Inside:

Distribution on the edge:

Canadian cinema carves an ‘erotic weirdness’ niche – p. B3

Canadian screenwriting:

‘A low-percentage proposition’ – p. B4

Shorts getting longer shrift:

Garnering more slots and more money – p. B20

Film diaries:

Production chronicles from conception to completion – begin p. B7

Features:

The Hanging Garden – p. B7

Shopping for Fangs – p. B11

Gerrie & Louise – p. B14

Pitch – p. B17

Hayseed – p. B19

Shorts:

Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight – p. B22

Permission – p. B24

Linear Dreams – p. B26

It all starts with the script. Ask any screenwriter and that’s what they’ll tell you, as will a lot of producers and directors when they want to humor those who create the vital but often overlooked first stage of any film production.

But does the Canadian film industry and its funding agencies support screenwriters? Judging by the number of storytellers who make a living writing purely for the big screen, probably not. The much-heralded Canada Television Cable Production Fund is purely a production fund, and while it has $15 million allocated for feature films, there is no development money.

‘If you’re 25 years old and want to be a screenwriter, move to l.a., but I personally wouldn’t want to live on that space station,’ says David Young, the Toronto-based screenwriter of the feature Swann, a coproduction between the u.k’s Greenpoint Films and Toronto’s Shaftesbury Films that made its world premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

With the Ontario Film Development Corporation no longer a script development funding source and a general lack of assistance from provincial and federal governments, Young, like many Canadian screenwriters, believes the disproportionate salaries between Canada and the u.s., and the unlikelihood of seeing a screenplay produced here will force many Canadians to move to l.a.

Young, who is also a novelist and Governor General’s Award-winning playwright (his new play Inexpressible Island is opening at the Canadian Stage in Toronto Sept. 18), thinks many of the hurdles facing Canadian screenwriters are created by the fact that Canada ‘lives next to an empire,’ and has a system that endorses a lack of proper distribution for Canadian films.

‘The United States understands that culture is the thin end of the wedge, and that you can take over any country inch by inch if you own the images in people’s minds. That’s the oldest story that we’ve got to tell each other in this country.’

While Swann had decent critical notice, it was the victim of poor Canadian distribution and marketing. Few people saw the movie based on the Carol Shields novel of the same name, a common story in the Canadian biz where the biggest production/distribution companies make most of their money distributing foreign product that takes away screen time from indigenous movies.

As a result of the lack of screen time available for Canadian films, many scripts that are written as features become mows.

Clement Virgo, who burst onto the scene a few years ago with the critically acclaimed Rude that he wrote and directed, is back at tiff this year with The Planet of Junior Brown. Produced by Toronto’s Film Works and cowritten with Cameron Bailey, Junior Brown will run on the cbc this year after it makes the festival circuit with the hopes of gaining a short theatrical release.

‘Often products that would be feature films in other countries end up on the mow market,’ says Jim McKee, director of policy and communications at the Writers Guild of Canada. ‘Canadian films get less than 5% of the screens, so your market potential is more limited than the mow market, and our statistics indicate that mows often have bigger budgets than the features,’ says McKee.

The small market for features forces many Canadian screenwriters to also write for other mediums.

‘Writing features is a low percentage proposition.’ says McKee. Poor and overburdened funds are drying up and McKee feels that the lack of support for writers is a symptom of the undercapitalization of the entire Canadian film industry. He argues that giving development money to Canadian screenwriters is the least expensive stage of the process and a positive way to ensure that Canadian stories get told.

Halifax’s Bruce McKenna penned the feature Salt Water Moose (Norstar Entertainment) and has decided to try to keep more control over his scripts as a director or producer, and in some cases to go directly to l.a. producers with his work.

‘The attempt now is to work on the two fronts, selling big in the States or doing something modest, like a romantic comedy set in Nova Scotia to be produced here in Canada,’ says McKenna. ‘And `modest’ requires as good or better writing. In some ways it’s easier to write what they call the `whammies’ with all that action.’

When it comes to funding issues, McKenna says that the lack of development money for screenplays is not allowing our writers to learn their craft. He cites the dismantling of the American studio system and the effect it had on u.s. scripts when writers were forced to be self-taught instead of apprenticing with senior writers.

‘There has to be a climate where a writer can make a living in Canada long enough to become a good writer,’ he says.

McKenna feels there is still room for the Canadian script and looks to the recent success of what he calls ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ – British and Australian titles – as a model. McKenna says the key is to write a script that ‘is distinctively Canadian in sensibility, while being very appealing internationally.’

There are, of course, those who do quite well by the film industry in Canada. The multitalented Don McKellar has worked as an actor, a screenwriter, and is about to direct his feature screenplay Last Night for Rhombus Media.

McKellar doesn’t have to rely on writing to pay for his ‘low overhead’ lifestyle, although he could have this year with his cbc series Twitch City, the Rhombus feature The Red Violin, which he cowrote with Francois Girard, and now Last Night.

McKellar began his film career after director Bruce McDonald saw one of his plays and asked him to write some scripts on spec for him. These eventually became Roadkill and Highway 61. ‘I had never even thought about writing for film,’ recalls McKellar.

A veteran of funding applications and development deals, McKellar says the process of getting funding has become increasingly complicated.

‘The Red Violin was the most complicated thing in the world,’ he says. A myriad of big companies were ‘thinking’ about putting money into the project, as McKellar ‘was just writing.’

‘I don’t need much money to live on, and we got all the money as we were starting to shoot,’ he says. ‘I have the luxury of occasionally being able to act or doing other work that will get me some more immediate money.’

While McKellar acknowledges the pitfalls of trying to be a screenwriter in Canada, he feels that Canadians are more apt to stay connected to the work, as he has seen what the big money offers of the States have done to some of his talented friends.

‘I know people who have done successful student or short films and are bought up by some studio. They are put up in these towers with a secretary and told to write, with no concrete future or sense that the film will ever be made,’ says McKellar. ‘They make lots of money but they don’t make movies. At least my scripts have been made.’

Another Canadian screenwriting success story is Toronto-based Michael Stokes. Though you probably won’t be seeing any of his work on the festival circuit, he has made a comfortable living for himself as a screenwriter over the past four years, with no less than seven of his feature scripts being produced.

The screenwriter on Norstar’s Iron Eagle iv, Applecreek’s Sabotage, and the upcoming Bram Stoker’s Shadowbuilder (Imperial/ Applecreek), Stokes graduated from York University in 1989 after completing a master’s degree in Fine Arts, specializing in screenwriting.

After graduation, Stokes began writing and had some initial success with one-off half-hours for Canadian tv, but the money wasn’t great.

With the financial support of friends and family, Stokes continued writing feature screenplays. Eventually Canadian tough-guy actor Michael Ironside optioned a couple of his scripts, and in 1994, George Flak of Performance Pictures decided to bring Stokes’ Jungleground to the screen with Norstar. The link with Norstar led to a creative consultant gig on their Shannon Tweed erotic thriller No Contest.

The rest, as they say, is history, and Stokes has been churning out action/adventure/thriller scripts ever since. The most likely next step for Stokes will probably be l.a., but hopefully not before he can get his detective thriller Verdigris made in Canada. Stokes is hoping to direct the film for which he says he will probably have to look to the funding and tax credit programs for the first time in his career.

‘I’m a fan of commercial films,’ says Stokes, ‘that’s what I write, and I know that can be a dirty thing to say in Canada, but I admit it.’