blew the dust off some old VHS tapes...
JPD Films started in 1994, taking its clever three-letter acronym from the last names of the trio who directed such classic movies as "A Date with Death," "Chimera," and "A Day in Matt's Cup." The names Jaeger, Philleo, and Duginski were synonymous with fine theatrical creations.
Whats that? You have never heard of any of these instant classic flicks? Well, that is because they really only existed in the minds of my closest friends and me. We produced over two hundred silly videos, epics, stories, and school projects (and yes, we actually got credit for some of them) strictly for our own viewing pleasure. What started with three individuals quickly grew into a cast of... dozens! And technically speaking, it still carries on today!
The EVERCON Tales are an annual skit put together by the owners of the convention, and I get to direct my friends in hilarious sketches once again! It's a tradition that I hope we continue to do forever! Filming on location at the incredible Kelley Castle in Tomahawk Wisconsin, a sacred place that only opens it's doors on ONE fateful weekend a year to boot!
Of course, over the years, JPD molded into far more than just the three last names that the letters were famously built from. For most of my teen years, my best friend Jay Johnston joined our ranks, and we went on to create far more than just silly skits for our friends. We made film history! Going ghost hunting on late nights, recording long conversations, and overall chronicling our idiotic adventures became commonplace on most weekends. See! We WERE good kids!
Whether it was Jay stabbing and eating Schwartzman's back, interrogating classmates, or getting naked in the art room, we knew what the requirements were for top-of-the-line comedy and action! I became pretty comfortable holding the camera and directing the talent, and Jay was the most versatile talent we could ask for! JPD became Jay Punching Demons on a weekly basis! And now I am tasked with viewing and capturing hundreds of hours of video projects that have definitely brought in a wave of nostalgia and creativity!We always loved to film on location, so seeing the way our little hometown has changed over the last thirty years is quite an eye-opener. We are OLD! Well, I am anyway. Watching all of these videos made me also realize that we were about a decade too early for content like this. Man, we would have made a killing on Vine or YouTube! Sigh, oh well; either way, we had a blast, and now the memories and creative concepts we created are fuel for writing projects! I would imagine a few of our JPD projects would make excellent books or short stories!
When I wrapped up the editing and publishing process for 3 Men & A Mountain, I was pretty quick to decide what my next project would be: rolling a bunch of creepy stories and experiences into a ball and writing a book based on most of them! really cool radio will be part fiction and part-ish non-fiction. Many experiences that we just could not quite explain need to be shared, and I figured this medium will be a perfect way to get our stories out there!
really cool radio (always lower case to show how cool and wreckless I am) trails the events of four teenagers on a gravelly path to an old, abandoned, and rumored-to-be-haunted house. It tracks the actual situations that we encountered while also taking place on a country road just outside our hometown! Names, places, and details have been blurred, but those who were there know the true story! Now it is up to me to recall them all (it helps to have video!) and put them into writing for you! At this point, I am about fifty pages into this project and hope to have it in beta readers' hands by January or February 2027!
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