Paul X Sanchez IV – 2023 Pilot Finalist
Latin "X"
Romeo a 15-yr-old, Hispanic/LatinX, punk-rocker, searches for Identity and acceptance with his ad-hoc family of outsiders as they battle racism and homophobia when his White, single-mother, in an act of defiance, moves their family to her childhood hometown of Darien, CT, an affluent, conservative, lily-white, cisgender, Reagan-era, shithole.
I’m Paul Sanchez IV and I’m from Darien, CT…please don’t hold that against me. If you know Darien, you’ll understand. If you don’t, think of the whitest, preppiest, richy-rich cisgender bastion of wealth and privilege… and know that that place wishes it was Darien. And if you are a person of even the slightest color and have ever driven through Darien, you are also familiar with the Darien Police Department.
I was born Paul Sanchez IV but when my mother and father got divorced when I was six, (my father was LatinX/Iroquois/Hispanic, my mother Irish descent) my mom anglicized our names back to her maiden name of “Yates” so we wouldn’t suffer the judgments for being “Hispanic in Darien”. I often wished my skin…and hair, could have been anglicized as well.
My mom, who was nurturing, beautiful, strong etc. came from money but was kicked out for marrying a Hispanic man and after my father left, she was forced to rebuild her life as a single mother. But she pulled herself up by her bootstraps and went from the secretary of an ad agency to the Vice President, even helping Reagan get elected with a slogan she helped craft. And this was in the early 80s. MAD MEN with wider lapels and more cocaine.
We finally got our own house in Darien. A tiny colonial that was 450 square feet. But it was ours and we loved it. Then, something took hold of her, her martini lunches became Jack Daniels days and nights. This was when I was 15. My previously super nurturing Mom, in her attempt to keep up with the Dow-Joneses, lost her mind, attempted to murder me, then disappeared. We lost the house and I became homeless/unhoused for 5 years, and BTW I was a straight-A, gifted student, and had never had alcohol or drugs, to this day btw, but Darien high school didn’t care, and asked me to leave.
But at the same time, the most beautiful thing happened, the thing that surely saved my life, in the AV Room of Darien High, I found a new ad hoc family of PUNK ROCKERS—one of them was Moby. Smart. Open. Questioning. Creative. Empathetic people. Intelligent inclusive outsiders, who did not care about my race, gender or hair. Pure empathy. Pure creativity and pure family. Their friendship and the nurturing ethos they/we held of: “Radical empathy without fear”, buoyed me through those rough, unhoused years, and is reflected now, in every script I write.
While unhoused, I was, however, accepted to NYU Tisch on the strength of my photography portfolio–MOMA later collected a monograph of my self-portraits. But I lived on the street while attending and had to leave NYU after a semester and a day. I then went to SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory, and got my BFA—finding another radically empathetic ad hoc family of misfits there. My experimental films, music videos, and docs played in underground art-houses and film festivals all over the world.
I toured with Moby as his keyboardist AND documentarian throughout the 90s. Playing everywhere from David Letterman to Woodstock ’99. I was the DP for the first history of Techno-music documentary: MODULATIONS, a Sundance darling.
My alter-ego, Schaumgummi, has had dance hits in Germany, and I built and flew a plane for Redbull’s Flugtag. I got my MFA from AFI, and since then have been mentoring students, AD-ing, working for homeless non-profits, writing, teaching, and being a father and spouse.
“TO TEACH EMPATHY” should be the goal of ALL storytellers. To craft sincere stories with specific voices, that have moments of hope, ecstatic joy, and desolate lows, that truly connect to, and reflect, the humanity in all of us.
By telling these stories, we can also expose the cracks in the system—cracks that were almost insidiously designed to snag outsiders and people of color. By sharing narratives of injustices, we can aim to create empathy and, in turn, prevent these same injustices from occurring again in the future. We must create an empathetic “message in a bottle” to reach out to those experiencing difficult times, letting them know that their voices are heard.
TV Shows that I feel have sent me that “message in a bottle”: Atlanta (the most underrated show in TV history), Star Trek, Twin Peaks, The Watchmen, Station Eleven, This is England, and Fleabag. And my goal is to create and be staffed on shows with empathetic hearts like these.