Inside Out

by Rebecca Schechter, President, Writers Guild of Canada

Want to save the feature film industry? Hire a professional please

This issue of our magazine focuses on what we call longform writing–movies and miniseries. On television, these forms do really well. The broadcasters like them because they’re easy to schedule around US simulcasts and they attract large audiences (much of the time). No question that WGC members who write TV movies and miniseries are well-respected in this country.

You’ll notice that one type of longform writing is conspicuously absent from the issue: feature film. This is because very few WGC members write feature films. To put it another way: very few of the films that get financed and produced in English Canada are written by professional writers. WGC stats tell us this–we get very few contracts for features for members or non-members coming through our offices.

Looking beyond the numbers, I was wondering who it is that’s writing English features. So, I took a quick browse through the Telefilm Canada website, looking specifically at the English films they financed in 2005. They list 32 writers in the credits of these films. Oddly, they call them “scriptwriters”. Doesn’t Telefilm know that the industry term is “screenwriter”?

Anyway, here are a few stats. Of the 32 writers I counted, 17–more than half –also directed the movie. On the other hand, only six writers have any identifiable writing experience in the most popular form of screenwriting in this country: TELEVISION. Only three were writers one might consider our A-list television writers. By which I mean writers who have also been executive story editors on series, showrunners or written more than a few MOWs.

There are many reasons why the feature industry is in trouble and why English Canadians watch so few of our films–lack of screens in our movie theatres being the most obvious. But is it possible that our films fail to be popular because the people who originate them–SCREENWRITERS–have no experience writing popular entertainment? I think so.

Now the big question. Why does the A-list mostly shun the feature film in English Canada? Probably lots of reasons, but here are my top two:

1) Once you get used to working in TV you get used to having an audience. Most writers want to communicate with as many people as possible and even with the current ratings slump for many TV series, the numbers are way bigger than the tiny audiences for most Canadian films.

2) When a writer runs a TV show, s/he hires the directors and sets the visual style with them. But it’s the writer/showrunner’s vision that controls the final product. Why give up artistic control–and earn way less money while you’re at it–by writing a feature?

Telefilm and the producers who make features in this country need to give up their historical disdain for “scriptwriters” and particularly for television writers. Our writing pool is too small to indulge in such arrogance and snobbery.

And all of us–writers, directors, producers and Telefilm–need to figure out a way to lure Canada’s A-list screenwriters into the feature film biz. It may be the only hope of saving the English Canadian film.

(PS: Any of you A-listers reading this, contact the Guild at editor@wgc.ca and tell us why you’re not writing a feature and what it would take to make you interested.)