A Ninety-Four Cent Dollar Dream

NO, I haven't finished, thank you very much. And as someone mentioned at the CFC Event I went to last night, "You can always tell when you've got a script deadline. You start linking to other people a lot more."

It's called "treading water for your life." I know that my Agent likes to joke that I don't sleep -- but I do. Fitfully and occasionally pitching myself to the floor. But that counts. Doesn't it?

Before I head out West to Banff, there's an awful lot to do, but something occurred to me sitting on the stage at Revival last night. It came to me because the CFC had just screened their 2007 crop of short films, and they were good. Several were even funny.

When the Film Centre shorts are good, there's always a different vibe in the room. It smells suspiciously like... hope. And that got me thinking...

What if nobody left for two years?

Seriously. What if all the writers, directors and actors who systematically are forced to say, "fuck it" every year; who face the petty cruelties, bureaucracy, relentless mediocrity and insanity of the business here said, "No. You're not chasing us out. We're not going."

What if everyone looked at our 94-cent dollar, decided that Yankee greenbacks, on their way to being worth less than ours by next year -- weren't the holy grail -- not forever -- just for now?

What if, en masse, all those talents demanded better from networks? What if they put the boots and the shame to those who work the gears of the industry but don't produce satisfying and worthwhile work? What if they stomped down Playback's doors and say, "it's time you wrote about US?" What if they descended on Gatineau and looked up 'Ol Konrad Von CRTC and said, "Enough. Do better!" What if they talked, and laughed, and exposed the showrunners who don't showrun, the development people who don't really develop, the network people without courage? What if all the people inside all those aforementioned organizations who do desperately want to do better discovered they had allies on the outside? What if everywhere every newspaper or media writer went, they faced a pool of engaged and talented people who said, "we're not letting you drive us out. When we go to the USA, if we go to the USA, it will be on our terms?" What if they took succour and comfort and inspiration from those people and stood up to the other people? What if they got excited too, instead of being resigned? And what if the poor, beleaguered artists -- the good guys and girls -- the ones still toiling here for family, or loyalty, or reasons they can't even define, were able to look up and say, "thank God you're still here - now I don't have to work with the bad people anymore."

What if this industry finally, finally decided "good enough" wasn't good enough?

What would happen then?

And now a word from The Department of Pathetic Fallacy: The whole time I have been typing this, the sky outside my office window has been growing darker and darker. Seriously. The sky is almost black now. In the middle of the morning.

Oh man.

Ah well -- it was still a nice dream.