Cinematic Superhero

Like any great editor, time can be ruthless.

In August, I finished writing the second draft of my new feature screenplay, Bitter Pills.

Bitter Pills is the story of a small town doctor who begins telling all his healthy patients they are dying of cancer. This news gives them a new perspective on life.

Back in August, I was rather happy with what I had written and felt the script was almost ready to be released into the world.

Having spent most of the first eight months of 2009 distributing The Last New Year (and writing Bitter Pills), in September it was time to get a job and pay some bills. I took a job as a producer on Down2Earth, and put the writing aside for a while.

Last week, I picked up Bitter Pills for the first time in almost three months. Reading it, I was shocked (and somewhat dismayed) over the amount of work which still needs to be done! Far from the polished work I had considered it to be three months ago, I feel it’s now a ‘good’ draft that requires considerable structural changes to get it where it needs to be.

… As the paint dries, the cracks begin to show through.

Stephen King says giving your drafts time to rest is one of the best things you can do as a writer. He suggests pounding out a draft, and then putting it away for at least a few months. The time between drafts allows one to become detached and provides a new perspective on the work.

Of course he’s right. What’s most surprising is my ability to forget this truth over and over again. Every time I finish a draft, I think it’s perfect, or at worst, only a ‘polish’ away from perfect.

Coming back to the work several months later is both daunting and exciting. Daunting because, even after diving back in, tearing the work apart and piecing it back together with laboured precision, there’s a good chance I could find myself in a similar state of mind three months after completing the next draft.

Exciting because, seeing the cracks so clearly now, I know there are ways to make it better.

Despite my feelings last September that Bitter Pills was ready to leave the nest and face the critiques of a harsh, unforgiving world, I never really felt it was as good as I’d initially hoped. Although well structured with strong characters, it wasn’t as remarkably, unbelievably, stupendously compelling as I thought it deserved to be. It wasn’t jumping off the page and grabbing me in a headlock and throwing me on the ground and kicking me in the teeth. It just wasn’t THAT good yet, and I thought, perhaps that’s just its fate. Perhaps it will never be that good…

But, perhaps it will, and with time come new ideas and new hope. I again believe it can and will be an amazing script, an ass-kicking script, and I have an arsenal of ideas about how to take it to the next level.

Now all I need to find is the time to work on it!

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There are times when it seems life has become one giant application. This is one of them…

In the last few months I have applied to: The Canadian Film Centre’s TV Writing Program, a Canada Council for the Arts Screenwriting Grant, The Toronto International Film Festival’s Talent Lab, The ABC/Disney TV Writing Fellowship Program, The National Screen Institute’s (Canada) Features First Program, The Berlinale Talent Campus, and The Bell Media Fund. Currently, I am working on an application for the Canadian Television Fund Digital Media program.

It’s too much. They all vary, but each application is at least a couple days of work to assemble (some are far more) So far, I have not been successful in any of the above, although I’ve only heard back from the first three. There is a strong part of me that is very curious as to why I even bother. I’ve never received a grant in my entire life, although, in the private sector, I seem to do quite well.

Perhaps I belong in the States?

You always hear how envious US filmmakers are of the funds that we have access to up here. However, sometimes I wonder if they’d feel the same way were they to experience how difficult it is to access any of those funds.

What’s remarkable about these applications is that they basically all require completely different supporting materials. It’s not like one can just copy and paste from one application to the next. Rather, it’s as if each one is carefully worded to purposely require unique responses. For the Berlinale Script Submission, they ask for a 10-15 page treatment of my script. This script is currently in the second draft. I did write a treatment, but it was prior to the first draft and is twice the length they allow. To try to rewrite it, that alone would take at least two days. Who’s got the time?

When I was in the early stages of writing Bitter Pills (my new script), I applied to all the Canadian funds I could think of – Telefilm Writers First, Corus Made with Pay, Harold Greenberg…

…None of them supported me. I told myself that the application process helped me refine my idea before moving to the draft stage, and although that’s probably true, the apps still required a lot of busy work that took me away from being creative.

I often wonder if all the time I spend applying to programs and funds was directed towards creating, how much more prolific I could be?

So, after all the rejections, I went ahead and wrote the script anyway. Who knows if it’s any good. I think it is, and, of course I also know it could be better. But, I also know that it’s miles beyond a lot of the scripts those funds that rejected me churn out.

So what’s the deal? What am I doing wrong in my applications? Is it a matter of not yet being well established to appeal to the burocrats? Or, is it that I’m just not good enough to be accessing these resources?

We’ll see. I have hope things will start to turn my way with this upcoming batch of applications… Otherwise, sooner or later, I’m just going to stop applying.