ChuckerCanuck 2.0

Vic Burns, lead singer of the speed metal uber-band, Streetcar, sends in a few questions on the Tory Takeover of Canadian Film Sweepestakes. I'm going to answer them here. If you have questions, comment them and I'll get you answers. This seems a better way than imposing hard and fast rules on the script competition.

By the way, Vic, Streetcar's fifth album, Rabbit Eater, rocks. This coming from someone who doesn't even like amplification.

1. Chuckercanuck, your golden rule of filmmaking is no ugly people. Is there anything else about the characters that we should keep in mind when coming up with our script ideas?

Tough one. I'd say the field is wide open on this. Dibilitating disease is a bummer, so I'd avoid giving one to any main character - save that for CBC morning radio. I guess the only constraint I would add - and this is where the conservative part comes in - is that while everyone has strengths and weaknesses, bad guys are bad while good guys are good.

When a good guy has a weakness, it has to be something endearing. Sort of the equivalent of the job interview response to your "biggest weakness" ("I work too hard"/"I'm bad at cutting corners"). Forgetfulness is a good guy's weakness. The minute you give the good guy a serious flaw, like manic depression, you have strayed into liberal territory and you've lost the audience. So don't.

A bad guy doesn't have his childhood sympathetically re-hashed through flashbacks. We are not asking the audience to contemplatethe nature of evil as a series of childhood traumas calcifying on our souls. It isn't complicated: the guy is bad. Oh, but here's a Tory twist to things: the bad guy is NOT AMERICAN. I suppose that's obvious. Automatic disqualification to any submission that includes any range of villanous yankees, from gorilla-sized, monkey-brained Texans to sociopathic, radical preppies from southern Vermont. The bad guy should be Canadian. (Hopefully, everyone's Canadian in the movie and the world still wants to watch).

2. Chuckercanuck, are there any guidelines you can give on setting?

In terms of time, liberal filmmaking in Canada has made the historical film unsalvageable. So much celluloid crap has come from the Maoist-like efforts to rub a pink hue into our history that Tory filmmaking must avoid scripts set earlier than Year 1 of the Mulroney era. (Every year, the CBC gets money to make a movie about Trudeau. Colm Meaney has made more Trudeau flicks than Sean Connery made Bond flicks.) You try to fill a theatre with stories about rotary phones and hoola hoops and you head straight to Bombsville. Make it contemporary, make it futuristic or make it a Cyndi Lauper lovefest and you still have a chance of packing them in from Warsaw to Wellington.

Setting is a different story. If it smells Canadian, then you can set it on a moon of Saturn or in the back of a Saturn, driving through Alabama. (However, they say: write what you know. So, don't be shy of a local setting. I would love a horror film set in Yellowknife or a romantic comedy from Thunder Bay.)

You have about three weeks before the official launch of the sweepestakes. Meantime, brainstorm ideas with friends and send your questions here.

Good luck!