W Files

Profiling Screenwriters at Work

Showing Us Hers: Shelley Eriksen

By Matthew Hays

Shelley Eriksen blames the career move on Barbie. That famous, glamorous doll, explains the screenwriter and producer, is the reason she got into writing in the first place.

“I played with Barbies for way, way too long,” she says of her childhood years, spent in Vancouver and Ottawa. “I went a couple of years past the date that most girls put them in the closet. I blame Barbie! I just loved telling stories, and that was a way to do it.”

So maybe Barbie can also take at least some of the credit for Eriksen’s recent string of successes, capped this year by her continued work on Show Me Yours, the popular Showcase
program. Eriksen is showrunner and an executive producer on the series about a refined psychologist (played by Rachel Crawford) who must work with a rugged biologist (Adam Harrington) to co-write a he-says-Mars-she-says-Venus-type book.

This past year has meant seeing Show Me Yours into its second season (season three is currently in development), and that, reports Eriksen, has been satisfying. It’s the first show Eriksen has ever served on as showrunner. “You realize that if it’s a triumph, someone else will take the credit, and if it’s a train wreck, you’ll be blamed,” she says.

“The difference between the first season and the second season is that during the first season I had a lot of sleepless nights. The second season I was like, ‘What can I do? All I can do is my very best and it’s either going to work or it’s not.’ Basically, I’m writing for myself, I’m writing the kind of shows I’d like to see… What I like about writing is the challenge. It’s like someone asking you to put together a complicated puzzle.”

As well as the insanity of putting together an ongoing series, Eriksen has been juggling various different projects and ideas she’s spinning for the big and small screens. She wrote the screenplay for Shania, the upcoming CBC MOW about Shania Twain, as well as penning an episode of Whiskey Echo, the CBC miniseries about Doctors Without Borders. She also has two feature screenplays and an original TV series in development.

Eriksen credits a great deal of her current success with a stint at Toronto’s Canadian Film Centre. “Actually, it took me a long time to get around to screenwriting,” recalls Eriksen, who did an arts degree at Queens and a journalism diploma at Carleton. “I had abortive careers in producing rock videos, writing a column of advice to the lovelorn and working in documentary. I’d had a little support from government programs for screenplays, and then I finally dared to send something into the CFC.”

That, Eriksen says, became a crucial turning point for her. She got in with a draft of her feature screenplay The Conspiracy of Mermaids. “I came away from the Film Centre with three very important things: interest in my screenplay; my first writing gig [a zombie feature, which Eriksen expects will see production this year]; and my first story editor gig on Traders. These things all happened in a matter of two weeks. It was a very good two weeks, and I credit the Film Centre with a lot of this.”

After writing for Traders for seasons four and five (1998-99), Eriksen spent time in Vancouver writing and executive story consulting on Cold Squad for seasons four to seven (2000-2003). The show, about a police unit that investigates seemingly unsolvable cases, provided her with one of her proudest moments as a writer. “There’s an episode where two characters are trapped in a car together–it really becomes more of a two-hand play, almost like a work for the stage,” she says.

But part of Eriksen’s history as a writer is something she can’t actually discuss in any great detail. She has been brought in on a number of MOW projects to work as an uncredited script doctor. “When that happens, you think to yourself, ‘Oh my God, am I betraying another writer?’ In these cases, though, the producers were usually up against a wall. In one case they were at risk of losing all of their funding because the script was that bad. That meant flat-out rewriting, at a ferocious pace. What I liked about it was the challenge.”

Although she winds up working on a lot of MOWs as a later writer, Eriksen says she often doesn’t understand why the first writer is taken off a project. “They don’t really realize what writers are capable of. And you know what? The writer helped to get that funding. I think a lot of time it’s just change for change’s sake. A lot of that is about insecurity. But I’ll never be the first writer again. I’ll stick to second place, thanks.”

And though Eriksen concedes it’s a very tough time for screenwriters in Canada, she says there are rich rewards for all the perseverance and hard work. “When you’re in a story meeting and you’re talking about something truly ridiculous, and you’re laughing your ass off, it doesn’t get any better than that. I get paid to come up with funny ideas and to laugh…

“In fact, you’re really encouraged to remain an eternal adolescent. I get to do sophisticated wordplay and make fart jokes. Actually, not fart jokes, I’m more into big cock jokes. I’m a big cock girl.”