A writer always has an edge when he can relate to his lead character. Such was the case for Maurice Chauvet, nominated for an adapted screenplay Genie for Owning Mahowny.

‘I found it easy to connect with the single-mindedness of this guy and his mission,’ Chauvet says on the phone from Los Angeles.

The film tells the story of mild-mannered assistant bank manager Dan Mahowny (played by U.S. actor Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his cash-devouring addiction to gambling. Inspired by Gary Stephen Ross’ biography Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony, about a banker whose gambling habit leads to the biggest one-man bank fraud in Canadian history, Mahowny’s descent struck a chord with Chauvet.

‘He’s dedicated to the lost cause of winning back everything he’s lost in Atlantic City,’ Chauvet says. ‘It’s a kind of obsession people can understand.’

Despite his French name, Chauvet hails from northern California. A playwright by trade, Chauvet was ‘doing theater in L.A.’ in 1997 when he was approached by Alessandro Camon, one of Owning Mahowny’s producers. (The film is a copro between Alliance Atlantis and the U.K., with U.S. distribution through Sony Pictures Classics.)

‘Executive producer Sean Furst had optioned Stung from Ross, and he and Camon were looking to get the movie started,’ Chauvet says. ‘I threw in some ideas on how to turn the book into a screenplay, and that’s how I got the job.’

For most writers, a banker-by-day/gambler-by-night character would fit into the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde mold. Chauvet, on the other hand, was determined to create a character whose outwardly contradictory lifestyles actually meshed with one another.

‘I look at Dan Mahowny as a guy who leads a relatively regimented life as a banker,’ Chauvet explains. ‘He lives by the logic of the financial world – when trouble arises, you just try harder and work longer hours to resolve it. You do what you need to do, and that will lead you to success. Unfortunately, applying this methodology doesn’t work when it comes to gambling.

‘Mahowny keeps stealing more money from the bank in an effort to solve his problem and pay off his debts,’ Chauvet continues. ‘However, he just ends up making things worse. The irony is that Dan Mahowny and [Molony] got away with skimming money for gambling as long as they did. He had a lot of luck, but just not at the tables.’

Bringing Owning Mahowny to the big screen wasn’t easy. ‘In the beginning, everyone kept telling me that ‘you have to clean this guy up and make him more sympathetic,” Chauvet says. ‘It’s to [director] Richard Kwietniowski’s credit that he cast Philip Seymour Hoffman and portrayed Dan realistically.’

Artistically speaking, Chauvet’s relationship with Kwietniowski was ‘quite honestly, not a relationship at all,’ according to the writer. ‘I wrote the first draft before Richard was involved. When Richard did become involved, he did notes on the first draft and I wrote my second draft. I turned in my draft and Richard took it from there.’

Chauvet has been busy on other projects since penning Mahowny. Twentieth Century Fox has bought his script The Bride Wore Black (not a remake of the Francois Truffaut film). Most recently, he and partner Christopher Vail have been cowriting the script for John Woo’s all-CGI version of Mighty Mouse for Nickelodeon.

In the adapted screenplay category, Chauvet is up against Robert Lepage for La Face cachee de la lune, Daniel MacIvor for Marion Bridge, Charles Martin Smith for The Snow Walker and Esta Spalding for Falling Angels.

-www.owningmahownymovie.com