What can you do with a weed whacker, a wheeler and dealer and a simple quote about nonsense?

If you are among the nearly 30 Dallas creative teams participating in The Dallas 48 Hour Film Project, you make a movie. According to its mission statement posted on 48hourfilm.com, The 48 Hour Film Project’s goal is “to advance filmmaking and promote filmmakers.” Teams have only 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a four- to seven-minute flick.

At the kickoff event at Excuses Extreme Café in Deep Ellum on June 26, teams drew for their movie genre, received free cases of Rockstar energy drinks and were given the list of elements required for their film — a wheeling and dealing character named either Peter or Penny Knoll, a weed whacker and a line of dialogue: “You’re not making any sense.”

Pugs & Peanut Butter Entertainment, headed up by director of photography Chad Windham and producer Danny Nguyen, is an East Dallas production company that entered the competition.

While many teams scrambled about the room, PPB kept their cool and got their gears turning about the genre they pulled from the stack — cop/detective. Windham said his expectations were “mostly for all of us to get together and have a fun weekend, but we would love to win.”

Although this is the first film contest the crew has entered as a group, they have worked together before on a short called Emmerick and are collaborating on a feature film in Los Angeles with a working title of Why Can’t You Be.

After a marathon brainstorming session at their ExpositionPark studio where everyone agreed people love “bad chicks and bad cops” in a movie, storyboarding and a screenwriting all-nighter by director Juan Francisco de la Guardia, PPB had their plot and script by 8 a.m. June 27.

That was quite an accomplishment considering de la Guardia admitted the day before that “the story is not too clear and I’m not totally sold on some stuff.”

What resulted was a film about two extortive cops who go on their weekly visit to a bar to shake down the bartender. What takes shape around that plot is a bit of grit, irony and crass humor.Nguyen said during the course of the two days, the plot didn’t change but the tone of the movie “pretty much did a 180” going from a serious cop movie to a comedy.

“By the end of Sunday, Juan and everyone were happy how it turned out. It ended up being very successful,” he said. “That’s the whole point of this thing — it’s really all a process.”

As for the other contestants, 48 Hour Film Project Dallas city director Raine Devries said two teams didn’t make the deadline by midnight June 29 and four teams were late. However 23 teams are officially in the competition — including Pugs & Peanut Butter.

Visit 48hourfilm.com/dallas for a list of Thursday's and Friday's screenings. Winners will be announced in the coming weeks.

MORE INFO:

Stay tuned on a video featuring the Pugs & Peanut Butter crew in action on neighborsgo.com.

SIDEBAR: 48 Hour Film Project winners receive:

• A trophy
• The city winner will be screened at Filmapalooza, the official 48HFP Awards Weekend, which will take place for the first time at NAB Show in 2010.
• Each city winner will receive a copy of Movie Magic Screenwriter software.
• Second-round contests: U.S. city winners are eligible for the Panasonic HD Showdown.