Bloggin' On: Adventures in Screenwriting - Reflections on a Finished Script

Photo Illustration by Lukas Bieri via Pixabay

“The script is what you’ve dreamed up–this is what it should be. The film is what you end up with.” – George Lucas

Well, as I reported yesterday, Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss has entered the last stages of post-production. Up in New York City, my friend and creative partner, Juan Carlos Hernandez and his wife Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez are putting what we hope are the finishing touches on the comedy-drama that I conceived and wrote for their Popcorn Sky Productions, in different iterations, between late spring and early fall of 2019. We had hoped to make it during the summer, but Juan, Adria, and their son Anthony were only able to start principal photography a few weeks ago.

As a result, the film that I wrote with the title Happy Days Are Here Again as a 21st Century tip of the hat to Norman Lear's topical comedies of the 1970s (especially All in the Family and Maude) morphed into a M*A*S*H-like dark comedy-drama that keeps its core story of an NYC family trying to navigate the political rapids of the Trump era without foundering in the depths of partisan divisiveness and vitriol that are part of the American scene in 2020.

The first page of my second revised draft of what was then called Happy Days Are Here Again. The final version is, I have been told, is somewhat different. © 2019, 2020 Alex Diaz-Granados and Popcorn Sky Productions

I've been a writer pretty much since I was a kid in junior high, which is where I earned my first bylines as a guest contributor to Riviera Junior High's student paper, The Ram's Horn in 1979. Since then, I wrote news stories and reviews for my high school and college student papers, script-doctored a friend's screenplay back in the 1990s, became an online reviewer and blogger in the 2000s, and co-wrote my first script (with my friend Juan) almost 11 years ago. Along the way, I've read two books on the art of screenwriting, and, starting early last year, have written or co-written three produced screenplays (A Simple Ad, Clown 345, and - of course - Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss).

“Once you crack the script, everything else follows.” – Ridley Scott

 Writing for the screen - and it matters not whether you are writing a low-budget short that will be seen primarily on a YouTube channel or a 120-page opus produced and directed by a big-name director - is an interesting gig, although it's not terribly glamorous. My job, as I see it, to create a blueprint for a story (whether it's a short drama about parental grief or a funny-but-serious look at our troubled times) that I want to see on a screen, then hand it off to the team that will shoot it.

 “Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot—the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.” – Billy Wilder

As someone who has been fascinated with the process of making movies since the 1970s, I have long been aware that movies undergo a series of changes during production. Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss and, to a lesser extent, A Simple Ad closely resemble my original concepts as I put them down in Movie Magic Screenwriter 6, but the final films are also somewhat different. Sometimes, the changes are subtle and come down to how the actors deliver the lines, as in A Simple Ad. An exchange between a husband and wife which was written with an intent to reflect one character's anger is now the same character's attempt to lighten the mood of the scene in a film that is about loss and grief.

Other times, the changes come about because quite a bit of time passes between the time I send the script and the time when Juan and Adria can actually go and make it, or because the team in New York discovers new themes and ideas that lie beneath the surface of the script that just beg to be added. That's why Juan wishes I could go up to the Big Apple during the production process; he respects the fact that I wrote the screenplay and wants me to be there so we can make adjustments to the script together.  But because I can't easily travel to New York, and because the films we work on together have to be done regardless, Adria and Juan make the adjustments there, but they often consult me or, if they must improvise quickly, at least let me know that they altered the script for X, Y, or Z reasons.

So when I first watch Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss, I am sure that I will see and hear much of what I wrote on the screen. Juan liked the premise of the story, as did Adria and Anthony. They also liked the dialogue a great deal, which is great because this is my first attempt to write a comedy.

My opening credits byline. Photo by Juan Carlos Hernandez © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions 

But I am sure that I'll be pleasantly surprised by the additional material added by Juan and Adria, especially the expanded role for the film's only level-headed character. I can't wait!