Roddy Doyle was born in 1958. His work includes The Commitments, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Booker Prize, 1993), The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, A Star Called Henry, and Bullfighting.  His latest book is Two Pints (2012).  A new novel, The Guts, will be published in August, in Ireland and the UK, and early 2014 in the USA.  He divides his time between Dublin and confusion.

RUSTY TALK WITH RODDY DOYLE

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Roddy Doyle: I was about ten, I think, and my teacher, Mr. Kennedy, told the class to write something about a rainy day. This was Ireland, remember, so deep research wasn’t necessary. There were fifty-four boys in the class, and it was the first time we’d been told to write, or compose, anything—to make it up.  I wrote about boredom.  Mr. Kennedy looked over my shoulder, then read it to the class. 

KM: Why did you become a writer?
RD: I loved reading.  I loved football—soccer—but was a hopeless player. I loved music but hadn’t the patience or ability to learn an instrument. But I was literate, so writing seemed like an easy option. I forced myself into the habit, the routine.

KM: What is the best writing advice that you’ve gotten that you actually use?
RD: Treat it as a job; don’t expect magic.

KM: How do you approach revision?
RD: If by ‘revision’ you mean editing, I love it. So I approach it with a full heart and a red ballpoint. I tend to, deliberately, write too much. Editing is often a case of paring back. I’m fascinated, and sometimes worried, about how the deletion or addition of a word can alter meaning, tone, everything. When I’m editing, I put all other work aside and concentrate only on the pages I’m editing. I don’t play music, and I often lose track of time.

KM: Your books often come out within a few years of each other. Do you work on multiple projects at the same time or stick to one project until it’s complete? Do you have difficultly switching from one genre to the next—particularly from adult fiction to children’s literature?
RD: I work on different projects at the same time; I divide my working day, about 9am to 6pm, into chunks. As long as the projects are very different, they don’t tend to infect each other. I play a different type of music for each project. I could, I suppose, change shirts too, but that might be going too far. So, I can work for several hours on a novel, save it, hang out the washing, make a cup of coffee, change the Rolling Stones for Steve Reich, and get working on a treatment for a possible TV series or a book for children. 

KM: What writers were influential when you first started writing? Who are you reading now?
RD: I think Flann O’Brien was important, particularly the Dublin dialogue in At Swim-Two-Birds. E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime was important—the simplicity of the language. I’ve just finished George Saunders’ collection, Tenth of December; I think it’s magnificent. I’m reading a collection of J.G. Ballard interviews, called Extreme Metaphors. It’s great. 

KM: Given the amount of books that you’ve written, it seems impossible to imagine, but do you ever get writer’s block? And if you do, how do you overcome it?
RD: No—never.

KM: Do you ever abandon projects? If so, how do you know when it’s time to move on?
RD: I’ve never abandoned, but I’ve parked projects for a while, stayed away from them until I was ready to look at them with that mixture of calm and excitement that I need if I’m going to work. Because I work on several things during the day, if one project isn’t going well, I can focus on another. 

KM: We often talk about the difficulty of rejection for writers but what about the problems that success can bring? After you won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, for instance, what was it like sitting back down at the writing desk?
RD: Success, however we measure it, is much nicer than rejection. But rejection can be like fuel to an almost empty engine. Rejection is a cousin of determination, and it’s part of the job. Success is too, if you’re lucky.  The trick is, I think, to ignore it when you’re at your desk. I never let myself think that, just because I’ve won a prize, I’m not capable of writing shit. After winning the Booker, I couldn’t wait to get back to work. I love the work. 

KM: You posted your latest work Two Pints, which was just published in its entirety in November, as a serial on Facebook over the last year and half. Why did you decide to do this and what was the process like for you? Did the process have any affect on the end product? In other words, did the reader comments influence revisions? Would you do it again with another project?
RD: I wrote the Two Pints pieces for fun.  Someone suggested they’d make a good book, so—grand. It’s an accidental book, and still fun. I still write the Two Pints pieces, when the mood hits me and I have time. I often compose them as I’m walking, say, from the city centre, home. I type them up, make sure they’re less than 200 words, then post them on Facebook. I like the near-spontaneity of it—very different from how I normally work. It’s a little madness. I didn’t revise them, so reader comments, while nice, had no influence on them. I’d never be tempted to put work-in-progress up on Facebook. I don’t want to know what readers think until I know the work is finished.

KM: What are you working on now?
RD: I’ve just finished a novel, called The Guts. It’ll be out here and the UK in August, and the USA early in 2014. I’m writing a short story, about a man who’s injured when another man, in Lycra, cycles into him.  I’m also working on a treatment for a possible TV series. ‘Possible’ is code for ‘It’ll never be made.’  I’m enjoying the job. Later this year, a musical based on my book, The Commitments, will go into rehearsal.  I wrote the script, the ‘book’, so that will take up a lot of my time.  I’m very excited about it. I’m tempted to say ‘I can’t wait’ but, actually, I can—just.

RODDY DOYLE'S LATEST BOOK
Two Pints, published by Jonathan Cape, Vintage Publishing, 2012

Description from the publisher:
Two men meet for a pint in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, take the piss… They talk about their wives, their kids, their kids’ pets, their football teams and--this being Ireland in 2011–12--about the euro, the crash, the presidential election, the Queen’s visit. But these men are not parochial or small-minded; one of them knows where to find the missing Colonel Gaddafi (he’s working as a cleaner at Dublin Airport); they worry about Greek debt, the IMF and the bondholders
(whatever they might be); in their fashion, they mourn the deaths of Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, Davy Jones and Robin Gibb; and they ask each other the really important questions like ‘Would you ever let yourself be digitally enhanced?’

Inspired by a year’s worth of news, Two Pints distils the essence of Roddy Doyle’s comic genius. This book shares the concision of a collection of poems, and the timing of a virtuoso comedian.

Linda Svendsen's linked collection, Marine Life, was published in Canada, the United States and Germany and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Saturday Night, O. Henry Prize Stories, Best Canadian Stories and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Marine Life was nominated for the LA Times First Book Award and released as a feature film. Svendsen’s TV writing credits include adaptations of The Diviners, At the End of the Day: The Sue Rodriguez Story, and she co-produced and co-wrote the miniseries Human Cargo, which garnered seven Gemini Awards and a George Foster Peabody Award. She received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. Svendsen is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.

RUSTY TALK WITH LINDA SVENDSEN

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Linda Svendsen: In Grade 2, we were asked to write a rhyming poem and I had so much fun doing it that I went on for a dozen stanzas. Building on this major breakthrough, in Grade 3 I tried to write a sequel to Tom Sawyer in which Becky and Tom married (roughly 6 pages of careful heartfelt printing).

KM: Why did you decide to become a writer?
LS: I don't think I ever decided to become a writer; it's happened by default and I still wonder how it's all going to turn out. All I know is that I really enjoy writing fiction and for screen and that it allows me to pursue all the other activities I considered such as acting, directing, producing, social work, anthropology, history, etc.  

KM: What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given that you use?
LS: Nancy Packer, fiction writer (and mother of New Yorker writer George Packer and novelist Ann Packer) told me to take my characters to the cliff.  And push them over.

KM: Your new novel, Sussex Drive, is a political satire offering readers a behind-the-scenes look at Canadian politics. Why did you decide to take on this subject matter? What do you hope readers take away from it?
LS: Sussex Drive was inspired by Canada's federal prorogue-a-palooza in 2008 and 2009. It's about a Conservative Prime Minister's wife and a left-wing Governor General and what happens when they can no longer play "Follow the Leader." I was very intrigued by the Governor General's role and decision-making in December 2008—would she or wouldn't she allow the Harper government to fall and the coalition to take power? Also, as Canadians, we're immersed in the entertainment/propaganda of the U.S. and U.K. (and their political figures with The King's Speech, The Queen, Game Change) and our own turf seemed rich and virtually unexplored. And it's chick lit, too, for canuckleheads.

KM: Sussex Drive reads like it’s written by a political insider. How did you approach the research for this project? Can you tell us about the process of writing this book?
LS: Sussex started out as a short story after December 2008 and headed toward novella length. After the 2009 prorogation, it became a novel and I visited Ottawa—the Parliament Buildings, Rideau Hall, Gatineau Lake, Museum of Civilization, the War Museum, and Rockcliffe Park. I happened to be in London in April 2009 during the G-20 and found it fascinating that the Canadians seemed to be invisible to the British press. Random House Canada bought the novel in October 2011 when I had 140 pages written; I wrote from January to June 2012 (my editors were amazing!) and it was published last October. Tight deadline!

KM: Many reviewers have commented on the sharp dialogue in Sussex Drive. In addition to writing fiction, you’re also an awarding-winning screenwriter. Do you plan on adapting Sussex Drive for film or television? If so, how do you plan on approaching the adaptation?
LS: I'm trying to talk my husband into producing Sussex Drive, but he's busy with other projects right now. 6 x 1 hour or a TV movie...fingers crossed!    

KM: What are you working on now?
LS: Right now I'm deciding what novel I'm writing next. Great space to be in.

Nadia Litz is an award-winning Canadian actress and director. After her debut at Cannes in the award-winning film The Five Senses, Maclean’s magazine voted her “One to Watch” for the new millennium. She played Sam Shepard’s daughter in 2002’s After The Harvest and was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Actress for that role. In 2007 she won the Vancouver’s Critics Award for her role in Reg Harkema’s Monkey Warfare.  Her 2010 short film, How To Rid Your Lover Of A Negative Emotion Caused By You!,  produced by the Canadian Film Centre where she was a director-in- residence, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010, has played over a dozen film festivals throughout the US, Canadian and internationally, including out-of-competition at the Cannes Court Metrage, winning best short at Austin’s Fantastic Fest 2011. In 2012 Litz was featured on the prestigious Wholphin anthology, alongside Jay Duplass (Jeff Who Lives At Home) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene). Recently Litz completed an experimental short doc on Canada’s revered and controversial Right Honorable Adrienne Clarkson, which makes its world premiere at VIFF in September 2012. Her first feature Hotel Congress, a comedy-of manners that takes place in a Tucson hotel is in post-production. While her second feature, a love story that takes place in a suicide forest in Japan, goes to camera in 2013. You can follow her on Twitter.

RUSTY TALK WITH NADIA LITZ

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Nadia Litz: In grade school we had to choose a story of a historical figure, do research on the figure, and then make a book on that figure. We had to write it, illustrate it, and even bind the book ourselves. My dad had taken me to go and see Milos Forman's Amadeus and I became obsessed with it and subsequently Mozart, so I chose to write my "book" on him. I called it "Wolfie".

KM: When did you first start directing and writing for film?
NL: I tend to do a lot of "research" before I try something. I read screenwriting books and had taken classes, and I had been aimlessly writing pretend scripts and treatments for a while—maybe 10 years. But, it wasn't until my last year of university studying Cinema Studies that I directed. It was a 3-minute experimental short that was an assignment in a directing for non-majors class. It landed me a spot as a director-in-residence at the Canadian Film Center months later. That was in 2009. Which proves I'm a noobie and you should probably stop reading this.

KM: How do you think your acting background influences or affects your directing and writing?
NL: I think it does but it is hard to articulate how. I suppose I trust what good actors can bring to a moment, so when I was first writing, I tended to underwrite (according to producers and story editors). I continue to learn the balance of what should be on the page and what shouldn't be. I was just re-reading Allan Ball's American Beauty, and in the script he writes a stage direction for the character Carolyn: "Even when she slept she had a look of determination on her face."  That kind of writing is gold for an actor. As an actor if I read that one line, I would understand the character, so I try to be mindful of things like that when I write and when I direct. The script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is also full of stage direction like that. Simple editorial clues that will be an anchor for an actor, without force feeding it. I don't mind breaking what might be considered screenwriting convention in order to make a script come alive for an actor; however, I do believe in a firm structure as a base.

KM: What inspires the stories you tell?
NL: I have noticed that locations seem to inspire the first grain of an idea for me. However, I hope that whatever inspires me at a given time will evolve as I do as a writer. I think the first few stories we tell tend to have a personal element. Filmmakers can seem like we want our trajectory to be the indie personal story root because when we are first starting out, we have budgetary constraints that lend themselves to personal stories. I love including personal elements in my stories, little nods to my life, but I have yet to ever want to tell the truth about my life on film. My preference is to look around me. I also like emotionalizing things that are "concepts". Also, I get a bunch of ideas via the Sunday Times. Too many, really, it's shameful.

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker that had a big impact on you?
NL: Kurt Vonnegut was the first great literary writer I read as a teenager. He had those naive drawings in a few of his novels, which always seemed subversive to high art literature and cinematic to me for some reason. His voice resonates with me still. He is wry and detached but wholly emotional to me. His satire is never mean. He points out the meanness of the world because his heart is broken that it is like that. That's how I see him. I relate to that way of thinking. His voice/tone is highly original.

The list is too long for filmmakers. However most of the films I love tend to be some form of comedy-of-manners in a broad stroke way. I think a lot of Kubrick's films, for example, are comedy-of-manners so I have a broad idea about that genre. Bunuel, Oshima, Ozu, Rhomer, Kubrick, Cohen Brothers, Whit Stillman, Coppola (Sofia)—usual suspects.

KM: When you are directing films that you didn't write—what is the process like? Do you have any advice about what screenwriters can expect when working with a director?
NL: I love the process of directing others' work. It's a whole other ballgame then directing your own work, and both are equally satisfying for different reasons. In directing another screenwriter's script you have to find clever ways of making it meaningful to you. It's a challenge to have one more person you need to satisfy. It can be exciting that your only way to tell the story is visually/emotionally. With the short “How To Rid Your Lover of a Negative Emotion Caused By You!” it was a case of having two very strong voices in the mix—the writer Ryan Cavan and mine as a director. It's successful because both visions were honored. 

KM: When writing your own scripts what is the writing process like for you? How do you approach revision?
NL: I love to write. It is a joy. I don't feel bogged down by it. If I hit a block, it's a challenge and I like challenge. The thing that gets me down is when I lose interest in something that I have been working on for some time. Do you try to revive the interest or do you let it go? That's an obstacle for sure. For revisions I like to have a plan. I'll start with strengthening the peripheral characters and work my way towards the protagonist. I just read these great tips from James Schamus, who had some harebrained ideas for revisions I think I might try. Revisions are a drag, but he had these thoughts about standing a draft on its head that seemed very smart.

KM: When getting notes from producers—what do you do when you get a note that you don't like or agree with on your script?
NL: Only take good ideas and only from people you respect. You know your script and characters better than anyone. People will try to convince to take their note by saying things like "you're too close to the script". I say, "yes!" It is a good thing to be very close to your script. Also, when you are starting out people will tell you are suppose to consider all producer notes, because you are new. Like it is a manners thing. This is what I think: your script is the thing you are the expert on. Have the conversation, if only as a way to articulate why you don't agree with their note, but ultimately you make the choice. You are the CEO of your script and a CEO needs to believe in the company and lead it. No one calls a CEO 'precious' when they believe in their company, so don't let words like that deter you...Now, if you're a bad CEO, your company will fail and the public will let you know quite quickly and you won't be allowed to be CEO anymore! So, you have to be a good CEO! But, ultimately I'm all for screenwriters, respectfully, standing up for a choice. Most producers in the real world respect people who can articulate and communicate a vision. It is your responsibility to instill trust in your producers and funders about that choice, however. Also, that was a really long CEO metaphor. I hope it was clear...Also, if you are a gun-for-hire, it's a totally different thing. Then you apply the note and you find your way into the note. Case closed.

KM: What are you working on now?
NL: I just finished shooting my first feature called Hotel Congress.  I had been in development on what was suppose to be my first feature The People Garden when this opportunity to make a film for no money presented itself. Hotel Congress is a film full of things I swore I would never do. I wrote it in 12 days. Very little revisions. Very talky. We shot the film in 40 hours. I star in it. I co-produced it. I co-directed it with Michel Kandinsky. Did I mention we shot the entire feature in 40 hours? We shot it on location in Tucson Arizona in a hotel called Hotel Congress. It is a romantic comedy-of-manners that we shot in 40 hours. We're in the edit now. We don't know if we're crazy, but so far we love it and think it's quite charming, actually. It was made with so much drive and love by an insular team of my favorite co-horts. It would be impossible not to love a feature film. That you shot. In forty hours. In the desert. 

I hope to make my film The People Garden next year. With a smidge more time.

Nadia Litz and Michel Kandinsky – Directors’ Statement

“Instead of bashfully wearing its microscopic budget as a badge of honor, Nadia Litz and Michel Kandinsky’s HOTEL CONGRESS aims for a genuine economy of craft. Ironically, in a project devised and executed in the shadows of the Canadian production stream, it’s a combination of old fashion virtues – a resonant location, clever camera placement, and a worthily wordy screenplay – that elevates Litz and Kandinsky’s first feature debut beyond a novelty item.” –Adam Nayman (Cinema Scope, The Grid)

Hotel Congress is a tender comedy-of-manners about two people who meet in a hotel famous for its nefarious associations to Depression era bank robber John Dillinger. Sofia and Francis try not to have an affair, while trying to find true love. The film comically deals with ethics in an unethical situation and could aptly be re-titled “What Happens When Cynics Try To Care.” Or “Why John Dillinger is Not A Bad Guy.”

The film was Shot for a $1000, in under 40 hours at the historic Hotel Congress in Tucson Arizona. Litz had been to the hotel 7 years prior to see the post-punk band Interpol play a show in the parking lot. She was struck by the dichotomous feeling of isolation and warmth the hotel had. The way the hotel felt stuck in time.

Nadia Litz (writer, co-director, co-producer, actress):

This film was under ‘willing duress’ from the start. I say willing because we wanted to prove a point in this very competitive market: you just need some smarts and an air tight work ethic to make an interesting film. Film at its best is about ideas and relatable emotion. Let that be the end of budget and time constraints.

When you start to think of what you can do for $1000, you quickly realize the script can save you. In writing this particular project, I focused on films that we all deeply admired the dialogue of (because dialogue doesn’t need lighting!) and why those films work. Obviously we love Mamet and Woody Allen and Hal Hartley and of recent years Lena Dunham comes to mind. We were going through a major Sturges period – hence the 4:3 - his films are simply shot, but beautifully romantic yet not at all ‘twee’….But, Whit Stillman is still the quintessential dialogue screenwriter for me. His characters are satirical, but his films are tender in a way that sneaks up on you. Could the Chris Eigeman character be more of a jerk, that you ultimately feel for, because a) he is truly stuck in his own jerk-ness and b)he’s the least hypocritical character in the Stillman world. I had him in mind for my character Sofia.

Stillman’s ideas and his modern philosophy (or philosophy of modernity) are what you care about in his films. Ideas and philosophies don’t inherently cost money so they bode well for indie filmmaking. That seemed like the highest bar to work towards.

I’m not into improvisation, shooting everything and finding the film in the edit for indie filmmaking. I think you need to be more meticulous and disciplined in the basics of the craft as an indie filmmaker

I wrote the film round the clock in twelve days. We were shooting three weeks later. Every word we said is in the original script. It felt mischievous to do it that way, to not belabor the process with second-guessing and rewrites. Just write it and shoot it.

When you don’t try to fit into a preconceived mold, the mode of storytelling becomes more interesting. You feel uncensored.

Michel Kandinsky: (co-director, co-producer)

For me, the film is about two people trapped by their own erudite, iconoclast self-awareness. They know what to say at the appropriate moment and how to say it in a clever way but this knowledge keeps them from feeling as deeply as they could.

I approach film as an intuitive medium, one in which too much thought gets in the way when time on set is spent trusting your intuition. It’s the opposite of what the characters in the film are doing, until they do it…And then once they trust in it they become the kind of love they aspire to, without even realizing it.

This was the first time I had co-directed anything. The remarkably short amount of time that we had to shoot this film kept us from too much discussion once we were on set. We simply didn’t have the ability to talk things out once we started shooting. We had to trust the script and our base instincts, keep out the temptation to over-think. I think that comes through in the finished product. There’s an energy there that I find very empowering. We knew we had to just start.

Starring
Nadia Litz
Philip Riccio

Director
Nadia Litz
Michel Kandinsky

Writer
Nadia Litz

Producer
Nadia Litz
Michel Kandinsky
Philip Riccio
&
Daniel Bekerman

Exec Producer
Ingrid Veninger
Stacey Donen

Cinematographer
Daniel Grant

Editor
Jonathan Eagan

Sound Editing
Gabe Knox

Song by
Paul Banks

Directed By: Nadia Litz
Starring: Sarah Allen & Joe Cobden
Screenplay By: Ryan Cavan
Produced By: Heather K. Dahlstrom & Daniel Bekerman
Edited By: Alexandre-Nicholas Giffard
Director of Photography: Daniel Grant
Production Design By: Nazgol Goshtasbpour

Description
Love can make us do weird things. Sadie does a weird thing. She does it to her boyfriend Dennis. Keep in mind she only wants what's best for both of them—a perfect relationship. It could be the perfect relationship, too, as long as nobody bleeds to death.

Iain MacLeod is a film and TV writer from Nova Scotia.  Educated at York University and the Canadian Film Centre, where he was captain of the soccer team, Iain’s first TV gig was writing sketch on CBC’s Street Cents.  Later he spent six seasons on Showcase’s Trailer Park Boys as story editor and the last four of those as one of the writers too.  Since then he has consulted on various shows in development, done some teaching and mentoring and also spent a lot of time thinking about joining the Navy.  Most recently his co-written feature comedy Beat Down was produced and will be released in theatres this fall.

RUSTY TALK WITH IAIN MACLEOD

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Iain MacLeod: I grew up in rural Nova Scotia, and I can remember playing in the woods a lot and pretending to be a soldier in WW2. I’d make up characters and little story lines. In terms of actual writing-it-down-writing though, I guess that would be writing stories in elementary school. A teacher said to me once I could be a writer. Foolishly I listened to her.  

KM: When did you first start writing for film/TV?
IM: As far back as grade twelve I’d fooled around with video but nothing serious.  Then when I finished university I somehow convinced my Mum to loan me a lot of money to make a 48-minute film. That was in 1996 and afterwards I made a few more shorts before getting a job at CBC’s Street Cents in 1999.     

KM: What inspires the stories you tell?
IM: I think it’s a combination of my neurotic brain and the weird area I grew up, New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, which is literally the worst town in Canada (seriously there’s a list and it’s finished last, two years in a row…don’t get too cocky though Toronto you were 47 this year). There’s always something strange going on there and I just love that. So my inspiration is crazy people, myself included?  Does that make me bad? It might. I just love people and the nonsense they get up to. Worst species ever…but I love us.

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker that had a big impact on you?
IM: All kinds really though I’m not quite sure how each person did. My favourite writer for example is Jane Austen (who is the greatest writer in the history of the English-language and I will fist-fight anybody who disagrees) but I don’t think anyone would see her influence in my writing. Should I just say Quentin Tarantino?    

KM: What is the writing process like for you when working on your own projects?
IM: I love to write but I also hate it…a lot. It isn’t always that much fun and (I hope) like a lot of writers I avoid it as much as possible. If I’m writing a script there’s usually a long drawn out period of making notes, thinking about structure, and so on. Then there’s an outline and that should be followed by a treatment but often isn’t. Finally, I write the script and that can actually happen fairly quickly if I get on a roll. I find a lot of the process is about waiting, staring at the ceiling, searching Wikipedia etc. Not fun.     

KM: How do you approach revision?
IM: With terror. To be fair sometimes it’s not that bad and can even be fun, but I also often feel like “that’s it, I’m done, it’s perfect” when I finish a first draft. And by often I mean always. You have to revise though. I guess?

KM: What was the co-writing process like on your feature film Beat Down?
IM: My co-writer, Deanne Foley, and I have a very similar sensibility (I don’t know if we’re really funny or not but we find each other hilarious) so for the most part the writing went smoothly. It can be a bit complicated to distribute scenes, acts etc. fairly between two people, but there was a lot of talking things through and knowing where we were going first. It ended up taking 2-3 years in the end, and I think that was both a good thing and a bad thing. On the whole though, it was a great experience. I’ve done co-writing where it’s been wonderful and where it’s been an absolute unbearable hell. Writing Beat Down was the former.

KM: What is the biggest difference between writing for film and writing for TV?
IM: Other than the paycheque you mean? I guess it’s that a movie ends but you have to keep coming up with new stories for a TV show. That sounds obvious but it is a really hard thing to do (watch The Beachcombers Season 15 for example).  Not all show concepts can sustain that. When I pitch TV series I often hear “that’s a movie” so I guess I haven’t really mastered it myself. Another thing is that, at least in Canada, there are far more people weighing in with notes for TV than with film and not always in a good way. 

KM: When getting notes from producers or story editors, what do you do when you get a note that you don’t like or agree with on your script?
IM: I smile and think they’re idiots. That’s actually true. But then if the note’s any good or I respect the person giving it I do seriously consider it, which is something I never used to do when I was younger. Maybe I’m growing up. Ultimately, if you’re getting paid and these are the people who will, hopefully, get your thing made you have to listen. It’s a balancing act though, fighting for your vision on the one hand and hearing different views on the other. It takes a long time to figure that out and given the nature of this business I don’t know that anyone ever does completely. As a general rule though, if you’re getting the same note from different people they’re probably right. Idiots!

KM: Do you have any advice for someone aspiring to write for television?  What is the best way to break in?
IM: I don’t have children but whenever I’m asked this question I feel like that’s what it would be like if I did and they asked me about Santa Claus. I genuinely want to be encouraging, but at the same time the simple truth, which is rarely stated unfortunately, is that writing for TV is highly, even brutally, competitive.  And not only is it competitive, but also there isn’t a prescribed path to take to break in. It’s not like being a doctor or a welder or a taxi driver or whatever, where as long as you do certain things it will happen. TV is just so unpredictable.  One of the things that’s hurt me (and it is possible I just suck too) is it took me a long time to get my head around that. I was trying to apply my small-town Presbyterian worldview to the industry and it wasn’t adding up. Anyway by all means immerse yourself in TV, try to write a brilliant spec script, talk to as many people as you can who are already in the business and so on but my biggest piece of advice is simply, understand just how unpredictable and ridiculous this business is. It’s probably going to be hard no matter what, but if you don’t have that perspective I’m talking about, it will be much harder. And you’ll probably go completely insane (that isn’t a joke). Of course everything I just said only applies to people who aren’t scumbags. For those of you who are, my advice is much simpler, just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll go far. I’m totally serious by the way—they have a much better shot. Lucky bastards. 

KM: What is your favourite moment that you’ve experienced as a writer or filmmaker?
IM: I was in a bar in my hometown once talking with some people a buddy of mine knew. They asked me what I did and I told them and one of them quoted his favourite Trailer Park Boys line, a line I’d written. So that’s probably the best moment. Not quite saving the world but I’ll take it.  

KM: What are you working on now?
IM: I have a couple features in development. One of my own, called Soccer Punch, and another with co-writer Ed McNamara, Brobots.  I have a few more in pre-development (which is code for I’m not getting paid), and I have some TV pitches I’m working on too.  I’m also fooling around with a novel fragment that I wrote when I was in my mid-20s and finally decided to work on again. It’s called Leftovers and is about my hometown (I’m also toying with calling it The Worst Town In Canada). 

Comedian, actor, and writer, Bob Kerr is currently a writer on CBC's award-winning This Hour Has 22 Minutes which earned him a Gemini nomination. He was a founding member of the 12-man sketch troupe The Sketchersons which earned three consecutive nominations for the Canadian Comedy Award. He has written for Cream of Comedy (Comedy Network), a segment for CBC Newsworld Live (CBC), Comedy Inc. (CTV), Nikki Payne's Funtime Show! (Comedy Network Special), and Hotbox (Comedy Network). Bob also co-wrote and performed in the short film, The Funeral, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival and CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival in 2008. In 2011, Bob participated in the CFC/Telefilm Comedy Lab for a horror-comedy feature film script that he co-wrote entitled The House They Screamed In. You can follow Bob on Twitter.

RUSTY TALK WITH BOB KERR

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Bob Kerr: As a fan of Letterman, I would write my own Top Ten Lists and read them to my fellow kids at the back of the bus. I also wrote stories that were a direct inspiration of movies I was into. I wrote a story that was about a baseball team that was trapped within a (Jurassic Park-type) jungle and the star pitcher was bitten by a "gypsy hamster" that turned him into a (Pet Sematary 2-style) zombie. Really dumb. 

KM: When did you first start writing for film/TV and how did you get into it?
BK: I was a member of a comedy troupe called The Sketchersons, and we did a weekly show called Sunday Night Live which heavily borrowed from the format of Saturday Night Live. I had done the Weekend Update part of the show for a large part of the time. Producers who saw the show asked me to submit things. My first writing gig was a for a late-night talk show pilot that didn't go anywhere and that was followed by my first trial run at This Hour Has 22 Minutes. 

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker that had a big impact on you? 
BK: It was mainly performers, actually. David Letterman and Conan O'Brien were big influences. They do what they want to do. And a lot of it's really weird, and I like weird things.

KM: How does the writing room work for This Hour Has 22 Minutes? 
BK: Early in the week, we pitch sketches and spend the whole day and night writing them. After the table read, sketches are picked and then the following days are focused more on copy jokes (a.k.a. news jokes...y'know, the set-up-punch stuff) and things called ledes, which is writing jokes around actual news footage. We sometimes pair up on sketches, but there's a lot of independent writing. My favourite days are writing copy jokes because we have table reads of those jokes amongst the writers and we have a couple laughs. Sometimes even more.

KM: For someone looking to get into TV or comedy writing, a writing room—especially a comedy room—can seem intimidating. Do you have any advice for how to get over feeling like an idiot if your joke fails or no one likes your ideas in the room? 
BK: Trust me, I know what it's like to feel like an idiot. I've had plenty of stuff bomb in the room. An important thing to remember is that you're in good company; everybody bombs.  Bombing is a very key part of the writing process. Because you learn from it. Mainly what works and what doesn't. So ultimately, don't dwell on feeling like an idiot. Because you will miss the bomb lesson. It's not about you! Get over yourself! Move on! (I feel like I'm talking to myself now.) 

KM: What is your writing process like for your other projects—other collaborations or solo projects?
BK: Typical; go to coffee shop, order an Americano and stare at my computer screen. Collaborations can be fun if you're doing it with the right person. Someone that you feel comfortable bouncing ideas with. 

KM: What is the biggest difference between writing for film and writing for TV?
BK: You spend way more time with a film script than a TV script. There's pros and cons to both. With TV, you don't have all the time in the world to make "the perfect script", so there's not much time for rewrites. You are also forced to write a lot and quickly and that kind of pressure is good. I think you get better stuff from that. Plus, there's a whole writing room that will punch up your ho-hum material. Again, it's not about you.

KM: When getting notes from producers/story editors/show runners—what do you do when you get a note that you don't like or don't agree with on your script?
BK: Well, there's two ways to go about it. You either don't make the change and pray they don't notice (which they usually do), or you talk it out with said note-giver. That being said, pick your battles. One thing I've learned in TV is that I can't be too precious with anything I write. With 22, there's not a lot of time, because I'm most likely onto something else. Plus, it's hard to feel precious about something I've worked on for a couple of hours the night before as opposed to something I've been working on for weeks or months. 

KM: Do you have any advice for someone aspiring to write for television? What is the best way to break in?
BK: I don't know what the best way is. I only know my way. I was tenacious and I wrote a lot of stuff. I was out there performing with a great troupe every week on top of doing stand-up and I was getting myself seen. It's a lot of work to get a job. There's also the standard advice: Write spec scripts, get an agent, write more spec scripts. 

KM: What are you working on now?
BK: I'm going to be returning to Halifax for the 20th season of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. I'm currently working on a spec pilot as well. I'm also trying to think of a funny tweet.

Semi Chellas is a writer and supervising producer on the sixth season of TV’s Mad Men. She is nominated for two Emmys (with Matt Weiner) for her episodes in season five, “Far Away Places” and “The Other Woman”. She is also adapting Dr. Jill Bolte Talyor's best-selling My Stroke of Insight for Imagine Entertainment. Semi was the Executive Producer and Co-Creator of Canadian prime-time network drama THE ELEVENTH HOUR, two-time Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television winner for Best Series. The show ran three seasons and was nominated for 38 awards by the Canadian Academy, winning 9; Semi herself won for Best Writing (with Tassie Cameron). As a director, she's had three short films premiere at The Toronto International Film Festival: Green Door (written by Barbara Gowdy); Trouser Accidents (included in the Best Canadian Short Films Showcase) and Three Stories From the End of Everything (nominated by the Canadian Academy for best live-action short).

RUSTY TALK WITH SEMI CHELLAS

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of writing creatively?
Semi Chellas: I wanted to be a writer as soon as I knew what that was. My mom was a freelance journalist and she had set up a little desk for me next to her desk. I must have been five or younger, and I had her taking dictation for this book I was working on that involved a lot of puns. When I was 7, I wrote a novel in twenty 3 by 5 spiral notebooks—it was the story of a girl with a tail who lived in a country where people with tails were enslaved. And basically she was trying to get Han Solo to smuggle her out of there. I submitted a story to The New Yorker when I was 16 and got a hand-written rejection. Later I think it became a liability for me. I had to get rid of the romantic ideas I had about being a writer and actually learn to write. The best advice I ever heard about writing was “get dressed every day”. 

KM: Why did you become a writer?
SC: It’s a bit of a cliché I think, but there is no why. I just always wrote.

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker or screenwriter that had a big impact on you and your writing?
SC: When I was a kid, in the ‘70s, my grandfather and his wife lived next door to Ann Beattie in Connecticut. I just read that during that decade she had 35 stories in The New Yorker.  She was an original and had invented a whole new style. Plus she was tall and funny and had long swingy hair and I loved her. My grandfather, to my mortification, told her I was writing stories. And she asked to read one of mine, and there was a dog in it. She read it very gravely and asked me questions instead of giving me false praise, or acting like it was cute that I’d written it. Then she gave me a copy of her latest collection, Distortions, and she had inscribed it to me and ticked off in pencil all the stories with dogs in them. And I felt like she was treating me like a fellow writer—that we were actually having an interaction that was beyond just me being a little kid who was in awe of her. Of course I was completely deluded. But I read every story in that collection a hundred times and tried to understand how they were so good, and that was an enormous influence on my writing. 

KM: What is writing process like for you when you write alone? How do you approach revision?
SC: I like to have big chunks of time when I write but that always used to lead to a lot of procrastinating, because I’d think, Well, it’s almost noon and I haven’t written anything so what’s the point of starting? Then I was at a dinner party with a famous fiction writer who was talking about how her daughter, a graduate student, had finished her dissertation after reading a book called How To Finish Your Dissertation. And this book was written by a brain specialist whose whole thing was that creativity comes in 90-minute bursts. After that, the brain needs to rest for 30 minutes. And two or three of these bursts was a good day’s work for a creative person; if you’re spending eight hours at the computer in the day, it’s really only two hour and a half periods that count. This changed my life. I started working in 90 minute windows, where I would completely block everything out—no phone, no text, no Googling or internet, no changing the music. And I started doing this with friends—we’d go somewhere and sit across from each other and work for 90 minutes and then take a break for a half an hour. And it’s incredibly effective. Then one of my friends asked about this book and we went looking for it and I swear it doesn’t exist. I don’t know if the writer made it up, or her daughter made it up, or something, but there is no truth to that 90-minute theory. But I guess it imposed discipline on me that I needed. I still do it. 

KM: Could you describe the journey from your first TV writing job to writing for Mad Men?
SC: A long time ago, I wrote a movie that ended up getting made for television. And it won a lot of awards, so even though I’d never written for television before that, I was approached to develop an idea for a series. So with a producer friend Ilana Frank, I created the show that became The Eleventh Hour, and it got ordered, and then suddenly Ilana and I were running this TV series. And neither of us had done episodic TV at all. It was really like getting thrown in the deep end and learning to dogpaddle to the side—over and over and over every week. The series turned out great, and I’m very proud of it. After that I didn’t want to work on a TV show for a long time. But I always said to my agent that if there was ever an opening on Mad Men, he had to get me the meeting. And then there was, and he did.

KM: How does the writing room work on Mad Men? How does this differ from the other shows you’ve worked on?
SC: Matt Weiner, the creator and showrunner of Mad Men, comes in at the beginning with a vision for the season. He lays out themes, character arcs and the time period. He’ll give us books to read, he’ll read us poems or passages, he’ll show us images. Then we work together as a room on every story—you don’t know if it will be your script until the outline is finished, and it’s an incredibly detailed document. The people in the room are amazing—people who’ve run shows, comedy and drama writers, advertising people from then and now. Writers in their 20s who worked up from being Matt’s assistant. Last season, a writer in his 80s—the late great Frank Pierson, who wrote, among other masterpieces, Dog Day Afternoon.

KM: Writing for TV is a collaborative effort. What is the best way to deal with conflicts when writing with others?
SC: Be professional. Don’t make it about you. Be clear about the chain of command. There are always going to be differences of opinion, but there shouldn’t be conflicts.

KM: When getting notes from producers/editors/showrunners—what do you do when you get a note that you don’t like or agree with?
SC: Look at what the note is addressing. The solution being offered may be wrong. But the problem it’s identifying may exist nonetheless.

KM: What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve been given that you use?
Besides “get dressed every day”? The best piece of writing advice I ever got was from an editor, who said when a scene’s not working, the problem is usually actually in the scene right before it. 

KM: What are you reading right now?
The book by my bed is The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor.  I read somewhere that Ann Beattie admired him, and I’d never read him. And I like to read publications from the year we’re working in on Mad Men--Time, Life, Newsweek, The New Yorker, the Times, Playboy, Harpers. I read the same magazines I would now but from dates back then. 

Jeffrey St. Jules is a Canadian filmmaker. His films include THE SADNESS OF JOHNSON JOE JANGLES, which won him Best Emerging Filmmaker at the Worldwide Short Film Festival and the Genie-nominated short THE TRAGIC STORY OF NLING, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Both films premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

He is the first and only Canadian to have been selected for the CANNES FESTIVAL RESIDENCE in Paris.  He is currently in development with SCYTHIA FILMS on a musical film entitled BANG BANG BABY. His latest project LET THE DAYLIGHT INTO THE SWAMP is a 3D documentary/fiction that recently had it's premiere at TIFF.

RUSTY TALK WITH JEFFREY ST. JULES

Kathryn Mockler: How did you first get into filmmaking?
Jeffrey St. Jules: In high school, we would go to an old fort called York Redoubt in Halifax to smoke pot and think about the craziest things we could put on film. I never actually filmed anything or even took photographs, but for some reason, I thought I could be a good filmmaker. Drugs can do that. There seemed to be so many possibilities inherent in the medium that people never bothered to try, and I wanted to try them. Then in university, I started trying things. I found out that tons of my ideas didn’t work, but occasionally something unique that I thought of worked, and I felt like it hadn’t been done before and that was exciting. I should mention that by the time I started making films, I didn’t even smoke pot anymore.  

KM: What is the writing process like for you? What would be involved in a typical writing day for you?
JSJ: If I have the luxury, I like to be a 9-5er, or rather a 9-12er. In the morning my head is the most clear, so I like to write then. I feel I can kickstart inspiration if need be. The best way for me to do this, is to go on the elliptical machine and stare at a blank wall, because my body is occupied but my mind is not.

KM: How do you approach revision?
JSJ: With feedback. I need outside opinions to reshape the way I think about the script. I have a tendency to be lazy and prematurely satisfied if left to my own devices, so I need a trusted person to tell me what sucks. A complete drubbing can often be the most inspiring thing for my writing. 

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker that had a big impact on you?
JSJ: In my coming-of-age days it was David Lynch and Jack Kerouac. Probably because they made it feel like you could just make stuff that inspired you and you didn’t have to follow rules. They also both operate on an intuitive level, which I have always tried to stay connected to.  

KM: What is the best piece of writing advice you've received that you actually use?
JSJ: Have at least a little bit of a plan before you start writing a story, or you will have to do a lot more work later in revisions. Sounds obvious, but when you buy into the romanticism of Jack Kerouac early on, you might not think you need to. 

KM: Can you describe your National Film Board project Let The Daylight Into the Swamp?
JSJ: It’s a stereoscopic 3D documentary/fiction film about my grandparents.  I suppose I would call it an exploration into the unknowability of our family histories.     

KM: What are you working on now?
JSJ: A rock-n-roll musical about the hallucinations of a small town girl. 

In Let the Daylight into the Swamp, filmmaker Jeffrey St. Jules reconstructs the story of his grandparents and their rugged frontier existence in the logging towns of Northern Ontario. St. Jules' tale unfolds on the bumpy back roads of life, where ultimately his family was dislodged. Blending fiction and documentary, myth and fact, comedy and tragedy, all rendered in 3D, St. Jules stitches together an elusive, fractured family history. Yet the joie de vivre of Franco-Ontarian life tempers the hardship and regret, infusing this visually inventive film with both joy and heartbreak.

Rob Sheridan is an LA-based Canadian writer with extensive credits on both sides of the border. Repped by WME Entertainment in Los Angeles and managed by Meridian Artists in Toronto, Rob’s recent LA writing credits include Mad Love (CBS) (Co-Executive Producer) starring Jason Biggs and Sarah Chalke, and the forthcoming Next Caller (NBC) (Co-EP) starring Dane Cook, and Jeffrey Tambor. This past year Rob also developed two projects for ABC Network with both ABC Studios and Warner Brothers television, including an adaptation of the book Home Game by bestselling author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Blind Side). Prior to moving to LA, Rob worked on several top-rated Canadian series including Corner Gas (CTV/Comedy Network), Little Mosque on the Prairie (Co-Executive Producer) (CBC), Less Than Kind (Consulting Producer) (HBO Canada), 18 To Life (CBC) (Co-Producer) Producing Parker (Teletoon), Crash Canyon (Teletoon), Naked Josh (Showcase Television) and The Red Green Show (CBC).

RUSTY TALK WITH ROB SHERIDAN

Kathryn Mockler: How did you first get into TV writing?
Rob Sheridan: I was doing some copywriting and working as a publicist, and generally hating it. But I had written a couple of sitcom spec scripts and submitted them to the television writing program at the Canadian Film Centre. I got into the program, and after that things started happening pretty quickly. Steve Smith hired me to write a few scripts for The Red Green Show, and hired me on staff the following year. I was already 30 by the time I went to the CFC, so when I hear a 24-year-old tell me they feel too old to break in to television, I always slap them. Not really. But I think about it.

KM: What is the writing process like for you when you write alone and/or as part of a writing team?
RS: On any sitcom you spend a lot of time in "the room" with a bunch of other writers, generating story ideas, working out the beats, and later doing punch up. It's great fun, very social, and a lot of great material comes out of that. But somewhere in between the writer goes off on his or her own and writes a first, and hopefully a second, draft. Some people hate that part, but I enjoy it. I can discover new things, and jokes and ideas occur to me when I'm alone that don't always come to me in the room. There are some shows that eliminate that step—scripts are "room-written" with everyone working on a draft at the same time with the script projected on a screen. It's not my favorite way of doing things. I think every writer deserves a chance to put his or her personal imprint on a script, if only so the other writers then have a chance to throw it out and re-write it anyway. 

KM: How do you approach revision?
RS: The most annoying expression to any writer is "writing is re-writing" because we all want to think we nail it on the first draft, but of course we don't Especially not in TV. A lot of the revising is done, as I mentioned before, in the room. It's not for people with big egos. Stuff gets thrown out, changed, re-written. You have to enjoy that process and trust that it's making it better. Sometimes you lose something you loved but the gains generally outweigh the losses. You can always use your hilarious penis joke another time.

KM: What is the role of the showrunner?
RS: The showrunner is involved in every step of the process. In addition to the writing they have input on casting, costumes, sets, props, editing, the whole thing. And they're often on the floor working with the actors. It's different than features because in TV the showrunner really is boss as opposed to the director. Unfortunately, in my experience, Canada has never really properly embraced the showrunner model, at least in comedy. It's too much creative power in one person's hands. Some of the Canadian creative execs I've worked with fear and hate that. So the showrunner often becomes more of a glorified head writer. It's incredibly frustrating, and one of the major reasons I came down to the U.S. 

KM: When should emerging writers approach agents?
RS: When they're absolutely certain their sample material is as good as it can be, and never before. You only get that one shot. It's a cliché, but you really do have to give that script to five or ten people that you trust (and maybe a couple that you don't) and take as much input as possible. You don't have to listen to everyone's advice, but if ten people all tell you your third act is rubbish and the lead character is boring, it means that your third act is rubbish and your lead character is boring. Also, for the love of God, watch the spelling and grammar. If I see someone write "your" when they mean "you're" on page one, I'm out.

KM: What are you working on now?
RS: I'm off to New York City this summer to work on a show called Next Caller for NBC. It's somewhat unusual for a sitcom to shoot in New York, though 30 Rock does it and it doesn't seem to have hurt them. The show was created by a writer named Stephen Falk who has written for Weeds for many years. His background in cable is evident in the pilot. It's very smart and funny and subtle where it needs to be...basically a battle of the sexes with two hosts working on a show at a satellite radio station. And it's a very strong cast. Dane Cook, Collette Wolfe, and Jeffrey Tambor, whom I love. I'm really looking forward to it, though I know I'll also be glad to get back to LA at the end of the year. I'm a convert to the constant sunshine. Kurt Vonnegut was right: California really does make you soft.

ROB SHERIDAN'S MOST RECENT TV PROJECT
Next Caller, NBC, 2012

Description from NBC
What happens when a foulmouthed satellite radio DJ--played by the multi-platinum selling artist and outrageously charming Dane Cook--is forced to share the mic with a chipper NPR feminist? It's anyone's call in this sharp new comedy from producer Stephen Falk (Weeds) and Emmy-winning director Marc Buckland (Grimm, My Name Is Earl).

It's her first day in New York City, and 26-year-old Stella Hoobler is ready to take on the world. After a stint on public radio, she's been hired to co-host the no-holds-barred show Booty Calls with Cam Dunne. Smart, spunky and passionate, Stella is determined to elevate the show beyond its boys'-club-locker-room humor into a respected debate about men, women and the state of human relationships. But there's a problem: Cam! She's going to find out the hard way that he's got no intention of sharing the spotlight, especially with someone like her. It's going to be a tense fight, but with the station's one rule being "make some noise," Cam and Stella could be a winning combination - as long as they don't knock each other out on their way to success.

Ivan Coyote was born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. An award-winning author of seven collections of short stories, one novel, three CD’s, four short films, the editor of an anthology, and a renowned performer, Ivan’s first love is live storytelling, and over the last eighteen years she has become an audience favourite at music, poetry, spoken word and writer's festivals from Anchorage to Amsterdam. The Globe and Mail called Ivan "a natural-born storyteller" and Ottawa X Press said "Coyote is to CanLit what k.d. lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture." Ivan’s column, Loose End has appeared monthly in Xtra West magazine for eleven years. Her first novel, Bow Grip, was awarded the Relit award for best fiction and named by the American Library Association as a Stonewall honor book in literature, and is in development to be made into a feature length film. Ivan’s new collection of short stories, Missed Her, was released in September, 2010. Ivan also recently co-edited Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme with Zena Sharman. Coyote’s latest short story collection, One In Every Crowd, a young adult collection of stories compiled for queer high school kids, was released in April 2012.

RUSTY TALK WITH IVAN COYOTE

Sara Jane Strickland: What is your first memory of being creative?                                 
Ivan Coyote: I am not sure if I have a memory of this or not, or if I feel like I remember it because there is an old old photo of me doing this, but I have a memory of setting up pots and pans like a drum kit on the front deck of my parent's first house and playing the drums on them. I would have been about two or three.

SJS: How would you describe your writing process?
IC: Deadline driven. I set or get goals and dates, and I try to follow them. I have thousand word days. I make myself write a thousand words, good or bad, not perfect words, just out there. Out of my head and onto the page. Also I make lists of scenes or chapters or stories or ideas and then I just try to write them and cross them off.

SJS: What are you working on right now?
IC: A novel and a survival guide for tomboys. Also two live shows, both collaborations with musicians.

SJS: What is the revision process like for you?
IC: I just grin and bear it.

SJS: What influences your writing the most?                                                              
IC: Life. Other books. Other writers. The sky. The weather. How much I have been to the gym lately. Music. Dance. Painting. Movies. Things I overhear on the bus. Kids I meet. People I meet. Loved ones. Loved ones dying. New ones being born. Life.

SJS: How did you deal with rejection when you first started out?                         
IC: The first book I was a part of writing, we got asked by the publisher for a manuscript, so I have an unusual story. I didn't have to deal with a lot of rejection right out of the gate.

SJS: What keeps you going as a writer or why do you write?
IC: I write because I love it more than anything else in my life. I write because I don't know or remember how to be anything else anymore. I write to pay the bills. I write to change the world. I write because I have a deadline. I write because not writing is no longer an option for me. I write because it is the only way to navigate this life, for me.

SJS: What is the best thing about being a writer and the worst thing?
IC: The best thing? Working alone from home with no pants on. The worst thing? Working alone from home with no pants on.

Michael Vass is a filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. His award-winning short films have screened at numerous film festivals and have been broadcast internationally. His critical writings have appeared in the film journal Cineaction and the Philadelphia-based publication MACHETE. Michael received his BFA from Simon Fraser University and his MFA from York University. He is also an alumnus of the Canadian Film Centre.

RUSTY TALK WITH MICHAEL VASS

Kathryn Mockler: How did you first get into filmmaking?
Michael Vass: I’m not completely sure. As a child I think I was drawn to performing—for instance, I loved stand up comedy at what now seems a weirdly young age (I couldn’t possibly have understood most of the jokes)—but I don’t think I was ever completely comfortable performing myself, at least not after a certain age. So I started writing stories then making videos, probably initially as a way of performing out of sight. When I was 11 or so, I started making little home movies with my friends and my sister. We’d make parody sequels for movies that were popular at the time. I think we made Home Alone 2 and Die Hard 3 (which we called Die the Hardest) before either sequel really existed. Since then I’ve just kept making things. As a teenager my interest in film intensified, then I went to film school where I was exposed to all kinds of films that fascinated and excited me.  

KM: Was there a writer or filmmaker that had a big impact on you?
MV: There are too many too name, and it tends to shift somewhat depending on what I’m working on. For my most recent project, Vancouver #1-13 (Notes for a report…), I was influenced mostly by filmmakers working in the somewhat amorphous genre that’s sometimes called the essay film, which has long fascinated me. The term itself isn’t that important, it’s just a way of grouping together a kind of film that’s always been around, which combines elements of fiction and documentary, and which tends to have a significant writing component—usually in the form of a first person voice-over. It’s generally a more self-reflexive and personal way of using various cinematic techniques, and it often addresses somewhat political themes, directly or indirectly. Film/video-makers like Chris Marker, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jean-Luc Godard, Harun Farocki, and John Smith had a particularly strong impact on me as I was working on the film, as did the writers Robert Musil, W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard, and Roberto Bolano.

KM: Can you describe your current film project that's screening in Philadelphia?
MV: It’s called Vancouver #1-13 (Notes for a report…) and, as I mentioned, it’s a kind of essay film, which mixes documentary and fiction to examine security and protest in the society of the spectacle. It uses documentary footage from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the G20 debacle in Toronto, and adds a voice-over by a fictional intelligence agent analyzing the footage. It is currently screening as an installation in the group exhibition “First Among Equals” at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (April 11-22). My participation in show came about because of my involvement with the Philadelphia-based gallery Marginal Utility and the Machete Group which jointly puts out the publication MACHETE, for which I’ve been writing about film for the past couple years.

KM: What is the best thing about being a filmmaker and the worst thing?
MV: The best thing about being an artist of any kind is that it lets you structure your life around engaging with the world and your experiences and interests on your own terms, or at least on terms of your choosing—creatively, critically, reflectively…however you want. The worst thing is that this kind of activity rarely pays the bills, so usually you have to find some other way of making a living.  Sometimes this can be something tangentially related to your activities as an artist (like teaching), or sometimes it is something completely unrelated, but either way it tends to eat up a lot of time and energy you’d rather be spending working on your own projects. This financial downside is exponentially worse as a filmmaker because filmmaking is so expense, logistically complicated, and time consuming, so if you want to make your own films, it can obviously be quite difficult. But artists shouldn’t whine too much about jobs and money – almost everyone hates there job and would rather not be doing it, at least we have something we want to be doing.

KM: Your funniest filmmaking moment.
MV: I directed a film at the Canadian Film Centre in 2006 called Skinheads. The film is a dark comedy and isn’t exactly about actual skinheads in any real way, it just appropriates some of the iconography of skinhead culture for other purposes. We put a trailer on YouTube to promote the film at festivals, etc. However, we didn’t anticipate that there are a lot of actual skinheads all over the world searching online for skinhead related stuff. The trailer has received a ton of views in the past year, along with some affronted comments by Neo-Nazi types. Somehow the trailer must have gone viral in some minor way recently on skinhead sites or something and has generated some negative attention. Maybe that’s not ha-ha funny, but I find it kind of amusing—as long is there is an ocean between the offended skinheads and me.

Vancouver #1-13 (Notes for a Report...) currently screening as an installation in the group exhibition “First Among Equals” at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (April 11-22).