#michael patrick jann

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Lindas de Morrer, 1999.

aqui apenas legendado.

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Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) Michael Patrick Jann

June 6th 2024

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"Drop Dead Gorgeous" (1999) - Michael Patrick Jann

Films I've watched in 2025 (10/?)

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Alma & The Wolf - Official Trailer (2025) Ethan Embry, Li Jun Li, Jeremie Harris

Dir: Michael Patrick Jann Star: Ethan Embry / Li Jun Li / Jeremie Harris

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. My mom gave me this 9-mil for my 13th birthday. Yeah. I'll always remember what she put on the card, "Jesus Loves Winners". That's why no matter what I do, I aim to win.

Drop Dead Gorgeous, Michael Patrick Jann (1999)

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THE STATE Breakin Hearts & Dippin Balls NYC shows announced!

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The Spiderwick Chronicles follows the coming-of-age story of the Grace Family, as they move from New York to Michigan and into their family’s ancestral home.  Upon arrival, the family not only uncovers mysteries hidden inside their great grandfather’s Spiderwick Estate, but also discovers a secret, fantastical world around them. 

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Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999, Michael Patrick Jann)

23/02/2024

Drop Dead Gorgeous is a 1999 black comedy in which Kirstie Alley and Denise Richards play a mother and daughter willing to do anything to win a beauty contest.

Amber Atkins is a teenager who signs up to participate in the competition so she can follow in the footsteps of her idols, television journalist Diane Sawyer and her own mother, Annette, a former contestant.

Janelle become deaf during her rehearsal, luckily she is an expert in American Sign Language, so she claims that, despite her dropping out of the pageant, she has never been happier.

After learning of the costume situation, Lisa leaves the show to give her approved costume to Amber, who performs her tap dance routine to a standing ovation.

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Kirsten Dunst as Amber Atkins DROP DEAD GORGEOUS (1999)

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2025 BUFF - Talking with Michael Patrick Jann

Green’s Party is proud to be covering the 2025 Boston Underground Film Festival, which kicked off last night at the Brattle Theatre (Cambridge, MA).  I’ve been lucky enough to cover the festival since 2016. Here is my 2025 BUFF coverage so far.

One of the highlights of this year's BUFF and the winner of the Audience Choice Award for Best of Fest Feature was Alma & The Wolf, which had its World Premiere at this year's BUFF. I got to speak with director Michael Patrick Jann at the fest, while he was attending and did a Q&A with his son / actor Lukas Jann. MJP got his start as a cast member of one of the all-time great sketch comedy groups The State, and he actually directed every episode of their MTV show from 1993-1995. I consider The State one of the all-time great sketch TV comedy groups of all time, so meeting and talking to him was a big deal for me! In 2023, he and his fellow State members reunited for some shows and I was lucky enough to cover their show in Medford, MA. Comedy Gold! MPJ has since directed a number of TV shows and films, most notably the criminally underrated mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous. A day after I got to see Alma & The Wolf's premiere at BUFF, I got to chat with him about it at one of the afterparties.

MPJ doing the intro at the BUFF premiere of Alma & The Wolf

Me: You've gone on to direct a great deal of film and television since The State. I've always felt like there's a connection between comedy and horror. Do you think that a lot of that short form comedy you did with The State paved for some of the scares you've done since then?

MPJ: Yes, there's definitely the connection of like - everybody knows that comics always talk about when they land a joke that they killed, they killed the audience. There is also an aggression associated with comedy, like grabbing the audience and shaking them a little bit. There is a similar urge to go - UUUHH [he fakes hitting me] to both jab and hold onto in a way that a meditative drama really doesn't. Or like a medical procedural doesn't. But there's also this: both of those genres are considered to be a dark art. If you're creating a piece of art, where it's comedy or drama, if you're doing laugh out loud comedy you want to be making art involving process. Like process is the most important part. But there's the double-edge sword in comedy in that the process doesn't mean shit unless it results in a laugh. So you want to be a process-oriented artist but you also know that in the end you have to get exactly this reaction. Horror is in a lot of ways the same way. Certainly Alma & The Wolf is a very process-oriented movie in terms of the narrative structure in the way that it works. But also it has to work like this - BAM [he fakes hitting again]. It has to come up with this exact result or it doesn't work. So you're coming at it from both the process end and the result end at the same time as an artist, which is difficult and unusual, and a very particular skill.

Me: I wouldn't call it a comedy, but there actually were some funny parts in it. And it was really great to see you cast your old State-mate Kevin Allison in it.

MPJ: He's fantastic!

MPJ (far left) onstage with The State on 10/21/23

Me: Oh absolutely. And going back to The State, you look at that group: Michael Showalter has gone on to direct some fantastic films, the fact that David Wain has too and the fact that you all came together for some reunion show was so exciting. Could there be some more reunions, whether it's more shows or a film or a series?

MPJ: Yeah, there could be. We did, just last month in San Francisco, we did a staged reading of a script that we wrote, which is a musical starring both The State and The Muppets. We performed a reading of it in San Francisco last month. It's really funny and we got a lot of people like the Henson Company is interested in doing it, and we are looking to try to make that. But we are continuing to try to create things together, which is fantactic. We've been together since we were 18 years old and now we're all in our mid-50s and we're still all working together and doing things together which is phenomenal. And I don't think we'll ever stop. The only difficult part is that we all learned the hard way is that there's no way to make any money off The State, there's like too many of us. So whenever we get together, it really has to be about the love, because it definitely isn't about the money.

Me: Yeah. I mean that tour was amazing because there was nostalgia of the old sketches, but it was also funny to see you all now playing teenagers and whatnot.

MPJ: Yeah, I mean what an incredible blessing it is to get together with everyone and go on the road together, travel together and be on stage together. To get up onstage and do that as a group in front of an audience to feel all that energy from the audience to us together, then we feed off the audiences energy and then we pass it along to each other and it's almost like a really incredible feeling of communion. When we get off stage and we're all together it's like we're 18 again in some ways.

Me: I'm going to try to skirt around spoilers with Alma & The Wolf, but I felt like there was a real Stephen King influence.

MPJ: Oh for sure.

Me: One of the things he addresses in a lot of his work is the effects of alcohol on parents and the idea that a parent not being a good parent is scarier than any supernatural force. I felt like there was a lot of those elements coming into this movie in a big way.

MPJ: Yeah, for sure. Like you said, without giving away spoilers, the movie is an interesting mix, that's definitely influenced by Stephen King there's no question about that, but it's an interesting mix of a lot of different horror influences that sort of grade across each other because the main character is a fan of horror. You've seen the movie, so you know how it all twists up at the end. But the point of the movie is exactly what you said, there can be the horror of monsters and there's the horror of the supernatural and there's the horror of the unknown, but the truest horror imaginable is what this movie is about. It's a portrayal of true horror beyond monsters, beyond the supernatural, beyond witchcraft, beyond The Wicker Man and all that stuff. There's true horror that lurks underneath that. And beyond true horror is the nature of true madness, which is the other thing that the movie is about. One of the great things that we did with this movie is that we made something that is really dense that you can watch a bunch of times, because it's going to be a streaming movie. Once you watch it once and you get to the end, you say "Oh my God that's what it was!?!". It has a key, a Roman à clef in a way. Once you see that you can go back and see how those things are braided backwards in the movie, and realize the movie is kind of a meditation on the nature of true madness. Maybe specifically in men.

Me: In terms of what's next for you, can you say?

MPJ: Yeah, what I was doing today, the nice thing about coming to BUFF is that I took the opportunity to come here because my partners and I raised money to do another movie that we'll shoot this Fall, a comedy shooting in Martha's Vineyard. So I was out scouting Martha's Vineyard today. I'm really excited because I've made a couple of horror movies in a row, they are horror movies but they're also sort of commentaries on horror movies. But this new one is a very funny comedy. I'm very excited to work on it to get back to the sort of roots and do something that's really crowd-pleasing and really laugh out loud. It'll really light up a room this movie.

the moderator, Lukas and MPJ at the BUFF Q&A

Me: Your son Lukas was with you at the Q&A. He had a very significant supporting role in the film. It seemed from the Q&A that you both enjoyed working together on a professional level not just personal. Could there be another film that you direct him in?

MPJ: I would love to. I'm lucky enough to be the first person to spot his talent. And the first person to know how to cast him well. He's really good in this movie, and I was able to tailor the role a little bit to him, because I know him really well. I couldn't be more excited to stand up there and do the Q&A with him! This is the first festival he's been in, he's really young, he just graduated from college. This whole world is really new to him. To be able to stand up there and share that with him is really special!

Alma & The Wolf is set for a limited theatrical release before it's streaming release this Summer.

Sadly, this now concludes my coverage of the 2025 Boston Underground Film Festival! It's been another great year and I want to thank the entire BUFF team for allowing me to cover their fest once again!

For info on 2025 BUFF

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Make Your Passion Project Now With Filmmaker Michael Patrick Jann.

Writer/Director/Producer Micheal Patrick Jann (“Drop Dead Gorgeous”, “The State”, “The Good Doctor”) and I are holding a live webinar called “Make Your Passion Project Now” on Feb. 18th. 6pm Pacific. Live with a spirited Q&A and VIP pop ins. Sign up here. 100% of the ticket sales go to Red Cross LA to help the victims of the LA fires. Graciously hosted by our dear friends at the Filmmakers…

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Organ Trail: Terminator of the Old West

Talking about Organ Trail and whether it really works or not as Western Horror.

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Drop Dead Gorgeous 1999 | dir. Michael Patrick Jann

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Drop Dead Gorgeous 1999 | dir. Michael Patrick Jann