The job of writing the screenplay for Canadian tv movies and miniseries is rarely given to a ‘hired gun.’ In the case of this year’s batch of nominees in the category of Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries, the writers were all personally involved with the subjects they took on. Playback asked four of the five nominees why they thought their stories needed to be told to a Canadian tv audience and how they made that happen.
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(CBC’s Jim Burt has a hand in four movies and miniseries nominated for Gemini writing awards.*)
CBC projects have four of the five nominations for Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries. One person whose work contributed to the pubcaster’s dominance in the category is Jim Burt, cbc creative head/ development executive of movies and miniseries.
At the post for 14 years, Burt is partially responsible for the myriad of movies and miniseries that have garnered countless Geminis by telling uniquely Canadian stories in the network’s Sunday night time slot.
Among the cbc projects he has guided are The Boys of St. Vincent, Conspiracy of Silence, Million Dollar Babies, My American Cousin and Life With Billy.
The Gemini-nominated dramatic programs and miniseries that aired on the cbc continue the network’s quality slate of Canadian long-form drama. Through marathon meetings and phone calls, Burt guided the development of in-house productions Dangerous Offender from Janis Cole and Pete White’s Peacekeepers, the Credo Entertainment/Flat City Films production of David Adams Richards’ For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down and Keith Ross Leckie’s The Arrow, produced by Tapestry Films, The Film Works and John Aaron Productions.
Burt, a Writer’s Guild member who penned the cbc miniseries Sam Hughes’ War, takes special pride in the relationship his department – which also includes Brian Freeman and Tara Ellis – develops with writers.
Noting that the kind of long-form dramas the department undertakes are almost invariably stories pitched to him by the writers themselves, Burt says all the writers who are nominated for cbc movies or miniseries were very close to their topics.
Richards’ For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down script was adapted from his critically acclaimed novel of the same name. Cole knew her Dangerous Offender subject Marlene Moore personally, having made two documentaries about the prison inmate. Burt says the Canadian military is White’s ‘thing,’ while Leckie is a pilot and self-described Avro Arrow buff.
‘We pick projects that the writers are passionate about,’ says Burt. ‘We didn’t do The Arrow because it was a commercial idea and somebody hired Keith Ross Leckie to write it. He came to us. We always start with the creative people coming to us.
‘If you look at the four cbc nominees this year, they were all the writers’ stories. I didn’t tell Pete [White] to do this and hire him because he’s a good writer, they all pitched me with their stories.
‘Our department has always been creatively based,’ he says. ‘As soon as there is a story with a beginning, middle and an end, even if it’s only two pages, we get to work. We do a lot of work at each stage. We talk with the writer and then they go and write the treatment. When the treatment comes in we may spend a few hours or several days going over it before they write a draft,’ says Burt, who has a four-day script meeting coming up with producer Bernie Zukerman and writer Sharon Riis regarding their next project.
‘The script has to be terrific before we can get anything going, so we work a great deal with the writer and the script, it’s our main thing.’ (Burt met with Arrow writer Leckie every day for a week, right up until production.)
With budget cuts affecting every department at the Corp, the number of projects emerging from miniseries and movies is down to about six or seven a year. Burt fondly remembers a time in the early ’80s when a cbc movie would run every Sunday night and the department would have up to 50 projects in development.
What frustrates Burt the most is the lost opportunities: he says he can easily name 30 scriptwriters in Canada who are ‘brilliant’ and adds that the quality of scripts and writing in Canada is currently ‘extraordinary.’
‘I wish that the other networks would take on some of the great projects that we do,’ he says. ‘I know Baton has got some interesting things in development and that’s good for me, because right now I don’t have the money to do them all.’
Potential future Gemini nominees for Burt’s department include an original project in development with author Carol Shields, a fiction project with documentary producer/director Elliott Halpern, and projects with writer/director Clement Virgo and Newfoundland writer Des Walsh.
‘The quality is so extraordinary now and we are always looking for ways to do more, but these things aren’t cheap,’ says Burt. ‘Occasionally we sell some internationally, like The Boys of St. Vincent. The miniseries tend to do better; the movies are really just for us.’
*John Hopkins is also nominated for a Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries Gemini for penning the Telescene production of Hiroshima which ran on Global.
Also in this report:
Profiling Best Direction in a Dramatic TV Series: Kari Skogland p.22
Jon Cassar p.22
Jane Thompson p.27
Profiling Best Writing in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries:
Janis Cole p.29
David Adams Richards p.31
Keith Ross Leckie p.37
Pete White p.37
Profiling the contenders for Best Sports Program or Series p.39
The nominees list p.44