Welcome to Grant Richards' Web Site!

Education

     I was born in San Jose, California and moved to Gilroy when I was in the third grade.  I graduated from Gilroy High School in 1986.  I went away to California State University, Chico for my freshman year of college.  I returned to Gavilan the following year, where I played on the basketball team, wrote for the school paper, explored music (I was a composer for a few years, thanks to Art Juncker), and was the ASB president.  Two years later I went back to Chico where I got a B.A. in Liberal Studies.  I then transferred to California State University, Sacramento, where I got my second B.A. in English.  I continued at Sacramento State and got my M.A. in English.  After I graduated, I taught at nine different community colleges and one private high school.  I am thrilled that I ended up at Gavilan in my hometown.  From a very early age, I knew I wanted to be a teacher.  It is probably due to the fact that I’m very close with my father, and he was an English professor at Gavilan.  He was also the men’s basketball coach at Gavilan for over 20 years (I played for him for two years.), and I coached the team for a couple of years as well.

Film Production

     I teach film history and film production at Gavilan.  I currently teach a wide variety of film classes, including Film and Fiction (Engl. 2C), Introduction to the Cinema (Hum 3), American Cinema (Hum 4), Foreign Film (Hum 6), Approaches to Modern Cinema (Hum 10), Screenplay Writing (Hum 20), and Film Production (25A).  However, I am developing a Film Production major at the college and will be adding numerous other Film Production classes.

     I have always loved movies, and I inherited this love for movies from my father.  In retirement my father writes movie screenplays, and we are currently writing one together.  It is a modern day version of The Treasure of Sierra Madre.  As much as I love to write screenplays, it is not enough to satisfy my desire to make movies.  That is why I took the next step.  I am now an independent filmmaker.  I have made several shorts, a documentary, and a feature-length film, entitled It’ll Happen.  I am in currently in post-production for my next film, Spyware, which was written by my wife.  It should be in theaters after Christmas.