WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Interior. Apartment. Early morning. Uriel Rodriquez is pouring over his screenplay.

“This is a first draft," Rodriquez said. "It is so long."

This wasn’t always how he would start his day. Although he spent high school making movies with his friends, “I felt like when I went to college I had to choose something more practical," he said, "so I went with history.”

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Cut to New Orleans where he worked as a high school history teacher. At the end of each year, he found himself encouraging his students.

“I would tell them ‘Go pursue your dreams, go do what you want to do,'" Rodriquez said, "but I realized that I wasn’t doing that thing."

Rodriguez set out to do a page one rewrite on his own life, got a master’s degree in screenwriting and just a few months ago moved to the city of dreams to pursue his own. He calls it "a leap of faith."

He landed an unpaid internship at a production company located on the Sony lot.

“I read a lot of scripts, a lot of manuscripts, a lot of graphic novels," Rodriquez said.

Each morning he leaves his apartment in West Hollywood and drives to Culver City. In the afternoon he commutes to La Cañada where he works as a tutor. In between he spends a lot of time in traffic.

“I’ve been listening to a lot of writing podcasts," Rodriquez said.

But it also gives him a chance to mull over script ideas. As a Puerto Rican writer, Rodriguez definitely thinks Latinx voices are underrepresented in film and television and he wants to be part of the wave that changes that. His Twitter handle is LatinXScreenwriter and he is prolific on the social media platform, sharing his victories and his rejections. It’s a perfect space, he says, for emerging writers to network.

“It’s just people saying to literally the void, ‘I have a project, I need some eyes on it,'" Rodriquez said, "and you’d get four or five people to just volunteer.”

Of course money is a concern. Rodriguez and his girlfriend Emily – who is also a writer – have bills to pay. Rent, gas, student loans, and let’s face it, L.A. is expensive.

“Everyone keeps on talking about the fact that you have to be in L.A. to be a screenwriter," he said. "I feel like the people who say that can afford to live here.”

He is not sure he’s one of them, but he is determined to give it his best shot. And while he says it’s great to dream big, for now he’s focused on more immediate goals. Like getting a job as a writers’ assistant.  

After about 40 minutes in the car, he reaches the Sony lot. Four months in and it still sometimes hits him that he works inside a movie studio.

“And that is a privilege that not many people have," Rodriquez said. "And I get to sit down, have some tea and actually read a script inside the lot and I feel like that’s part of the dream."

A perfect place to begin what he hopes will be his Hollywood ending.