A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2023 Popcorn Sky Productions/ADG Books  Hi, everyone.  I am pleased to announce that my friends at Popcorn Sky Productions (Juan Carlos Hernandez, Adria K. Hernandez, and Anthony Hernandez) are wrapping up work on a trailer for my novella Reunion: A Story.  Featuring a mix of motion and still pictures, music, and a short voiceover based on a short section from the novella, this trailer is, as you might expect, a quick but visually powerful promo for the first book in the Reunion Duology.  I watched the "rough draft" a few times after Juan sent it to me via WeTransfer. I liked it, although there was one still photo that didn't look "right." It's an easy fix, Juan says, and he said that the finished video should be up tomorrow.  I'm so excited! I'll share the finished trailer here as soon as it's up on YouTube. 

A screenshot of our GoFundMe page.  Hello, everybody. I just want to update you on the status of our new film, which doesn't have a title yet, so we refer to it as Untitled Sequel to Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss.  As you know, this time the folks at Popcorn Sky in New York City want to make a true feature-length film, with multiple locations, a larger cast, and a story with a running time of around 90 minutes.  This, of course, is a far more ambitious project than our previous ones. So far, we've managed to do four films of varying lengths with minimal budgets and small casts; the ones I've written on my own - at least as far as first drafts go - have two, three characters at most.  The film to which I contributed the least -El Grande de Corona - has a cast of five:  Juan Carlos Hernandez Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez Steve Arons Matthew Martin Ward Natalie Hernandez Clearly, we're not quite ready to compete with Cecil B. DeMille in size of cast or sc...

  A screenshot from the script of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss Hello there, Dear Reader. I’m writing this post because the folks at Popcorn Sky Productions – including this blogger – are starting work on a new film project that follows the characters from Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss into the realm of feature length films. The entire cast of that short film – Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez, Anthony Hernandez, and Juan Carlos Hernandez – who’s also our director – will be back in their roles of Ronnie, Jerry, and Guillermo Ronderos. I will return as well as one of the writers, plus I will be doing double duty as associate producer. While we do not as of yet have a title, much less a complete screenplay, we have a good idea about the story, its themes, and its characters. Here’s how Adria and Juan describe the project: The film is to consider the issues of political extremism (which we satirized in Ronnie) but this time around, let's look at the costs ...

My writer's credit!  On February 9, 2020, Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss made its debut as a YouTube short film. Since then, it has been viewed 1,257 times, which by YouTube standards is not impressive but still is gratifying for everyone involved. Of the three "shorts" that actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez and I have collaborated on, Ronnie has had the most success, not just in the pageviews department but also as far as critical success is concerned. On our film's Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page , we only have two critics' reviews, one by Meg Learner of PersonaPaper, the other by Denise Longrie, a poet, writer, and longtime reviewer who wrote for many years at the now-closed review site Epinions. In her review , Ms. Longrie says this about the premise of a NYC family divided by politics in Trump-era America: These people love each other. Despite their differences, they still care for one another. Jerry brings home treats for ...

Before actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez and I ever collaborated on Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss   and the other two films we've made as a team, he and his wife Adria had already made several short movies for their Popcorn Sky Productions company. JJ in Dobbs was one of them.

I'm still over the moon about Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Wow, gang! Man, it's been an amazing 10 months for me as a screenwriter. That's about how much time since my high school buddy Juan Carlos Hernandez first challenged me to write a two-minutes-long short film for him and his wife Adria to act, direct, and produce. I didn't quite manage to write a movie that brief; the short that is now A Simple Ad has a running time of 3:41, which is nearly twice as long as the requested length. Still, I wrote the script in early April of 2019, and it was uploaded to Juan 's YouTube channel a few weeks later. A relatively short time after A Simple Ad was shared with the world, Juan asked me to write a sequence for a film he was doing in the Big Apple with Adria and their son Anthony (a talented young man who I predict will have a great career on stage and screen). My contribution was modest, but it complemented what ...

Still image from Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Hi, Constant Reader, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On: Adventures in Screenwriting. Today I'll be talking a little bit about the music of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss, as well as a few other tidbits about the making of the short comedy that Juan Carlos Hernandez, Adria K. Woomer Hernandez, and their son Anthony just completed and uploaded to YouTube this weekend. Now, as the screenwriter of Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss, I was not directly involved with the sound design of the 22-minutes-long comedy. That was done in New York City, 1,149 miles away from my corner of Florida; the movie's sound was designed and edited by Adria, who is our female lead and producer. However, because Ronnie was my creative baby, as it were, I did have some suggestions about the film's score, some of which I integrated into the script. When Ronnie...

Illustration by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay Well, I posted Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss on several social media outlets, and so far the reactions to the film that I wrote for actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez have been positive. As of today, no one has written a long, detailed review, but judging by some of the comments I have read on Facebook, Ronnie works as it was intended; it is funny and at the same time it reflects the divisions in the United States during Donald Trump's Presidency. Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez stars as Ronnie, the film's voice of reason in a chaotic environment. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Dayna P. writes: OMG, I was dying! The mom was the best. I didn’t think she was actually going to say “fuck,” I laughed out loud when she did. ...drinking wine out of a regular glass... it is so funny. I see you got your John Denver in too. Norma D. writes: Wonderful! Terrific character portrayals, dialogue, and score ~ the concept...

Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez in Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Well, Dear Reader, it's official.   Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss is finished and uploaded to YouTube. The long journey that began late last spring with a first-draft script titled Happy Days Are Here Again ended late yesterday afternoon when the film's director, Juan Carlos Hernandez, fixed a last-minute glitch (a digital artifact had messed up the next-to-last shot, and Juan wanted it gone) and posted it onto the video-sharing platform owned by Google. Ronnie is my third produced collaboration with Juan, an old friend from drama class back at South Miami Senior High in the 1980s. I haven't seen him in person since, oh, 1989, the year he left Florida to pursue a busy and successful career as a character actor in New York and other places. (You've probably seen Juan Carlos Hernandez on TV or at the movies; he has played many roles in movies, ...

Well, here it is, at long last. After several rewrites and a few unavoidable delays, Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss has made the transition from page to screen. Directed by Juan Carlos Hernandez, produced by Adria Woomer-Hernandez, and written by Yours Truly, this is, as Juan likes to call it, "a film about today." Credits: Starring: Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez   as Veronica "Ronnie" Rondero Juan Carlos Hernandez   as Guillermo "Guille" Rondero: Anthony James Hernandez  as Jerry Rondero Directed and Edited by: Juan Carlos Hernandez Produced by: Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez Sound by: Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez Written by: Alex Diaz-Granados, based on his original screen concept, Happy Days Are Here Again

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...

Habemus Titulum! Photo Credit: Juan Carlos Hernandez. © 2020 Popcorn Sky Productions Hi, there, Dear Reader, and welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the no-reviews, no-politics section of A Certain Point of View where I talk about writing, random stuff that crosses my mind, and other things that don't fall into the reviews or politics categories. It's Tuesday, February 3, 2020, and as I write this it's pretty late in the afternoon. If I were working at an office on a 9-5 schedule, I'd be less than an hour away from my daily "going home from work" time. Presently, the temperature in my nook of Florida is 74℉ (23℃) under mostly sunny skies, and that was the forecast "high" for the day. The low tonight is expected to dip to 49℉ (9℃), and as the week progresses, we'll be experiencing a warming trend as the temperatures begin to rise up to more Florida-like levels. Well, it looks as though the second complete screenplay that I ...

Illustration Credit: Pixabay Hello there! Welcome to another installment of Bloggin' On , my blog-within-a-blog where I don't write reviews or dabble with political commentary. It's early afternoon on this Monday in my little corner of Florida, and the weather outside isn't frightful; the current temperature is 66℉ (19℃) under cloudy skies, and the low tonight is expected to reach 55℉ (13℃). It was supposed to rain this morning, but there's no evidence outside that any precipitation fell here, so that part of the forecast was off. My friend and filmmaking partner Juan Carlos Hernandez updated me over the weekend about the progress of our film Ronnie and Her Two Nincompoops. (That's the working title Juan chose; I don't know what he and our producer - and Juan's wife - Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez will choose.) The "shooting" (principal photography) phase is over, now Juan, Adria, and their son Anthony are doing post-production work: editing,...

Portrait of the Screenwriter As a Young Man, circa 1986. (Photo Credit: Peter C. Townsend) Hello, there, Constant Reader, and welcome once again to Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View where I don't "do" reviews or the occasional bit of political commentary. It's Wednesday, January 22, 2020, although because it was a three-day weekend due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, it feels oddly like it's Tuesday...and a spectacularly cold Tuesday at that. Right now (it's mid-morning as I write this) the temperature outside is 36℉ (3℃) under sunny skies, although the wind chill lowers the feels-like temperature to the freezing point. The temperature will rise a bit as the hours pass; the forecast calls for a high of 60℉ (16℃) and some cloudiness, but overall, by Florida standards, it's going to be  c-c-c-cold out there. Yesterday I got (via text) an update on our comedy film project from actor-director Juan Car...

Screenshot from Movie Magic Screenwriter 6 showing dialogue from Happy Days Are Here Again. © 2019 Alex Diaz-Granados Hey, there, Constant Reader! Welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the no-reviews, no-politics zone of A Certain Point of View where I talk about (or, if you're literal about such things, write about ) topics that do not fit neatly into those categories. Today is Friday, January 17, 2020, which by coincidence is the 29th anniversary of the start of Operation Desert Storm (the U.S.-led military campaign to liberate Kuwait from its Iraqi occupation) back in 1991. It's already early afternoon here in my corner of Florida, and it's a nice day outside. Presently the temperature is a mild 77℉ (25℃) under mostly sunny skies; the forecast for the area says that's as warm as it will get today, and the low is expected to reach 62℉ (17℃). For those of you who are following the progress of Happy Days Are Here Again, Juan told me yesterday that he...

Photo Credit: Pixabay Hello and welcome once again to Bloggin' On, the blog-within-a-blog section of A Certain Point of View where I don't do either reviews or political commentary. It's Wednesday, January 8, 2020, and it's morning here in my corner of Florida. It's a cool morning; the temperature outside is 52℉ (11℃) under partly sunny skies. The forecast for today calls for a high of 66℉ (19℃) and partly sunny skies; the temperature will probably drop tonight to 51℉ (10℃) with no precipitation. According to one of our local TV stations, this will be our last cold day this week because a warming trend starts tomorrow. Well, Happy Days Are Here Again just finished principal photography; most of the acting-heavy scenes have been shot, especially those involving Anthony Hernandez and his father, actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez. Anthony is available only for a short time because he has to go back to college soon, so (per what Juan tells me) all of his scene...