Sidewalk Sketches to Screenplays: The Long Way to Page One

Kung Fu, a hotel front desk, a bartender's ear and years of code. How a Brooklyn kid who sketched strangers ended up writing screenplays in Berlin.

Henry Holiday (Quinones)

10/15/20263 min read

Henry as a young schoolboy in a suit and tie

I was six years old the first time I sat on a Brooklyn sidewalk and drew a stranger's face. I have been studying faces ever since. Today I write screenplays, and when I trace where my characters come from, the road runs back through a Kung Fu school, a hotel front desk, a lot of busy bars and a few decades of code. Here is the long way I took to page one.

Henry in a school portrait with long bangs, suit and tie

Brooklyn, the best seasoning

I was born in Queens and raised in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood drawn from every corner of the globe. Picture All in the Family, grumpy bigot on the corner included. We learned to live with each other's opinions, food and hobbies. Some people would call that something to tolerate. To me it was the spice on a good meal: the more there was, the better it tasted.

My parents both worked for the Department of Education, so teachers were family friends. Other kids watched TV after school. I studied, sketched, and studied some more.

Henry as a teenager in a leather jacket and cap with a boxer dog

Kung Fu and Siddhartha

My grandmother signed me up for Kung Fu, and it changed my life. At 13 I became convinced that my science teacher, a Buddhist, was secretly a Kung Fu master. He never confirmed it. Instead he handed me Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and walked me through the teachings of the Buddha. I trained until I was 17, and the focus carried me to good grades and onto the high school gymnastics team.

Henry wearing a green and gold matador's suit of lights

Ithaca, then Hollywood

I studied communications and theater at Ithaca College, worked odd jobs, and then went west to act. Los Angeles gave me the freedom to be anyone I wanted, whenever I wanted. It also gave me a loneliness straight out of an old Neil Diamond song. I paid the rent at the front desk of the Bel Age hotel and worked my way up to night manager at its sister hotel, the Cezanne.

Henry raising a glass of white wine at an outdoor table

Behind the bar

Hospitality brought me back to New York for an off-Broadway show. I trained at the New York Bartenders Association and poured for restaurants, caterers and private parties. A bartender hears more real dialogue in one night than most writers put on paper in a month. I was listening the whole time.

I dated a chef who opened up my palate and my world. We traveled for food, culture and spirits, and I came home knowing two things: fresh ingredients matter, and I could stand on my own as a whole person.

A matador passes a bull with a red cape in a sand arena

Learning everything

I set out early to be as complete a person as I could. That meant running, weightlifting, martial arts, yoga, skateboarding, racquetball and some golf. I learned guitar, and I still want to play the clarinet. I welded sculpture at the Art Students League, trained as a video editor and made short films from my own life. Those shorts, and the acting years, are where the writing really began.

Henry in a winter selfie with an older man in a cap

Code as a canvas

Software came next, as a way to pay the bills without parking my creativity. Code is a canvas you can bend and shade any way you like, and it reaches people at a scale a sketchbook never will. I studied Information Systems at Empire State University from 2009 to 2012, and tech work still keeps the lights on. New York kept shaping me through it all: 9/11, hurricanes, blizzards and the everyday chaos of the city. Hard, never insurmountable.

A smiling woman with short blond hair outdoors at night

Berlin, and the slate

Now I live in Berlin and write as Henry Holiday, flying home to see family in the States a few times a year. Everything above ends up on the page somewhere. The current slate:

Pure Teatro, a limited series inspired by the life of La Lupe, from Havana in 1958 to New York. All eight episodes are written.
KINSKY, an adult animated series set in Berlin, in English and German, now rolling out as micro-episodes.
Out of the Rough, a feature that grew from one of my own shorts, with a companion pilot, Eight-Eight-One.
Cleanskin, a counterterrorism thriller set in Berlin in December 2016.
Features A Night with Johnny Law, Berlin PM, BLACKpudding, La Corrida and Sugarloaf.

An older couple smiling on a porch at night

What's next

I want to see these scripts made. My lady and I also dream of buying land and building an off-grid life, so I am learning restoration with my own hands. The kid sketching faces in Brooklyn would recognize every one of these stories. He was there for the start of all of them.