A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Screenshot from Movie Magic Screenwriter 6 with a page from A Simple Ad. (Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados. ©2019 Alex Diaz-Granados) Hello and welcome once again to another edition of Bloggin' On , the blog-within-a-blog where I post stuff that doesn't fall under the reviews-or-political commentary content categories of A Certain Point of View. I'm glad to see that you're reading and I hope that you are enjoying my blog. Right now it's early evening in my corner of Florida; right now it's 66℉ (19℃) under cloudy skies. A line of thunderstorms and strong rain showers passed through the area earlier, so our outing to rewatch Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was canceled and we stayed home instead. My Significant Other has been busy doing household chores while I - at her suggestion - took most of today off to, as she says, "sloth." Rainy days almost always sap the energy out of me, so I didn't argue and sat on the couch in the common room and

Hello, everyone! It's Friday, January 3, 2020, and the first weekend of the new year (and new decade) is nearly upon us. In my corner of Florida, it's almost noon, and it's another cool early winter day. Right now the temperature outside is 78℉ (26℃) under mostly cloudy skies, so the light that strains to stream through the window is dim and gray. The high for today is expected to reach 83℉ (28℃) when the clouds recede later, and the forecast says the afternoon weather is going to be almost summer-like. Well, for those of you who are wondering whatever happened to Happy Days Are Here Again, a screenplay I wrote last year for Popcorn Sky Productions, I have an update. My friend Juan Carlos Hernandez, who I met when I signed up for Drama I at South Miami High School in my senior year there, texted me earlier this week and said that he and his team (actress-producer Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez and their son Anthony "A.J." Hernandez) started filming Happy Days Are

Image by  Lukas Bieri  from  Pixabay   I was going to take the rest of Sunday off, but I received a series of encouraging texts from my New York City-based collaborator and friend, Juan Carlos Hernandez, about my recently-completed screenplay for Happy Days Are Here Again.  Juan and I have been working on our most ambitious collaboration to date since he and his wife Adria completed the post-production phase of A Simple Ad in May. As I've said in previous posts, Juan had originally asked me for a comedy rather than what he got in A Simple Ad, which was a brief but poignant rumination about loss and grief. And although Juan and Adria liked the script well enough to devote time and effort into making it into a short film, they still wanted a comedy script from me. This time, though, Juan wanted a longer, more elaborate screen story that included a part for his son Anthony, who is studying drama in college up in New York State. I eventually settled on a situation comedy-

Photo Credit: Pixabay I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker. … But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art. – Paul Schrader After a couple of days of anxious waiting, I finally heard from my friend and writing partner, actor-director Juan Carlos Hernandez, about the revised screenplay for Happy Days Are Here Again.  Juan sent me a couple of texts yesterday; they were not very long or detailed. but overall they were rather encouraging. Basically, he said that he had spent several days breaking the script down to determine how to best interpret it. At first, he had a bit of difficulty trying to understand the third act, but he added that after a second read-through, "I finally got it." I don’t think screenplay writing is the same as writing — I mean, I think it’s blueprinting. – Robert Altman Juan is a guy of few

Map of Cuba. (Credit: Wikipedia) “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 This week has been a busy one for me; since Monday, my focus has been on making revisions to my second original screenplay of 2019, a comedy-drama titled Happy Days Are Here Again. Happy Days Are Here Again is a project that I started working on almost as soon as my filmmaking partners Juan Carlos Hernandez and Adria K. Woomer-Hernandez finished post-production on my first produced short, A Simple Ad. As with that project, Happy Days Are Here Again (no relation to the 1970s-era sitcom) began as a request for a comedy script; however, A Simple Ad ended up be

Well, so now I have two writing credits on my Internet Movie Database page. (Here it is...my modest IMDb.com reference page: Alex Diaz-Granados: Writer ) Last week, my actor-director friend Juan Carlos Hernandez finished post-production on Clown 345, a short comedy film about a young clown (Anthony Fernandez) and his attempt to tell a joke to his parents (Adria K. Hernandez and Juan Carlos Hernandez). It was written mostly by Juan; I was asked to write the "bridge" between Acts One and Three, which had mostly been filmed by the time I came on board the project. Clown 345 is now complete and "live" on YouTube, so Popcorn Skies Productions, my friend Juan's New York City-based production company, has listed it on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), complete with a cast and crew list. For my modest contribution, I earned my second credit as a screenwriter for a produced work in my career. My first one, of course, was for A Simple Ad, an original screenp