Closing Up the Cottage

AS I WRITE THIS, it's the afternoon of a holiday Monday in Canada. Victoria Day in Canadian lore is known as the May-two-four (two-four being Canuck slang for a case of 24 beers; the calendar this year means it's a week earlier) It's also the traditional time of year when people in Central Canada flock out of the city en masse to a little patch of wooded ground, hopefully near a lake. Cottage Country.

In Montreal, they head out to the townships, and in Ottawa it's somewhere in the Gatineaus. Out of Toronto, it's bumper to bumper up the 400 highway to Muskoka and parts beyond. I'm reliably informed that in B.C. they go to "cabins," and I know a few friends out of Calgary who go to Revelstoke to go camping.

Whatever. In the great outdoorsy scheme of things, this is the weekend traditionally set aside for "opening the cottage." It's a ritual of de-winterizing and airing out and making ready for a summer of travels to that little patch that marks the beginning of summer.

(picture: when writers bowl)
Ironically, as lots of people contemplate the renewal that the opening-up entails, I'm thinking about closing down. Not the cottage -- I don't actually own a cottage. But like a lot of people who work in film and tv production, the crunch is about to start for me. My closing up the cottage is more of a metaphorical thing. This weekend's been largely about hanging about, seeing movies, drinking coffee and reading and listening to CD's, all in the service of what is likely to be the last time for a long time that I have any significant chunks of time to myself. There's also a closing quality to some of my interactions with friends. A conversation or a "see you later" comes with a proviso that later might actually be quite a bit later than any of us think. It's amazing how I've gotten to the point where I can go six months without seeing somebody. Not somebody I barely know, a Facebook friend, but actual, real life, "hey, I wish we saw each other more often friends."

It's been a bittersweet and fun ride ramping up for production season. A lot of my writer friends are also working -- an awful lot, which makes me wonder if there's slightly more going on or I've just been enjoying a statistical bubble.

When I look back on some of the first entries I made on this blog, I can remember clearly the palpable feeling of isolation I felt. There were no writing rooms, there were just development deals and single meetings with people. I didn't really know too many other people doing the same job. I didn't know what was "normal" practice, and what was an "outlier" or unacceptable.

I contrast that over the last few months, and it's like night and day. There's been a couple of fun get togethers that brought together staffs from CBC's shows The Border, The Session, and The Wild Roses (Seriously, is CBC afraid of greenlighting a show without an article in front of the title or what?)

Last week, we went bowling. And in between trash talk and stunning displays of athleticism, hard information was exchanged: about development processes, work methods, various ways of structuring the room, story breaking tips, and effective ways of handling notes.

Late into the night, fabulous arguments over alternate ways of distribution and how to keep production companies on their toes led to laughter and hair-raising, "can you believe they tried this?" stories.

If you're a shifty sort used to the bad old ways of doing business in the TV/Film Industry in Canada, that's probably why your ears were burning.

(photo: How J. Hurst (The Session) and S. Eriksen (The Wild Roses, AKA Cowgirls) lick story problems.)

Oh yes, the writers are talking. They were talking at dinner parties and at informal gatherings at writerly watering holes. And this staffing season (which in Canada is to the U.S. staffing season as a Mosquito is to the U.S.S. Nimitz) actually saw, for the first time, active competition for writers - with 'go' shows going after the same small pool of talent. It's ... an interesting development, to say the least. And instead of the usual for-me-to-succeed- you-must-fail Darwinism that's always prevailed, there's a genuine feeling of camaraderie and support that's emerged, largely in the last year, year and a half. More and more, it seems like maybe a rising tide actually does float all boats.

(Except, pssst, those Cowgirls writers are super-competitive. Shhhh.)

This is exactly what I was hoping for when I started spilling all these keystrokes onto the net a few years back. The 'writer mafia' thing, that was mostly a big joke when a journalist coined the metaphor last year, is actually happening, like, for reals. The cats are being herded!

And now, as production for all of us draws closer, all of that's going to fall off a cliff.

So Matt MacLennan and the Wild Roses/Cowgirls staff (photo above) drink in the west a bit while they ramp up the story breaking of their show. (MacLennan, by the way, is also an excellent amateur photographer and perhaps the official photog of the Canadian writer mafia. He's responsible for all the photos in this post)

The Session prepares their first outlines; The Murdoch crew cook up more mysteries, Little Mosque, Heartland, and Flashpoint are already shooting, their writers already lost to the mountain of work. Corner Gas' talented have decamped to Saskatchewan. We're all battening the hatches and loading for bear, and it's somewhat bittersweet. It seems like only yesterday we were freezing through the winter, and now the glorious spring and the fun of things like the Screenwriting Awards is fading into the contemplation of the summer of suck. Sorry. The summer of Living the Dream.

For me, the culprit will be season two of CBC's The Border. I'm a co-producer on the show this year (such is the peripatetic nature of the Canadian industry that you can find yourself as a co-executive producer on a show you create, and then as an executive story editor the next week. One friend of mine, in the midst of delivering his first season of shows he wrote and produced to the network, is taking a job as a fill in story coordinator for a week on another show. Why? "I need a new roof." Oh, we're having fun, sure, but don't accuse us of gettin rich!)

Anyway, the lay of the calendar means that the next six or seven weeks is going to be quite crazy. I have one ep that starts prepping next week -- and I'll be in meetings for that, then on set while it shoots, and then there'll be about ten days and then I start prepping my second episode.

The eagle eyed among you may notice I didn't build into that description any idea of when I would be writing the outline or drafts of that second episode. Yes. Well. That, as we say, is a work in progress.

All that, and my first meetings as a member of the Writers Guild of Canada council. June's gonna be a fun month.

Hand me that hammer would you? I gotta cover up these windows.

Writer peeps? See y'all at the Geminis.