Ideas can come from anywhere. I once wrote an award-winning screenplay based on a newspaper article I came across. In the case of CEREBRAL, my most recent feature film, there was a popular song with the line “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” As a college professor, I heard students telling each other this, as if pop culture carried deep philosophical truths. But I remember thinking that it wasn’t always true. I knew of people who survived near death experiences and were never the same again. And pondering these things made me want to research and write about it. As a former journalist and as an academic, I knew research was important. I never write anything without researching first. I learned that the song line was based on a quote from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who said what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger (among other things, of course). Nietzsche was speaking societally, but someone “Americanized” it and made it a mantra for the individual. So I set out to do a story about someone who undergoes a near-death experience and when he recovers physically, he grows worse psychologically. And it turned into a powerful psychological thriller story.

Obviously, the protagonist is the most important character. So I spend as much time as I kind filling out a character and making sure I know as much as I can about this person as possible before I start creating the world in which he/she lives. Usually, the people around the protagonist are next, even before we really focus on the antagonist. But I truly believe that character and story are closely related. As I told students in a writing course I was teaching, suppose you are writing and the person you are writing about suddenly finds a wallet on the street with $1000 in it. What happens next? Obviously, there are many possibilities as to what might happen. They may keep it. They may turn it in. They may borrow it until the next pay day. They may return the wallet but empty, saying that’s how they found it. To know what happens next, the writer needs to know who that person is. Is he rich? Poor? Good-hearted? Heart of gold? A police officer? A single mother struggling to get by? What happens next totally depends on the character, his or her values, situation or personality.

The next feature is one I’ve written called “A.I. Dad.” While working on CEREBRAL, I decided that the teenaged actress playing the daughter was super talented and I wanted to write something where she could show off her talent. So I created a character that was an older, childless man who became a father late in life. Knowing he probably wouldn’t live long enough to see his daughter live for long, he decides to start documenting his life with all his life’s work, letters, recordings, memories, and academic work (he’s an academic). Sure enough, he passes away while she was in high school and on her 18th birthday, she gets this gift of a hard drive with her father’s digital life. While in college, she meets a boy who is a computer science phenom and they decide to make an A.I. version of her dad.

I created a production company called TexMex FilmWorks to showcase sophisticated stories with realistic characters. In Texas, it’s not unusual to see Hispanic doctors, lawyers, college professors, business owners, political and civic leaders and this reality should appear in our media, beyond the Hollywood stereotype of gang members, maids, and all recent immigrants. So I tell sophisticated stories with characters who happen to be both Latino and professional/educated/functional members of society. I think our media should reflect the reality in terms of character depictions. I believe this enough to position myself as a filmmaker that champions this strategic type of story-telling.

So far, I have produced three feature film projects. Two of those three I have written. Two of them I have directed. One of them I’ve produced, written, all directed. All of then I have edited. I have written projects I wouldn’t mind selling. But for the most part, I write something I plan to produce one day. But I’m not married to producing my own projects. I produce them because nobody else so far wants to produce these stories that I want the world to see. I’d be thrilled to find these collaborators and work with them, freeing me up to tell my stories better.

There are so many challenging moments. Always. Deal with it. Figure a workaround and keep going. One frustrating moment I had once there was no workaround. My actress left. I needed her. This was the ONLY day I had access to this location. We HAD to shoot two scenes there. She decided we were shooting just one and then left. For hours the crew sat around while others went out looking for her, calling/texting her and all her contacts. She left at 5 p.m. We finally got her back on the set at 1 a.m. and had to shoot until 3 in the morning. Her costumes matched in the continuous scenes but not her hair. I wasn’t happen about it all but we shot it, finally. 

The story is key. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is access to tools. When I went to film school in the 1990s, cameras shot film. Editing was done on platforms with physical cutting and splicing. Now, anyone with an iPhone and a computer can put out a film. That’s what changed. Formats and technology has changed. Writing now can be shorts or 10-series episodics. But good writing is still good writing and good story-telling is still good story-telling. I doubt that will ever change. 

I think everyone is different and every journey is unique. What worked for me probably wouldn’t work for anyone else or most people. The truth is, whatever works is what works. The film industry isn’t kind. There is a lot of rejection… so many no’s. So, if you’re going to do it, do it because it’s something you are passionate about and you want your voice to be heard. And don’t wait for permission. Get your story out there any way you can that does your story justice.