Defensive

writing in

the net lane

Suzette Couture is truly a household name. Aside from one-offs and the feature film La Florida, the screenwriter has written three miniseries for Canadian and American networks – Conspiracy of Silence, Love and Hate, and most recently, Million Dollar Babies. She has also penned two miniseries for u.s. nets – Out of Nowhere and The Choiring of the Trees.

Her first miniseries, Love and Hate, topped the weekly ratings list for an American primetime network slot, and Million Dollar Babies hit the jackpot again. It scored Nielsen ratings of 15.9 and gained a 26% audience share in the u.s.

Couture hasn’t experienced the nightmare stories she’s heard from other tv writers, and says Bernard Zukerman, producer and collaborator on the three Canadian miniseries she wrote, has a lot to do with it.

‘My experience with Bernie is probably atypical in that we are really collaborators.ÉThe network (cbs) was very trusting of our relationship so it didn’t impose ideas and suggestions arbitrarily that we had to comply with or we would be dead. I think that’s quite unusual.’

Zukerman kept Couture out of any production battles in order to protect the creative process, she explains. It was only when she started writing for American-produced network television that she got a real glimpse of the labyrinth that has historically daunted so many writers.

Couture calls the network process ‘a fancy tap dance,’ and recalls her first meeting for an American production. ‘All of a sudden I’m in a meeting where there are two production companies and within those companies are two or three development people and it feels like 20 people have read the script. They all have notes and none of those notes agree with anyone else’s, and that’s before you even get to the network where they all have their own points of view.’

Couture exhales and counts her lucky stars. ‘I was just really glad I had worked in comedy clubs.ÉIt’s a blood sport, and you either live or you die out there.’

She says she’s being semi-facetious, but confesses the network scenario was quite a surprise because she ‘had been so sheltered’ until then.

Despite the intimidating influence of so many critics, Couture says she tries to keep her ears open for any good ideas that may pop up in the pile, and she balances that approach with a sense of protecting the material. ‘You’ve got to be passionate about your work without necessarily putting your fist through the wall.’

There is another reason why Couture was not crushed when she first encountered the wall of producers and development people.

‘I was able to go into the United States electronically with those (miniseries) that were well-received, so by the time I was offered work in the u.s., I already had a reputation that made people take me seriously. So it wasn’t as if they were there to put their hands into my work.’

Another key to surviving the jungle is a solid sense of humor, she says, and she got an early start. ‘I’ve always had a love of comedy, probably because I was educated by nuns. It teaches you to have a healthy sense of the absurd.’

Couture has a primary principle that guides her whenever she starts a project: if it doesn’t move the writer, it’s not worth pursuing.

‘When I approach a story it has to be a story that affects me profoundly, otherwise I’m not interested. Then I tell myself the story. I don’t think I’m being indulgent. In fact, I think unless the story is told from a personal and very intense point of view, it really won’t succeed.’

At first, Couture wasn’t interested in the Dionne quintuplets saga.

Micheline Charest of Montreal’s Cinar Films had approached Couture to write the screenplay a few times, but Couture always turned her down. ‘I had thought it was some old creaky artifact,’ she says.

But when Zukerman joined Charest on the quints project, Couture changed her mind. ‘I guess I just needed a little kick in the miniskirt from Bernie,’ she says. Upon closer examination of the Dionne tale, Couture became focused on the custody battle between two men – the natural father and Dr. Dafoe, the children’s legal guardian.

The first draft was skewed to the children’s perspective as a result of some research Couture had done, but she realized later she only had half the story. The late director Frances Mankiewicz, who directed both Love and Hate and Conspiracy of Silence, brought the imbalance to Couture’s attention.

‘He said one thing to me that I needed to hear, and that was: `If we don’t believe the parents loved their children, there is no story.’ ‘

It was a pivotal point in the development of the project, and Couture proceeded to draft two.

cbc was on board all along, and Zukerman, draft two in hand, went to cbs. The u.s net picked it up, and from there, casting was nailed down and Couture wrote a third draft with story editor John McAndrew. The rest, as they say, is history.