My life as a 15 year old Latino boy

Tomorrow I go back to work.

So on my two month vacation I finished Not Dead Yet (I'm going to talk more about that soon) and threw it out to the world. I started a script and abandoned it, I started a Pushing Daisies which I plan to finish in time for Disney, and I thought up a new idea.

There's just not enough time to do all the things I need to do. I never did write up the proposal for journalism class I planned to put together, mostly because I was distracted by episodes of Blind Date.

I do have a tendency to drop scripts when they get too tough. I had this idea about a character with superpowers and some major social anxiety. The problem is no matter what I did I could never get the plot to work. Every page felt like garbage because I didn't believe in it, and if you don't believe in it the script won't be very good. So I'm dropping it until I figure out how to solve my plot problems.

Then the other night I was thinking about what sets me apart from other writers and what kind of individual experience I bring to the screenwriting industry. Just one thing: I'm a middle class white teacher of poor Latino kids.

Whenever people find out what I do for a living they always say either "Ooooh like Freedom Writers!" or "Oh, like Dangerous Minds!"

Sometimes they'll say I'm just like Michelle Pfeifer! One guy, when I told him I teach in South Central, asked how I liked teaching Ebonics.

Yeah I don't really like talking to racists, asshole. Besides, my kids speak Spanglish. Get it straight.

Anyway, those movies are all well and good but not horribly realistic. Most movies about teachers in the ghetto are about some white teacher who comes into a classroom where the kids are out of control and turns them around through his or her wacky methods.

Yeah that happens about never.

I don't go to my kids' homes and try to convince their parents they should care more about their children. I don't spend half my salary on supplies. When I go home, I grade papers and I think about my lesson plans, but I don't stay awake at night dreaming of how I can change their lives.

That doesn't mean I don't care. God, I care. I gave one little felon my cell number and told him to call me when he gets backed into a corner and has nowhere to turn. I teach my ass off in that room. I counsel those kids all the time. But most of the time my class is pretty standard and the kids behave like normal teenagers, and I learned my first year of teaching that if you try to "save" every kid you will drive yourself crazy with the painful futility of it all.

But that doesn't make for a good movie.

So I realized the other night that I want to write a story that's a little more realistic. I want to show that most of the time these kids have so much going on at home that although teachers can help, they can't save a kid from a crappy home life. I want to show that most teachers are not saviors and they're not evil overlords. Most teachers are human beings who care but don't kill themselves over the job.

I'm also tired of seeing movies where every Latino kid goes home to a single parent home and deals with gangs and drugs and that's his life. Most of my kids aren't in gangs. Most of them don't do anything harder than pot. Most of them don't even know how to shoot a gun. Many of them have both parents at home.

Yes, my kids are more exposed to crime than most. Every one of them could easily travel down the path that leads to prison. But in the end they have to make the decision for themselves about where they plan to end up, and their teachers can give them advice but they are in charge of their own lives. I just don't see that enough in film.

So I'm going to write a story about a 15 year old Latino male in South Central Los Angeles who has to decide whether to lead a life of crime or take the hard road. And he has to do it on his own. And he has two loving parents who have jobs and nobody beats him and he goes to school and has normal, responsible teachers who don't always know about the personal issues that sometimes make kids behave like little asshats in the classroom.

The upside of this undertaking: I feel like I have a really clear idea of my mission and my plot. The downside: my protagonist is a 15 year old Latino male. I am none of those things. I can only hope my experience with my students will be enough to let me voice him accurately. I'm going to refer to the script as Jacking.

And I really hope I don't ditch this script halfway through.