ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – NURSE.FIGHTER.BOY

Call it a blessing in disguise. Some people would just give up after doing a whole lot of waiting, which is exactly what nominated screenwriting duo Charles Officer and Ingrid Veninger went through to get Nurse.Fighter.Boy off the ground.

It began as an idea as the two were on their way to attend Burning Man in 2003, and started coming together as they worked on several drafts, waiting for development support from Telefilm Canada, The Harold Greenberg Fund and the Canadian Film Centre. They finally got the green light from CFC in 2006.

Then the ACTRA strike hit, throwing a wrench into their shooting schedule. Plus, Officer and Veninger were waiting for their lead actor, Clark Johnson, to wrap up filming on The Wire, so with more time on their hands, they continued working on the script and attended the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2006.

Their script was invited to participate in a script clinic during a creative talent summit, and was one of two projects selected out of 250 to be presented on stage by actors participating in the summit. Officer chuckles at the memory of stepping in to direct those excerpts from Nurse. ‘It was totally nerve-wracking, terrifying and amazing,’ he recalls. ‘That was one point where we realized we weren’t making theater, it was something to be captured on film.’

Though the two had previously worked together on a number of short films, this was their first screenwriting venture. So from conception to entering production in September 2007, they spent about five years on the script alone. ‘We were in a pretty healthy development period,’ says Veninger with a laugh. ‘We used the time to make the script as good as it could be.’