Screenwriting : Hello! by Darrin Friedman

Hi, all. I just wanted to take a moment and introduce myself. I'm new to the platform and have no connections (friends?) yet. Now that I have admitted that I know absolutely no one, I'll give you the skinny. I'm finishing up my MFA studies in writing for stage and screen at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

I consider myself a writer above all else. However, I did write and direct a short film premiering in January and will hopefully do well on the film festival circuit.

If you want to know my full story, here is my personal statement (it's the one I will be using for professional purposes):

In those early days of the pandemic lockdown, I was like everyone else. Nowhere to go. Trapped inside my home with my family for months – unless I was making one of my valiant trips to the grocery store in mask and gloves as if I were a hunter/gatherer alpha male ancestor seeking food for my kin.

A hunter-gatherer, I am not. I am a writer. And I was in desperate need to create.

I opened the Final Draft software on my Mac and eyed the welcome screen, staring at the templates, when something remarkable happened.

I started to write a play.

I had written a few novels, but I was not a playwright, thank you very much. What was I doing? Was I delusional? I don’t know, but I was writing. I was creating a world that felt real. Maybe I was just manic? The pages were filling up, which tended to happen when things got wonky in my brain chemistry, but this was different. This was dialogue! Troves of it. I was swimming in it. I was getting off on it. Then, after my first draft, I held a virtual table read with a bunch of actor friends. It was at that moment that my life changed. I heard my work being read back to me. My words! It was just a draft, but the reading changed my perspective on how I viewed myself.

A couple of months later, after continued readings and the lifting of Covid restrictions, my wife turned to me and said, “Whatever you want to do to be a writer, you have my support. Be a writer. Do it. LEARN!”

The next day I submitted my application to grad school, and soon after that, I became an MFA candidate in writing for Stage and Screen at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. Class of 23’. Holy shit.

I am the oldest in my class, but I’m doing it. And I’m learning, and writing, and creating characters and stories I care about. I write from my heart because I believe that authenticity means something.

By now, my work has started to get recognized, which means something. Not because awards validate my work but because I’m comfortable enough to tell a truth about the ravages of mental illness in a public way. You see, I am bipolar, and I know first-hand how those who suffer from silent diseases can be marginalized by the ignorant – including my own family. Maybe that is why my work centers around those who experience trauma. Perhaps that is why I write characters who strive to break through the stigma of those unwilling to understand.

Thank God for my wife. She’s the reason I’m doing what I am doing. Because she believes it’s never too late to start.

She’s right, you know. It never is.