CANADIAN CANADA $7 SPRING 2019 VOL.21, NO.2 SCREENWRITER FILM | TELEVISION | RADIO | DIGITAL MEDIA Mark Little Makes Move to Live Action Pitching Your Way Into the Big League Bad Blood leads to good times for Michael Konyves PM40011669 tsc-2019-cs-ad-final.pdf 1 2019-03-04 2:08 PM C M Y CM MY CY CMY K CANADIAN SCREENWRITER The journal of the Writers Guild of Canada Vol. 21 No. 2 Spring 2019 ISSN 1481-6253 Publication Mail Agreement Number 400-11669 Publisher Maureen Parker Editor Tom Villemaire Contents [email protected] Cover Director of Communications Lana Castleman Bad Blood 6 Editorial Advisory Board Canada’s contribution to felonious violence has been Michael Amo ignored for years. That was a crime. Michael Konyves Michael MacLennan and Simon Barry changed that. Susin Nielsen Simon Racioppa By Matthew Hays Rachel Langer President Dennis Heaton (Pacific) Features Councillors Michael Amo (Atlantic) Demons and Laughs 12 Mark Ellis (Central) Mark Little has swapped his animated demons for Marsha Greene (Central) live-action laughs in his latest project. Alex Levine (Central) Anne-Marie Perrotta (Quebec) By Kendra Wong Andrew Wreggitt (Western) Studio Ours Design Pitch Perfection 16 Cover Photo: Emma McIntyre Printing Renaissance Printing Inc. Getting the proper tone in your pitch is one of the screenwriting craft’s most challenging skills. We get tips Canadian Screenwriter is from some of the industry’s most successful scenarists. published three times a year by the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC). By Diane Wild 366 Adelaide Street West, Suite 401 Toronto, Ontario M5V 1R9 TEL: (416) 979-7907 W-Files FAX: (416) 979-9273 WEBSITE: www.wgc.ca Marsha Green — By Cameron Archer 21 Subscriptions: WGC members receive a Kathleen Phillips — By Mark Dillon 23 subscription as part of their membership. Non-member subscriptions: $20 for three issues. Columns Advertising policy: Readers should not From the Editor/Contributors 2 assume that any products or services advertised in Canadian Screenwriter are Inside/Out — Dennis Heaton 3 endorsed by the WGC. One Last Thing — Jeremy Woodcock 28 Editorial Policy: The WGC neither implicitly nor explicitly endorses opinions or attitudes expressed in Canadian Screenwriter. News Submissions are subject to editing for Beat Sheet 4 length, style and content. Advertising Sales: Spotlight 24 Visit www.wgc.ca or contact Lana Money for Missing Writers 26 Castleman at [email protected] New Members 27 Letters to the editor are subject to editing for length. Not all letters are published. FROM THE EDITOR CONTRIBUTORS Guild is the solution Spring 2019 to power dilution Cameron Archer runs the Canadian television and media site Power is a beautiful thing. Gloryosky (www.gloryosky.ca), and You don’t realize how beautiful it is, until it’s gone. is also a freelance arts and media This winter, we had a wind/snow storm to beat all storms. It was a writer. He currently lives in Eastern life record for me. The house, which seems solid the rest of the time, was Ontario. shaking and the roof — well, I was sure at one point it might be pulled off or suffer severe damage. Mark Dillon is a Toronto-based And to cap it off, the power went out for 12 hours. freelance journalist and former While we were involuntarily off the grid, it made me think about editor of Playback magazine. He is author of the award-winning Fifty power, the lack of it, the importance of it and the different ways we have Sides of The Beach Boys. and don’t have power. Not just electrical power, of course. For example, let’s look at the issue of the concentration of own- Matthew Hays is a Montreal-based ership in the English-Canadian television market. I want to cite part writer, author, and university and of the submission of the Canadian Media Producers Association, only college instructor. His articles because they use the word oligopsonistic. A fancy pants word, if there have appeared in the Globe ever was one. How often do you even see that? Not often, believe me, and and Mail, The New York Times, if you want to base your estimations of an editor’s column solely on the Maclean’s, The Toronto Star and number of times you see the word “oligopsonistic,” well, you are proba- many others. His book, The View bly about to read the very best column of your lives. from Here: Conversations with Gay Here’s part of the CMPA’s submission to the Broadcasting and and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp), won a 2008 Lambda Telecommunications Legislative Review (BTLR) Panel. “Given the Literary Award. substantial vertical integration and consolidation of broadcasters in Canada, the oligopsonistic nature of our domestic market, the informa- Emma McIntyre is a staff tion asymmetry between producers and broadcasters, and the resulting entertainment photographer with significant buying power yielded by broadcasters, there is a real risk that Getty Images currently based ownership concentration will reduce the programming options and the in Los Angeles. Her work has number of distinct creative and editorial voices available to Canadians.” appeared in many publications If you haven’t looked it up yet, oligopsonistic means a market in which including Rolling Stone, SPIN, The there are few buyers and many sellers, which results in buyers having the New York Times, PEOPLE, The power. And if the producers feel that way, imagine how screenwriters feel Hollywood Reporter, US Weekly, about the dilution of their power. That’s just another reason — maybe the GQ and Pitchfork. biggest reason — the Writers Guild of Canada is so vital and important. Diane Wild is a Vancouver-based There are so many key issues to address right now, including fair writer, editor and health care pay and ownership of work, and even schooling the fine folks who buy communicator who founded the your words about the need to help cultivate a healthy environment in TV, eh? website and gallivants which screenwriters can also flourish. to work on the Olympics every If Canadian screenwriters don’t thrive, Canadian stories get couple of years. short shrift and our culture starts to wane. The Guild has had some pretty big victories over the last few Kendra Wong is a former months. That’s thanks to members’ efforts and the leadership at the front. journalist in Victoria, B.C. She has (We all know who they are and they know who they are and I could list a bachelor of arts from Simon them here, but space is limited and oligopsonistic takes up a lot of room.) Fraser University and a certificate in journalism from Langara But as the market becomes more concentrated, the need for screen- College. She has worked at writers to maintain a unified voice to express their concerns and their newspapers through BC, including perspective only becomes more important. There’s strength in numbers; Metro, the Tri-Cities NOW, some might even say there’s power. And power can be a beautiful thing. Smithers Interior News and the Oh, the lights are back on! Victoria News. She currently works in communications. — Tom Villemaire 2 INSIDE/OUT — FROM THE PRESIDENT Negotiating: When to compromise and when to draw a line in the sand I don’t actually remember my first negotiation, but I’ve decided that it went something like this: I needed one last Star Wars trading card to complete my collection. It wasn’t even a great card — let’s say it was the Jawas — but maybe the picture on the back completed the second picture puzzle. And. I. Simply. Had. To. Have. It. In this scenario, a classmate What you may not realize is solely about protecting the IPA, it’s has a duplicate. I start out with a that this could shape up to be one of about facilitating its evolution. The straight “onesie” trade offer. This our biggest negotiations ever. IPA is a living, breathing document hypothetical kid isn’t having it. He It’s the first time the Guild that must change to reflect the wants five of my doubles and two and the CMPA have sat down at change in our industry. stickers. Unheard of. But he has me the bargaining table in five years, It’s easy — maybe too easy — over a barrel. I give in, ensuring I having mutually agreed during the to treat these negotiations as an only ever complete one set of Topps last round to hold off bargaining antagonistic process. After all, we’re 1977 original Star Wars cards. And while we waited for a response to storytellers. We know the anecdote the next day, I get that same card in a our CRTC petition to keep up PNI about the worst negotiation we ever new package. Twist ending! spends by private broadcasters at engaged in is infinitely more enter- But I bet I would have learned historic levels. (We won! And we’ll taining than the one about the even- this valuable lesson about negoti- always be grateful to then Minister keeled conversation where both ating: Even when something seems Mélanie Joly for that great victory.) sides respected each other’s stance, like the only option, there’s always The expectation was that we and listened to what they had to say, another one. would resume negotiations when before making a counterproposal. Because I know you all read there was a little more stability and But as my father never said, “If you every email blast and newsletter certainty for our industry. Oops. walk into a room expecting a fight, from the Guild, I don’t have to We are currently in the midst you’re partially responsible for tell any of you that it’s currently of one of the entertainment indus- ensuring that there is a fight.” preparing for a new round of bar- try’s greatest-ever upheavals — or That’s why — when it comes gaining with the CMPA (Canadian “disruptions,” as the kids call it.