a great writers guide and the techniques can be applied anywhere.
Now on to a random fact that I discovered last night.  I’m really trying to get my girlfriend addicted to Dexter.  So, I’ve started watching season 1 with her.  My girlfriend loves True Blood.  She can’t get enough of it.  We’ve stayed up till like midnight watching episode after episode of True Blood.  Which for me is early, but for her is insanely late.  Anyway, we are watching Dexter and she says “Hey, that guys is on True Blood.  He plays Sam Merlotte.”  Low and behold there he was, Sam Trammell, the actor who plays Sam Merlotte.  He was on the second show of the first season and he was one of Dexter’s victims.  He was an alcoholic that would go from city to city drinking and driving.  Every single time he would get too drunk and hit someone he would just pack up and move to another city.  So, if anyone ever asks you “what True Blood character had an appearance on Dexter in the first season?”  You can say Sam Trammell.  Not that anyone will ever ask you that.  I suppose calling it a useless fact was quite justified.

I think we are done with Do Nice Guys Finish Last.  Finally, right?  I say “think” because we may still have a little bit more work to do on it.  I’m still not sure though.  I tried to stick with that amateur film maker style and make the transitions simplistic.  They were simplistic, yet thought out.  I really liked it.  That short film has sort of grown on me.  I wasn’t really all that crazy about it when we had the first couple of edits, but I think it’s a funny short film.  I think I can get it in at least 1 festival. 
I’m reading a new book, A TV Writer’s Workbook by Ellen Sandler.  I haven’t really read that much of it, but I have to say, it’s extremely entertaining thus far.  I probably shouldn’t have expected anything less from an experienced writer.  She has all these great stories about her experience in the industry.  I’m going to do the exercises in the book.  I have a really hard time writing sometimes.  Plus I haven’t read a single book on it, so this works. 
I watched the first episode of Dexter, season 4 last night.  I wish I could have caught it on Sunday when it first aired.  That first episode was awesome.  That part where they altered the intro was great.  
Censored will be available in the Shorts section for viewing soon.  I figure it’s done with its festival run, so we can post it now.