impact’s the thing

John Krizanc always dreamed of being a writer, but only recently did he begin to think he could make a career of it. Remind him that he did actually win the prestigious Governor General’s Award for playwriting in 1987 for his play Prague and he responds, ‘Ya, but I always felt like I was more of a good book buyer.’

Krizanc, who is up for a Gemini for Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series, ran The Book Cellar on trendy Yorkville Avenue in Toronto for 15 years before venturing into writing full time in 1988.

‘I was really good at that job; I never felt I could make a living as a writer. I’m starting to appreciate the craft of writing, but I still find myself remarkably lazy. I never envy the talent of other writers, it’s their word output I lust after. It’s difficult for me to churn it out, but the deadlines help.’

Tamara, a complex, cleverly woven interactive play about fascism in Italy, set in a mansion at the turn of the century, was Krizanc’s first big success as a writer.

After opening to rave reviews in Toronto in 1981, it traveled to in Los Angeles in 1983 and ran there for 10 years, with actresses such as Angelica Huston and Karen Black starring.

Now it is headed for cd-rom through Atlantis Communications.

As a follow-up to Tamara, Krizanc wrote another play entitled The Half of It. Through that he met television producer Bernard Zukerman. They started talking about doing a film together about Dieppe.

‘I think Zukerman thought I could bring the historical figures like Churchill alive without making them sound like icons,’ says Krizanc.

‘In Dieppe, I was trying to make World War II try to speak to a new generation. The impact of World War II for those who lived through it was obviously tremendous. So while at the same time as honoring and respecting that, I had to address why some 18-year-old should care. The challenge was how could I create characters that were engaging to modern sensibilities while still maintaining historical veracity.’

The story was extremely complicated, so the first step was to distill the mass of material down to three hours of television in a clear and compelling way.

The first draft came in at 450 pages and was eventually whittled down to 150 pages. It went through countless incarnations and story editors, including the late Francis Mankiewicz. Then John N. Smith came on board as director and reinvented it again.

Krizanc found writing for film a dramatic departure from writing plays: the pace is very different, he says, and film obviously doesn’t depend so much on sequence. As well, the tone of theater is somewhat more relaxed.

‘Learning that language of constructing scenes and the range of what you can do visually was definitely the exciting part.’

The most rewarding aspect of the three-year writing ordeal on Dieppe, however, came after its completion.

‘For 50 years the Dieppe veterans had been trying to get recognition from the government to honor this national tragedy, and that medal was not forthcoming. Yet within 48 hours of the broadcast of Dieppe (on cbc), it was announced they would finally get their medals. I was surprised that we could have that kind of impact. As a writer you don’t often see that.’

Krizanc, who recently finished writing six half-hours of a new sitcom set in a bookstore entitled A Likely Story with fellow screenwriter/novelist Paul Quarrington, considers his strength as a writer to be ‘a personal liability.’

‘I always lose arguments and I’m not really that funny in real life, but given seven drafts of a script I can win that argument or come up with the perfect zinger. So perhaps if I was a better person I would be a worse writer. It’s an odd kind of fantasy life.’