The job of writing the screenplay for Canadian tv movies and miniseries is rarely given to a ‘hired gun.’ In the case of this year’s batch of nominees in the category of Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries, the writers were all personally involved with the subjects they took on. Playback asked four of the five nominees why they thought their stories needed to be told to a Canadian tv audience and how they made that happen.
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According to screenwriter Keith Ross Leckie, it was a meeting on the dance floor at the 1995 Gemini Awards with then cbc head of arts and entertainment Phyllis Platt that finally got The Film Works/Tapestry Films/John Aaron Productions miniseries The Arrow airborne, capping a 10-year process to bring the story of the Canadian jet to film.
After first taking the project to the cbc in 1988, Leckie would see it crash twice after takeoff, first as an mow, then as a feature. By 1995, Leckie and producers Mary Young Leckie, Paul Stephens, Eric Jordan and Jack Clements wondered whether The Arrow, like its namesake, would be permanently grounded.
‘I had been out to lunch with Jim Burt [head of cbc movies and miniseries] about two weeks before the [’95] Geminis and he had said, `There’s no way with The Arrow, we’ve got too many other things,’ ‘ recalls Leckie.
Then came the announcement of massive budget cuts at the cbc.
Spying Platt at the Geminis and figuring it was now or never, Leckie pitched her the story of the ill-fated yet revolutionary fighter jet, deftly drawing parallels between the Arrow project and the situation at the pubcaster. On the following Monday, Platt reportedly spoke to Burt, saying it would be a courageous story to do and finally got the miniseries in motion.
Leckie also says cbc’s decision to do The Arrow in 1995, after being in ‘development hell’ for a few years, may have had something to do with the fact the federal Liberals were finally well established in power.
‘I believe that this thing couldn’t have been done under Mulroney’s government and I think that was part of the problem in the early days,’ he says.
Leckie sees the film as a positive story, unlike many of the other subjects that are tackled as long-form dramas at cbc.
‘I’ve always been fascinated with the Arrow and I’m a pilot, a nationalist and a Liberal,’ says Leckie, who won a Gemini in 1993 for penning Journey into Darkness: The Bruce Curtis Story. ‘I’d always been interested in the story and I remember seeing it in the paper when I was about three years old. [The Arrow] was made in Canada and it was the best in the world. Then suddenly, it was gone.’
Also in this report:
Profiling Best Direction in a Dramatic TV Series: Kari Skogland p.22
Jon Cassar p.22
Jane Thompson p.27
Profiling Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries:
Jim Burt: The non-nominee behind so many nominations p.29
Janis Cole p.29
David Adams Richards p.31
Pete White p.37
Profiling the contenders for Best Sports Program or Series p.39
The nominees list p.44