1986. My future wife Patricia and I are in New York. We want to see a movie. The New York Times recommends a new comedy, She’s Gotta Have It, by a new director. The theatre is a few blocks north of our hotel, just past the Army recruiting office. A small single screen. The director, Mr. Lee himself, […]

I still go to movies in movie theatres. Mask on. No popcorn. Staring straight ahead in a depopulated room. I went to see West Side Story by Mr. Spielberg. The original Oscar-winner was released the year I was born.  But the story is still emotionally affecting. The music soars. The audience gasped at certain moments. […]

The marks are in and I have wrapped teaching another semester of Dramatic Writing.  I read twenty-six one-hour drama pilots written by mostly third year university students. The trends, you ask?  Fewer mafia hitmen and teen vampire series this year.  An uptick of dystopias. A run of thrillers where the hero finds themselves trapped in […]

I just attended my first movie in person since August 2020.  We are moviegoers. In person. On the big screen.  So, we drove to the Port Hope Drive-In to see Nobody The Port Hope Drive-In sprouted from a farmer’s field in 1947. The locals know to line up on the shoulder of Theater Road an […]

You know the old saws. The shoemaker’s kid goes barefoot. The dentist’s daughter has cavities. The rocket surgeon’s son never gets the turbo-charged atomic scalpel that the other neighbourhood kids find in their Christmas stockings. I’ve been pitching and selling TV shows for twenty years. I teach how to pitch TV projects. And last Friday, […]

I am watching reruns of the original Hawaii Five-0, a show I loved when I was ten. Still entertains. Yes, its plotting is pokey with too many scenes of elite cops running in and out of offices (aka shoe leather.) Its politics ranges from earnest pleas for the environment to painful talk about a woman’s proper […]

I admire viruses. Mindless but highly motivated. Out for a good time, to propagate themselves across the universe.  Cunning little strands of RNA.  My great grandfather died of the “Spanish” influenza and I’ve always been fascinated by Ebola, black death and the like.  For the last two years I have been developing a science fiction […]

I just spent ten weeks isolated with my Dad in Montreal due to Covid.  He was waiting on a heart operation postponed as “nonessential” during a pandemic.  So, during the day I write the scripts for The Last Place You Look. In the evenings my Dad and I play Scrabble. Watch Netflix. I buy a new bike and […]