Categorie archief: Autobiografisch

Brainfood: A JK Screenplay (synopsis)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Recently, I released a precious childhood amateur film of mine called Brains For Breakfast. If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to check it out by clicking the icon below.

It’s still a dream of mine to one day expand this short horror-comedy into a full-length feature. To that end, I’ve developed a treatment for a screenplay. If you’re interested in getting involved in any way, I’d love to hear from you – just reach out at jeponline@hotmail.com.

BRAINFOOD — Treatment

Genre: Comedy / Horror / Science Fiction / Action
Setting: The Netherlands (alternative universe) – Bergen, Heiloo, Alkmaar, Schermer Region

Tagline: The ultimate drug in the galaxy has been found… and they want it.

LOGLINE
In an alternate Netherlands where alien encounters are routine, a disgraced psi-soldier must rejoin his disbanded elite unit to stop a violent race of interdimensional drug-hunters from stealing the most powerful psychedelic ever created.

SYNOPSIS

A Violent Return
In a parallel universe version of the Netherlands – an English-speaking, militarized, right-wing nation used to alien visitors – an aggressive alien race known as the Atomics breaches into Earth via a ‘Dimension Traveller’ device.

Primitive in appearance – some resemble lizards, some skeletons, some monkeys and the leader – Taurus – a bull –.the Atomics wear long dusters and wield antique-looking rifles. They land in the dunes near Bergen, killing a dune ranger and parasitizing another using a leech-like creature that implants a mind-controlling worm through the ear.

On their way to their concealed base, they murder a police officer, triggering a national military alert.

General Glorious, the army chief responsible for alien containment, recognizes the race instantly. The Atomics were here two years ago, on a drug-harvesting mission for Netherweed, and escaped with their stash despite heavy casualties inflicted by the elite Psychedelic Unit, a special-forces team of psi-sensitive soldiers.

A Broken Hero
One of the Psychedelic Unit’s finest, Max Crunch, has spent the past two years at home in the small rural village of Schermer, crippled by PTSD. He feels alienated, mocked by locals, and increasingly distant from his girlfriend Nina. His psychiatrist has given him an ‘anchor’ technique to keep him grounded during flashbacks, but his trauma remains unresolved.

When the government cuts off his benefits and Nina leaves him, Max reluctantly answers the army’s summons. General Glorious reveals that the Atomics have returned and the Psychedelic Unit must be reassembled. If Max helps, he’ll receive permanent paid leave afterward. Reluctantly, Max agrees.

Reforming the Psychedelic Unit
Max reunites with the scattered members of his old team:

• Captain Jimmie Lombardo – alpha-male, tough, impatient, the unit’s brash leader.
• Henry ‘Cowboy’ Waterman – laconic sharpshooter in a cowboy hat.
• Steve ‘Suicide Steve’ Hoskins – fearless, volatile, and racist and fascist tendencies.
• Thomas ‘Tank’ Larson – the team’s powerhouse
• Olaf ‘Bulldog’ Braat – sniper with perfect accuracy

The group once used the substance Daylyrium, enabling psychic attunement and interspecies telepathic tracking. But this time, Max can’t make a connection at the scene of the cop killing – the Atomics are clearly using psi-blockers.

With telepathy off the table, the squad turns to old-school detective work: Find the drugs, find the aliens.

The New Drug
They discover that eccentric chemist Dr. Schnobel has invented the ultimate psychedelic, dubbed Entheogen, a liquid that dissolves the ego and induces cosmic unity. Rejected by corporate drug monopolies, Schnobel distributed product through two major dealers, called Frans Hario and Teeg Brown.

Unbeknownst to humanity, Alien scouts monitoring Earth’s drug trade identified Entheogen as the most valuable substance in the galaxy. In response, the Atomics sent a forty-soldier strike team to harvest the drug and abduct its creator.

Two Raids
The Psychedelic Unit and the Atomics both converge on the dealers:
• At Hario’s home, a chaotic gunfight erupts. The squad kills all Atomics on site and captures Frans.

• At Teeg Brown’s, the Atomics strike first and abduct Brown without resistance.

Interrogation leads both sides to the same destination: Dr. Schnobel’s lab.

Ambush by the Terrifying Five
Taurus anticipates pursuit and dispatches the Atomics’ elite hunters – The Terrifying Five – to ambush the Psychedelic Unit. The squad barely survives the devastating encounter, but Schnobel is abducted and brought to the Atomics’ commandeered villa base in the forests of Heiloo.

There, Schnobel is forced to teach an Atomic chemist the formula for Entheogen, while the villa’s parasitized owner serves as a puppet caretaker.

The Oracle of Bergen
With leads running dry, Max suggests visiting The Oracle of Bergen, a powerful psychic buried waist-deep in a forest hill, clad in a Hawaiian shirt and aviator shades, flanked by two similarly dressed psychic companions.

The Oracle reveals:
• The Atomics are master chemists from Atom X, a devastated world stripped of natural resources.
• Another alien race gifted them the Dimension Traveller to scavenge resources from other worlds.
• The Atomics’ return, and the showdown to come, is part of a cosmic design.
• Their leader is Taurus, the same figure responsible for Max’s trauma.

Max’s PTSD surges at the mention of Taurus.

But the Oracle also gives the squad the Atomics’ exact location.

The Assault on the Villa
The team launches a coordinated three-front assault:
• Max and Steve attack through dense forest.
• Jimmie and Cowboy approach from a rear field.
• Tank and Bulldog hold the front to intercept escapees.

Fierce firefights rage as both teams carve their way toward the villa.

Schnobel completes the Entheogen formula, but Taurus prepares to flee. He releases the Terrifying Five once more. The squad manages to kill them, but Cowboy falls in battle, enraging Suicide Steve into a berserker and foreigner hating rampage.

Taurus escapes with the Entheogen sample and formula, fleeing in the same van the Atomics used upon arrival. Bulldog manages to plant a tracker before Taurus escapes.

Showdown in the Dunes
Max takes the tracker and pursues Taurus alone. In the dunes, Max is attacked by the mind-controlled dune ranger. Back at the villa, Jimmie kills the leech-creature controlling the ranger, and the ranger dies instantly. Max continues the chase.

Taurus reaches the Dimension Traveller, a lift-like mechanism atop a dune. Before he can signal home, Max confronts him and a traumatic flashback hits:

Two years earlier, during the first invasion, Max and the squad pursued Taurus to a similar base. Among the team then was Max’s younger brother Patrick Crunch. Patrick was parasitized and attacked Max, who was forced to shoot his own brother. Taurus laughed as he escaped with stolen Netherweed.

Back to the present. Both characters draw their guns and Max blows Taurus his brains out.

A Gift for Atom X
At the Atomics’ base on barren Atom X, Taurus appears to call home. But it’s actually Max holding up Taurus’s severed face to the camera, mimicking his grunt. The Atomics activate the teleportation system.

Instead of Taurus, the bag of C4 appears and detonates. The Atomic base is obliterated.

Enlightenment on the Lawn
Max returns to the villa. Dr. Schnobel lies dying, but hands Jimmie one final vial of Entheogen:

“Take it together. This is enlightenment in a bottle.”

Jimmie proposes sharing the drug with the last surviving Atomics they captured. Steve objects, but the others agree.

On the villa lawn, surrounded by the bodies of friends and foes alike, the five surviving members of the Psychedelic Unit sit with five captured Atomics. They ingest the Entheogen together.

As the purple sky stretches endlessly above them, they gaze upward, united in a moment of pure transcendence.

For the first time, they truly understand: they are all one.

A JK Classic Re-Release: Brains For Breakfast (2000)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

On my YouTube channel, Jeppy’s Video Circus, I usually post short videos in three categories.

The first is pop culture features, like Schwarzenegger’s 100 Greatest Kills and Ranking the Top 100 Beatles Songs.

The second is experimental shorts, such as Passenger and Light Parade.

The third category is amateur movies I made during my childhood, including A Bad Trip and Nicky and Mugs.

I’ve just released another one called Brains For Breakfast and this one might be my favorite.

The Amateur
The unfinished video was shot in 2000, about halfway through my five-year stretch as an amateur filmmaker.

That period began in 1998, when my buddy Jean-Marc and I took a two-week videomaking course in Charme, France, taught by the Amsterdam-based Open Studio. They taught us the basics of filmmaking: camera work, directing, editing, screenwriting – the whole package.

The following year, I shot a number of shorts with my friends in Heiloo, including Nicky and Mugs and A Bad Trip. Many unfinished projects from that time still live in the dusty archives of my desktop.

In an upcoming short called Dreaming of HeilooWeed, I plan to edit those fragments into a medley of our unfinished amateur films.

In 2000, we created what I consider the highlight of that era: Brains For Breakfast, which is now available on YouTube.

That same year, I also traveled through India and Nepal, where I shot a two-hour travel movie.

In 2001, my friends and I spent three months in Thailand, where I filmed another travel documentary – though calling it a ‘travel movie’ doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s part Jackass, part comic meditation on backpacking. I plan to edit it into a half-hour YouTube version next year, titled 2001: A Thailand Odyssey.

By 2002, my movie career had started to fade, and I moved on to other things. I made a few videos that year, but nothing particularly noteworthy.

That is, until 2020 – when I picked up filmmaking again as a hobby.

About Brains For Breakfast
Brains For Breakfast can best be described as a horror-comedy, heavily inspired by Peter Jackson (Bad Taste) and Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead).

The story follows weed dealer Jimmie Lombardo, who suddenly finds himself in the middle of an alien invasion, one with the sole purpose of stealing Dutch weed.

What I love most about it is the humor. There are some genuinely funny moments, along with a few surprisingly effective scenes, like the one where an alien shoots a guy on a bicycle from a balcony.

I also have a soft spot for all the amateurish mistakes: jumping the axis, catching the cameraman’s shadow, or scenes that shift from early evening to near-dark in the blink of an eye. All of it adds to the charm and hilarity.

Since the film was never finished, I decided to create an ending by adding a short ‘making-of’ segment, showing us trying to pull off one of our great ‘special effects’.

I’m happy with how it turned out, and I hope you’ll enjoy it too. Check out Brains For Breakfast below on YouTube!

In Brussels (2)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

“The mind is not only an internal phenomena, but an external landscape thing as well. When you walk around a city, it is located in your mind and you’re creating every external object you observe in this cityscape. Those objects wouldn’t be present without you. They don’t exist in the world, they exist strictly in observers.”
― Nicky Mento, ObserverWorld

[22-05-25] The road was becoming familiar by now. As I approached Belgium, five towers loomed on the outskirts of Antwerp, overlooking the highway. What a terrible, unnatural way to live, I thought. But I suppose, in this day and age, that qualifies as prime real estate.

Other landmarks slipped past on the A12: the Duvel brewery, the gleaming geometry of the Atomium, and of course, the beautiful cathedral that greets you as you enter Brussels. I was in the city for the second time that week – this time for an interview with the head of the Belgian antitrust authorities, which, in the world of M&A, is no small thing.

It was a week before my 45th birthday, and I felt good. Energized, even. Ready to explore this engaging city once more. The interview went well, and afterward, I ducked into a café to get some work done. Later, I made my way to De Brouckère Square again. But instead of stopping at the Metropole like last time, I went to the UGC cinema to watch Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.

I’d noticed Tom Cruise’s face of posters scattered across the city when I drove in. In this eighth – and possibly final – installment, he was truly up against the impossible: defeating a rogue artificial intelligence that had seized control of the internet.

The film wasn’t perfect, it dragged on in parts, but the finale was spectacular. The airplane sequence was a genuine triumph. It also tapped into one of the most pressing threats facing the modern world: the drift from information war to potential nuclear conflict. So kudos to Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie for pulling it off.

Luther had the last word, and it was a hopeful one: there are countless possibilities ahead, and we can choose well: not just for ourselves, but for others. “Nothing is written.” A message that harmonizes beautifully with quantum physics – and fittingly so, given this city’s history. In 1927, the world’s leading physicists gathered at the Metropole on De Brouckère Square to grapple with the implications of their discoveries.

They didn’t phrase it in those exact terms, but the idea was present: the universe arises from unmanifested potential, and it is consciousness – expressed through living beings – that brings it into form, shaping reality within the space-time field they themselves create.

In the film, the AI, known simply as The Entity, can calculate the probabilities of human choices, predicting the future with uncanny accuracy. To defeat it, the characters must make wildly improbable decisions, thereby evading its forecasts. That concept stuck with me: What improbable choice should I make? Should I invest everything into Free-Consciousness and try to get the platform off the ground?

I wandered into a sushi restaurant to think it over. The waiter greeted me with a nod and showed me to my table. I felt a bit like Robert De Niro’s character, Noodles, in Once Upon a Time in America, being led to a bed in the Chinese opium den – where he proceeds to dream the second half of the film into existence. Or so it seems. Only my opium was sushi and cola from an unfamiliar brand.

But I was there to dream. To dream about life, about work, about writing and movies. The week before, I’d come to a realization: I have too many passions. And by trying to do them all, none of them is really going anywhere. I started Free-Consciousness to bring a small spark of awareness to a world in decline. But if I want it to succeed, do I need to go all in?

To help answer that question, I brought along a trusted companion: the I Ching, or Book of Changes – one of humanity’s oldest living oracles. For more than three thousand years, this ancient Chinese system of divination and wisdom has helped emperors, sages, and ordinary people navigate life’s complexities. While traditionally understood through classical philosophy, new interpretations suggest the I Ching might be an early interface for the consciousness field; a symbolic system for engaging with probability patterns and glimpsing potential futures.

My question to the book was simple: Is it okay to dabble in all my hobbies, or should I focus on just one and fully commit?

The system revolves around 64 hexagrams – six-line figures made up of either solid (yang) or broken (yin) lines. Each hexagram represents a universal situation or process. I took three coins from my wallet and cast them six times to determine which lines to draw.

The result was Hexagram 53: Chien / Development. And it was exactly what I needed to hear.

The text read:

‘The image of this hexagram is that of a tree growing high on a mountaintop. If this tree grows too quickly, without properly rooting itself, it becomes vulnerable to the wind and may be torn apart. But if it takes time to establish strong roots and is content to grow gradually, it will enjoy a long life and a lofty view. Human beings are no different. While we often crave rapid progress – immediate achievement of all our goals – we must eventually come to understand that the only lasting progress is gradual. Chien urges you to accept this truth and shape your thoughts, attitudes, and actions accordingly.’

Word. Free-Consciousness is like that tree. It needs time to root before it can rise.

In Brussels (1)

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

“You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It’s the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that we got here, but it’s just there, it’s a little different.”
― Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction

[14-05-25] Jesus, Brussels again. I’ve been making this godforsaken pilgrimage for over a year and a half now — a regular descent into the bureaucratic underworld — ever since I signed on as a freelance journalistic gun-for-hire for some lean and hungry M&A startup out of Belgium. Side hustle to my main gig as Chief Editor for the more ‘respectable’ Dutch M&A outfit.

I checked into a hotel that looked like it hadn’t seen a fresh sheet since the Euro was introduced. A tight-budget startup means no minibar, no frills, no apologies. I scouted the bathroom for survival tools — wound up dumping the garbage can and using it as a makeshift ice bucket. Cold water from the shower, the poor man’s fridge. Cracked open a beer. Sat by the window and watched the Vlerick Business School across the street where I would attend an event later on – like a man waiting for the electric chair.

This city… it pretends to be something, doesn’t it? Capital of the European Union, epicenter of bureaucratic posturing. The flags are everywhere, waving like they know something we don’t. And the police — too many of them. Not the fun kind either. The serious, jaw-clenching, armored kind. I had the creeping suspicion war was sneaking in through the back door. Putin’s slithering shadow stretching over Europe, and these people — god bless them — are busy sipping wine and debating organic cheese subsidies.

We’re about one autocratic handshake away from the world catching fire, and no one’s really ready. Not here. Not back home. The Americans? Jesus, we’ve got that orange carcass still stinking up the joint. The man’s a threat to civilization, and I don’t say that lightly. But dictators don’t die quietly. They collaborate. And when they do, history tells us what comes next: fire, blood, and desperation.

Still, I get by here. Brussels is manageable for a Dutchman with a functioning liver and low expectations. The French is thick in the air, but there’s an international wash over it all. In M&A circles, at least, the Belgians tolerate us — maybe even prefer us to their own Walloon kin. Some speaker at the conference said Flemish dealmakers would rather do a deal in Amsterdam than in Liège. Culture clash, he said. Closer to the Dutch. I nodded. We’re all weirdos in tailored suits.

But under the gloss? This city’s bleeding. Homeless people tapping on your windshield at red lights, begging for spare change while banks loom overhead like glass castles. The façades look slick, but peer behind the curtain and you’ll see peeling paint and ignored rot. Still, Brussels feeds you. Every kind of restaurant. Every shade of hunger. Less charm than Antwerp, maybe, but more bite.

After the conference, I drifted toward the ghost of the Metropole Hotel at Brouckère Square. Closed for renovations. They say it’ll open again later this year. Last time I was here, I snapped some photos — a kind of spiritual homage. You see, in 1927 this place hosted the Solvay Conference — Einstein, Bohr, quantum mechanics, the whole mad circus of theoretical physics. And I plan to return in 2027, one hundred years later, to write where the debate has gone since. An essay. A novella. Something unhinged but honest. Because guess what? The issue is still far from settled.

That thought spiraled into another: Free-Consciousness, my pet project. My Frankenstein. I launched the site last year after seven long years of mental spelunking. Wrote the big one — my theory on consciousness and reality. Put it out there. Hit ‘publish’. Thought the gods would not take notice. They didn’t. And that’s the rub. The writing is the easy part. It’s the screaming into the void that eats you.

Nobody tells you how much blood promotion takes. Daily work. Daily hustle. I’m not doing that. I admit it. I’ve got too many hobbies, too many dreams, and too little interest in turning my brainchild into a full-time marketing campaign. So it sits there. Like a loaded gun on the nightstand. Waiting.

But I keep moving. Blogging keeps the rust off. And video — that’s the new itch. I’m starting to get a taste for it. No production machine yet, but what’s coming down the pipeline is damn good. Trust me. There’s energy there. More momentum than Free-Consciousness, for now. But I haven’t given up on either. Not yet.

Even if no one reads, clicks, or shares — it’s worth doing. Soul in the Game, as Taleb says. Not skin. Soul. You do it because the act is holy. You put your guts on the page and make it sing. I bring that same madness to everything — journalism, blogging, my family, my cats, my dreams, even my juggling. Yes, juggling. Try it while lucid dreaming. It’ll change your whole view on reality.

Later that night, the pull of divine intoxication brought me to Beer Central. Oh man. The Belgians. Say what you want about the country, but these motherfuckers can brew. 333 bottles on offer. I tried four: Floreffe, Dirty Talk, Gouden Carolus, and something I can’t even name anymore. After that I stumbled back to my crusty hotel, half-watched an episode of Andor, and blacked out somewhere between galactic rebellion and existential fatigue.

Brussels. Beautiful, broken, bloated Brussels. I would be back soon. The madness continues.