Library & Resources

Praxis Fellows Profile : Graeme Manson

In 1994 Graeme Manson was a recent graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Victoria with a terrific genre script called One Step Ahead, a comic crime road-movie about a con-artist couple who lure men to Las Vegas motel rooms and rob them. When one of their victims turns out to be a small-town Texas sheriff, he chases them up to Canada and things get crazy. The script was chosen for the Fall 94 Praxis workshop where Graeme worked with Denny Lawrence, an Australian producer.

That year the Praxis workshop was hosted by the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, and Graeme determined his next step was to get into the CFC's Resident program as a screenwriter. Aiming for a makeable, low-budget Canadian project, he had an idea for another road movie, this one set in the wilds of coastal B.C. among the volatile mix of hippies and fishermen that he'd encountered in earlier travels. He wrote Rupert's Land in 1995, and the first draft got him into the program. Three years later it became not his first but his second produced feature.

Rupert's Land, which had a reading at Praxis, is a character-based comedy about two half-brothers travelling to Prince Rupert for the funeral of their estranged father. One is a prissy British lawyer, the other a small-time drug dealer, and naturally they see differently on just about everything. The script was developed with the help of Vancouver filmmaker Jonathan Tammuz, who eventually directed it in 1997 with Ian Tracey (DaVinci's Inquest) and Samuel West (Notting Hill). Manson's script was nominated for a Genie Award, and the film eventually won five Leos (B.C. Film Awards).

Meanwhile another Film Centre connection led to Cube, a low-budget sci-fi project being developed by Directing Resident Vincenzo Natali and Andre Bijelic. Cube is a claustrophobic nightmare -- six people wake up inside a cube that is part of a gigantic, seemingly endless puzzle, with no idea of how they got there. Imagine Tarkovsky's Stalker set inside a Rubik's cube, with less metaphysics and a lot more action.

When Cube was short-listed for the Film Centre's Feature Film Project, Manson was brought in on the rewrites. "I added the black humour, fleshed out the characters. After two years of writing, Natali and Bjelic were locked inside the cube." Cube became a cult hit that played around the world, it grossed $10.3 million in France alone and at one point was the top video rental in Japan.

After the two theatrical features, Manson scored another success with Lucky Girl, an MOW co-written with John Frizzell and produced by Louise Garfield of Triptych Media. Lucky Girl, the story of a teenaged girl addicted to gambling, won a Genie award for its screenplay and a Top Ten Award from the Writer's Guild of Canada in 2001.

Screenwriting Competition

Duncan Delorenzi • Raw Pennies
(Formerly A Working Game)
Rene, a homeless street performer, and Bernie, an uptight restauranteur, 'meet cute' when Bernie gets caught up in Rene's guerilla theater skit. Soon they discover that despite their differences in class, both are struggling with the same problem -- how to earn their families' respect.

Duncan Delorenzi, a helicopter maintenance engineer in Kamloops, B.C., attended the Vancouver Film School and has worked in locations. He worked with Guy Bennett (writer/director of Punch) as his Advisor.


Kara-Leah Grant • The Scholar and the Warrior
Teenaged Lexia knows she's a little different. She discovers just how different when a sorcerer arrives from a parallel world and kidnaps her Dad. When she follows him through a hole in the sky to a fairytale world she discovers her uncanny powers just may not be enough to save him.

Kara-Leah Grant is a New Zealander now working as a freelance journalist in Whistler, B.C. Her Advisor was Charles Lazer. She received the British Columbia Film Fellow for this year.


Ted Hunt • The Flame Within
A talented high school runner is recruited into a high school wilderness adventure program. After a horrific camping trip, she's afraid to reveal the truth about its charismatic leader and brainwashed students until her coach discovers their diabolical secret.

Ted Hunt is a retired high school principal and journalist who has published numerous features and short stories; he is also a former B.C. Lion, member of Canada's Olympic ski team and captain of the national rugby team. Maureen Dorey was his Advisor. Ted has been granted the Telefilm Canada Western Division Fellowship.


Belle Mott • Pink Ludoos
When young Gugan refuses the unknown boy her dead grandmother arranged for her to marry, she knows that she will pay. For one thing, she is already pregnant (with triplets!) by her inappropriate boyfriend. Pride and independence mean more to her than Punjabi tradition; when she's turfed out of her house she won't crawl back. But magic is afoot and ancient powers have strange effects, even in suburban Surrey.

Belle Mott is a schoolteacher who has written fiction and plays. She is the recipient of the CityTV Cultural Diversity Fellowship. Her advisor was Mina Shum.


Curtis Saretske • The Kid With The Camera
A satirical fable about celebrity and the power of the photograph to steal our souls. Young Walter has a wonderful talent to capture the essence of his subjects, but he's a parasite who sucks them dry. This is a very disturbing comedy.

Curtis Saretske, a recent graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, works in post-production in Toronto. Guy Bennett was his Advisor. Curtis is the Movie Central Fellow for this year.


David Schmidt • Wish
A young man, pulled every which way by his attraction to several women at once, loses his ability to tell fact from fancy and ends up losing everything he has.

David Schmidt has written and directed two film comedies, worked as a story department intern on Tom Stone, and has three feature screenplays optioned in Los Angeles. He has been a semifinalist in six U.S. competitions, with two scripts in the prestigious Chesterfield Writer's Film Project. His advisor was Tracey Forbes (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). David has won the New Line Cinema Fellowship.

Updates

Frequent Praxis Advisor Sharon Riis has won a Genie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay with The Savage Messiah. Based on the life of religious cult leader Roch Theriault, the film is a creepy investigation into the psychology of brainwashing. It was originally made for English TV but it attracted such interest that it was subbed into French and received a successful theratrical release in Quebec. Sharon received previous Genie nominations for Latitude 55, a dreamlike allegory directed by John Juliani, and for Anne Wheeler's first feature Loyalties. Sharon won a Gemini Award in 1987 for her mini-series Daughters of the Country.

Vanz Chapman (Bitter Earth, Fall 1996 Workshop) is co-producer and head writer of Lord Have Mercy, a new sitcom series for Vision TV that's set in an evangelical storefront church with a cast of culturally diverse characters. Vanz, who attended the London International Film School and the Canadian Film Centre before his Praxis session, spent a few years writing for the hip-hop series Drop the Beat before teaming up with executive producer Paul de Silva to develop Lord Have Mercy. Its sometimes raunchy situations push the envelope of what's expected on Vision, a multi-faith religious broadcaster, but because of that and its authentic take on the West Indian experience in Toronto, the show is receiving a lot of attention.

Spring 1997 Praxis Fellow Alan Levin picked up a 2003 Leo Award for Best Screenwriting in a Youth or Children's Program or Series for an episode of D'Myna Leagues, "A Starling Is Born." Alan has also recently written episodes of Yakkity Yak and Yvon of the Yukon. His Praxis script, Kanada, is under option to Cinema Capet.

Jacob Tierney (The Trotsky, Summer 2000) shot Twist, his first feature as writer/director, in January. This update of Dickens' Oliver Twist adapts Victorian pickpockets into contemporary male prostitutes, with a tone more like Larry Clark than classic melodrama. It stars Nick Stahl (the murdered young man from In the Bedroom and upcoming star of Terminator 3) and Jacob himself, who has been acting since the age of 7.

Shooting has wrapped on Roger Larry and Sandra Tomcs' The Crossing, a romantic comedy-crime story about an East-European mafioso who's into Merry Widows.

On The Corner

written and directed by
Nathaniel Geary

Nathaniel Geary's script from our Fall 2000 workshop was shot two years later in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, literally around the corner from the Praxis office in Gastown. On the Corner is the story of Angel, a young native prostitute and heroin addict who makes up her mind to leave the streets, but must return to temptation and despair in order to rescue her younger brother. The script is loosely based on the lives of some of the street people that Nathaniel has worked with in six years as a counsellor at the Portland Hotel, a city-owned shelter for drug addicts and the mentally ill. Scenes from the film were shot around the hotel, and local residents were hired as extras.

On The Corner was produced by Wendy Hyman and Marc Stephenson on a $650,000 budget. Besides the Praxis workshop, On the Corner was part of the NSI's Features First Program, which chooses five indigenous features each year for guidance through development. It is slated for a Fall release at festivals and Canadian theatrical distribution. On The Corner has been accepted at the Toronto International Film Festival (where it will screen on Tuesday, September 09 at 6:15 PM and on Thursday, September 11 at 4:45 PM at the Cumberland). It has also been accepted to Montreal and to the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Production Company: On the Corner Productions Inc.
 Executive Producer: Karen Powell
 Producer: Marc Stephenson, Wendy Hyman
 Screenplay: Nathaniel Geary
 Director: Nathaniel Geary
 Cinematography: Brian Johnson
 Editor: Michael Brockington
 Production Designer: Erik Whittaker
 Sound: Jeff Carter
 Music: Michael Campitelli
 Principal Cast: Alex Rice, Simon Baker, Gordon Tootoosis, Katharine Isabelle, JR Bourne

In 1998, Nathaniel directed keys to kingdoms, a short film he adapted from a poem by Downtown Eastside poet and activist Bud Osborn. keys to kingdoms went on to screen at over 25 film festivals around the world, including the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. On the Corner is his first feature film.