When Semi Chellas took a leave of absence from her graduate studies at Cornell University to join the Canadian Film Centre, she vowed only to return if she couldn’t make a living as a screenwriter. But after umpteen rejections from story departments for which she was seeking to intern, one chance meeting with Bruce McDonald solidified the young, budding writer’s fate.

It was 1994 when Chellas, fresh out of the cfc’s screenwriting resident program, met the Hard Core Logo director at a party. He told her he wanted to make a movie about a Quebec girl who gets lost in Toronto. She told him she had recently moved to Toronto and shared some of her observations. He asked her if she would be interested in writing an outline for his untold story. She, with not one writing credit to her name, said ‘yes’ and the embryonic Claire’s Hat was conceived.

‘I totally wasn’t trying to get the job,’ says the ascending screenwriter, who is decked in black from top to bottom as she sits on a ragged Salvation Army couch in her Annex apartment. But whatever her intention, McDonald made the offer without any reference to her professional experience (or lack thereof) and paid the young writer’s rent for the few months it took to complete the outline. ‘That was great for me at the time because I was really, really poor,’ she says and giggles.

Her accent is as curious as her name and she looks 10 years younger than her 31 years, but despite appearances and trappings, Chellas, considered by most to be a new arrival on the scene, has spent the past six years becoming one of the most prolific young screenwriters in Canada.

‘I’ve been doing the same thing for six years and suddenly everything is getting made at once and there’s a critical mass of people hearing my name,’ says Chellas, who was recently named a ‘Young Leader of Canada’ by the Globe and Mail, and whose Claire’s Hat, which is now in post, was finally produced by Robert Lantos.

The ofdc financed the film’s first draft, but soon after fell apart as a funding agency, leaving McDonald to look elsewhere for financing. Lantos, who had seen the first draft years earlier when it was presented to Alliance Atlantis, finally picked up the film 14 drafts later.

It was Chellas’ 31st birthday when she got the call. She was still recovering from a party the night before when she made it to the phone to find 30 messages from Lantos’ office.

‘I didn’t even know they were talking about it,’ says Chellas, who quickly pulled herself together to find out upon arrival at Serendipity Point Films that the script she had been rewriting for the past five years was going immediately into preproduction.

And this wasn’t the first time serendipity played such a large part in Chellas’ fate. In addition to her initial meeting with McDonald, she also fluked out on her first feature The Life Before This.

When she completed the program at the cfc she went out to make some shorts for Showcase, which at the time had a calling card program. She was doing it for free so she could rack up credits to qualify for membership in the Writers Guild of Canada. Then, in the midst of her pursuit, the program was cancelled. ‘One of the producers there then introduced me to Ilana Frank. They must have felt sorry for me,’ says Chellas, recalling the first time she met the producer of her first feature film, which later premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (1999).

Within the past six years, Chellas also wrote her first mow, Dead Aviators (Temple Street/Accent Entertainment), which was nominated in 2000 for six Gemini Awards including best script and best movie, and won for best director (David Wellington).

She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy for the project.

‘While I was developing Claire’s Hat I got other work – The Life Before This and Dead Aviators – basically because Bruce had given me this huge break,’ says Chellas, who believes every writer needs some serendipity but, ‘what they do with it is another story.’

Currently Chellas is adapting Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion for Serendipity Point and Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries for Rhombus Media.

‘In the last three years, all books are optioned and everyone I know is adapting,’ says Chellas. ‘And it makes sense from a development perspective because if you can walk in with a book that people can read and see is good, it’s easier for them to take the leap of faith and start developing it.’

And while Chellas champions the new trend, especially because it bolsters Canadian culture, she hopes it doesn’t overshadow the value of original screenplays.

In terms of the process, she says the difference between adapting and writing from scratch is the difference between listening to music and doing a crossword – that is until you have a draft. ‘Once you’re into the rewriting and the nuances, it’s all the same.’

And, of course, once a film goes into production, the writer’s job is essentially over.

‘In the end, it’s the director’s film. The director’s going to wear it if it fails and it will be thought of in the spectrum of his work,’ says Chellas who doesn’t (yet) worry about issues of control. ‘If you want total control of your writing, write fiction. In film, nobody has total control. At best you have someone drawing the best out of key people and keeping in control of a vision.’

What Chellas does take issue with is the industry’s overwhelming tendency to develop writer/directors. ‘There hasn’t traditionally been a broad class of professional screenwriters working in features in Canada because the people who brought this industry to where it is now, in English Canada, were writing their own material. There’s just starting to be a critical mass of really accomplished screenwriters who may go into directing but for now are just writing. The problem is first time directors don’t have access to them.’

But an even bigger challenge, says Chellas, is figuring out how to make a film viable in a market so diversely competitive.

‘An independent film is up against, not necessarily the big studios, but a really diverse and often high-level body of work, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or You Can Count on Me… To actually break out from the pack and get noticed is really tough and in the end it becomes the writer’s problem.’

The Life Before This didn’t break out at the box office, which was very frustrating for Chellas. ‘It makes the whole point of what you’re doing come into question because nobody likes to make movies that nobody sees.’

That said, there has to be a good reason for making a film. There has to be an audience. ‘The hardest thing right now is there’s not really a loyal Canadian film fan audience and it’s hard to get screens,’ says Chellas, who is excited about the new feature film fund’s commitment to marketing as it gives screen owners incentive to pick up Canadian films. Whether the new money is enough is another question, she says. ‘It’s more than before, but it’s still really tiny when you consider what they’re doing in the States.’

Perhaps the most obvious solution to the problems facing Canadian screenwriters is to migrate to the u.s., but Chellas says she is not wildly interested in moving to l.a., if it means writing cheesy sequels. Then again, what are the incentives for Chellas, a duel citizen and an in-demand talent, to stay in Canada?

Being closer to the creative process, she says. ‘I feel like Canada has given me a lot of opportunities and I do have a sense of loyalty, but at some point it comes down to audience…that would be my only temptation.’

Meantime, Chellas isn’t going anywhere too fast. With two feature films in development and a series pilot in the works, she has a workload that will keep her busy well into next year.

At the tiff, Americans seeking out Canadian writing talent approached her, but she says, ‘I’ve just been plugging my ears and humming.

‘The writer’s strike has made Americans more interested in English-language writers that aren’t in the American Guild, but it would be stupid to get in there while they’re on strike and then expect that when things settle they’ll take kindly to you.’

As for Canadian content, Chellas, a Yale graduate, says, ‘Sometimes I don’t know what that means, then sometimes I think I do. Because I was born in Calgary and I live in Toronto and especially because I’ve lived in the States, I understand what’s particularly Canadian about Canadian. But the more complex we allow the definition to be, the better.’ *