Following a healthy box-office run and several awards, Montreal writer/director Louis Belanger’s Gaz Bar Blues now also finds itself in contention for an original screenplay award, one of the drama’s pair of Genie noms. A win would mean a second such prize for Belanger, a self-proclaimed reluctant writer who won a 1999 Genie for the script for his feature debut Post Mortem.

‘It’s always tough for me, because I never consider myself a writer,’ Belanger says. ‘I’m a filmmaker first, and I write my stories because it’s the only way I can make films, but it’s always great to receive this kind of recognition.’

Gaz Bar opened the Montreal World Film Festival last August and went on to win four awards there, including most popular Canadian film at the fest. More recently, it won a pair of Prix Jutra, including best actor for Serge Theriault’s lead performance as Le Boss, and best music.

The script for Gaz Bar is largely inspired by Belanger’s childhood. The story of a family-owned gas station run by a father with Parkinson’s disease and his two sons, and the store’s amiable ensemble of hangers-on, is one that Belanger had been preparing to tell since working on Post Mortem.

‘Usually when I write, it takes me about 10 drafts to be happy, but on this one, by the second draft I was already pretty close to what was going to be the final script,’ he says. ‘The moment I was able to picture all of those people as cinematic characters, instead of my brother, father, sister and myself, it became very easy.’

Because of the highly personal nature of the story, Belanger says he could not have allowed anyone else to direct his script, most of which is based on fact. His brother Guy serves as the model for a character in the film (played by Danny Gilmore) who aspires to be a musician, and in real life Guy collaborated on the film’s music with Claude Fradette and won a Jutra. Also, their father (played by Theriault) did have Parkinson’s. Belanger says directing Theriault in this role was the most challenging part of bringing the script to screen.

‘In the beginning, when he was thinking about shaking with Parkinson’s disease, he was forgetting his lines, and when he was thinking about his lines, he’d deliver them without shaking and start again as soon as the other character would reply,’ says Belanger.

Theriault studied tape from Quebec’s Societe Parkinson, and after further discussion with Belanger, the actor nailed it and went on to win his Jutra.

With Gaz Bar having grossed $1.04 million across Quebec and in Toronto, Winnipeg and Saskatoon, Belanger is on to his next project – an adaptation of Trevor Ferguson’s 1996 novel The Timekeeper, set in the Northwest Territories. He says he is anxious to shoot in the wilderness, although penning an adaptation is proving a mixed blessing.

‘I’ve never adapted a book, so in the beginning I thought it was a fantastic gift and that I was stealing, because everything is there for you,’ he says. ‘Now I’m in the middle of the process and I’m discovering all of the problems that come with such a gift. There is a lot of freedom and space in the book, and I have to dig and find out how we can do it.’

Gaz Bar Blues was produced by Coop Video de Montreal and Productions 23 and distributed through Film Tonic and Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm in Quebec and Odeon Films in English Canada.

In the original screenplay category, Belanger is up against Denys Arcand for Les Invasions barbares, Sebastien Rose for Comment ma mere accoucha de moi durant sa menopause, Ken Scott for La Grande seduction and Peter Wellington for Luck.