"Quinceanera" writer-directors give update on TV adaptation of their movie...

After Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer appeared on a panel at the Q-MeCon conference earlier this month, I cornered them to ask about the TV adaptation of "Quincearnera," their acclaimed indie film that won both the grand jury prize and the audience prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. It also won best limited release film at the GLAAD Awards recently.
"We hope to keep the cast pretty much intact," he said, noting that Chalo Gonzalez (uncle Tomas) and Emily Rios (Magdalena) are among those expected to reprise their roles.
In the movie, Magdalena is anxiously awaiting her 15th birthday and preparing to celebrate her quinceanara. But she discovers she is pregnant after not being able to fit in her gown for the event. She's kicked out of her home by her father and is taken in by her great-granduncle, Tomas and her gay, often-in-trouble cousin, Carlos. There she finds a new family and life.
"We see them as essential elements to the whole success of the piece," Westmorland says of Gonzalez and Rios. "We want to bring the actors and the crew back together, we want to bring everybody back together."
But Jesse Garcia, who played the gay cousin, Carlos, is not going to be apart of the show.
"It won't be the same name but there will be a gay character," he said.
Glatzer told me this is an example of having the freedom to use elements of the movie in the television show or to ignore them.
"One of the things about Carlos in 'Quniceanera' is that he was a real loner and what we have now is a kind of pack of guys and one of those guys will turn out to be gay but we're not gonna tell you which one!" Glatzer said. "We want it to evolve over the development of the series we don't want it to all be in the pilot. We want to keep some mystery about that character."
They are currently waiting to shoot the pilot for ABC Family.