John Ritchie has been senior producer at Vancouver’s Force Four Entertainment for the past 11 years. His production credits include producing, directing, writing and executive producing more than 60 hours of primetime documentary and dramatic television programming in the last five years. He is currently the executive producer of The Shopping Bags for WTN and a coproducer on Third World, a Force Four/Howe Sound Films six-hour miniseries in production for CBC.

It’s 1999. I had been going to the Banff Television Festival for six years running, and like my seasoned colleagues Hugh Beard and Rob Bromley, I had become well acquainted with rejection. We would be going off to the annual event in a few weeks armed with an assortment of projects, including a drama we had optioned by author Don Hauka. Our company had not yet produced big-budget drama, but Hugh’s experience included five years as executive producer of The Beachcombers.

Don’s novel Securities: A Mr. Jinnah Mystery was about to be published the following fall, and we were proposing to turn the story of a Vancouver-based, Indo-Canadian crime reporter into a television series. It seemed a bit of a long shot but we’d done our homework, and we knew that CBC was the logical broadcaster for a project featuring a non-white lead actor.

And now here was Don asking if he could accompany us to Banff. ‘Oh oh,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘Ha ha,’ laughed Rob. ‘Sure Don, you can come, but you’d better be ready to be shot down,’ answered Hugh.

Don replied that he had been a newspaper reporter for 20 years. He had seen his finely crafted work ripped to shreds by ruthless editors more times than he could count. Besides, the entertainment editor at the Vancouver Province was interested in an article on being rejected at Banff.

‘You’re in,’ was our reply. After all, how could we blame Don for being naive and hopeful? He should have the same opportunity as we to experience rejection first hand, and hear those familiar lines: ‘We already a) have a project like this in development, or b) aired something like this last month/year/decade/millennium.’ We knew these well-worn phrases meant the same thing: ‘No thanks.’

We had also learned that, at Banff, the word ‘yes’ is to a television producer like a clear mountain stream to someone dying of thirst in the Sahara desert. It doesn’t exist. We had discovered that ‘maybe’ was the best one could expect, and that recognizing a ‘maybe’ is not as easy as it sounds.

Of course we had made our share of rookie mistakes over the years, like pitching a network exec at a social event or talking up a documentary to a commissioning editor of drama. Pitching projects in the hot tub. Small gaffes like that.

But now here we were at the Rimrock Hotel for a meeting with Susan Morgan, head of drama at CBC. Don was along with us, and all the way up the hill to the hotel we’d been coaching him on how to take it on the chin. How to be stoic while being creatively rebuffed.

Susan sat down and her words were familiar. ‘I haven’t had time to really go over your proposal in detail…,’ she began. Here it comes Don. Take it like a man, we were all thinking. And then Susan continued, ‘…but I very much like this project and we’d like to pursue it.’

What? What did she say? That sounded like ‘yes!’ We were all dumbfounded. But not Don – he didn’t look fazed in the least. Of course not, he hadn’t been paying attention to us. But wait, Susan was asking Don a question: ‘I was wondering what kind of tone this murder mystery would take?’

Oh no! We hadn’t even talked about ‘the tone.’ And Don had no experience at this. He’d never been to Banff. He could blow it all right here!

‘It has a lighter tone,’ replied Don, ‘not gruesome and grisly.’ All heads turned to Susan. She was smiling and nodding! ‘Good,’ she said. Good! Susan went on to explain that she was interested in the project as a movie-of-the-week to begin with, rather than a series. If things worked out, Jinnah would become part of a recurring series of murder mystery movies on the network. This sounded perfectly fine to us.

The meeting was over in about 15 minutes, with Susan promising to get back to us. And not a half an hour later, after we’d been high-fiving in the parking lot and acting like 15-year olds who had collectively landed our first date, we were back at the Banff Springs Hotel when the cell phone rang; CBC had decided to put the project into formal development. We had been to many markets before this day, including NATPE and MIP, and we’d had a few green lights in the past, but never had we been given a go on anything this big, this fast.

Just over a year after the pitch, Jinnah On Crime: Pizza 911 went to camera with Debra Beard producing. In January 2002, it aired on CBC as a two-hour MOW, reaping favorable reviews. A second movie is currently on the funding treadmill and CBC has asked us to develop three one-hour scripts and a bible, with an eye to turning our project into a series.

These days we tend to hear ‘maybe’ a bit more, and we try to avoid pitching in the hot tub.