Writing

The screenwriter and director in me is drawn to character-driven stories, scripts that avoid dramatic acrobatics, formal adventures, openness to the imaginary, and auteur cinema expressed within established genres.

At the start of my projects, a matrix image and a character emerge, never a plot or a theme. I discover them later once the characters gain strength. I can only write what I visualize, which is why I consider myself more of a screenwriter-director than a pure screenwriter.

My stories can be set here and now, in distant countries, long ago, or in the near future; all of them, according to the professionals who have read them, stand out for their brevity and sobriety, for their contained dramatic intensity, and for a certain lyricism.

I tend to rewrite the sequenced treatment a lot. As Hitchcock said, “Once the script is written, all that remains is to add the dialogue.” Of course, it worked in his case, but not all screenwriters and directors have the same needs.

As long as the foundations are not solid for me, it makes no sense to write a dialogued continuity. Unlike many authors, I do not advocate writing many versions of the script. An “overwritten” script leaves less space for staging, to the point that sometimes the films are mere filmed scripts.

Years ago, I read something in Elia Kazan’s copious autobiography that caught my attention. The filmmaker, who had read the original manuscripts and typescripts of playwrights on their way to fame (Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Clifford Oddets, William Inge), came to the following conclusion: “when a play is good, it is good from the start.” Until then, I naively believed in the infinite powers of rewriting. For some time now, I have shared Kazan’s conviction.

I have discovered that in my case, one must not seek but wait. If I search eagerly, it is a futile effort produced by a rational will that inhibits. When the contours of the story, its structure, and above all its tone and rhythm, finally take shape, the work becomes intense and the course, clear.

As an author, I observe changes in my work. Increasingly, the implicit montage of the scenes guides my way of constructing them. On the other hand, in the most recent scripts, women and ecological reflection are protagonists. Although I live in a large city, it is usually nature that inspires me, the city very rarely.

My scripts have been selected to participate in workshops or meetings such as Madrid CreaLab, Casa de América, Equinoxe, la Maison des Scénaristes, the SGAE, the online market of the Cannes festival, or Cinenido.

The time has come to turn them into films.