A year ago Bonnie Fairweather was living in Edmonton.  If you?d told her she?d have a film entered at TIFF this year as writer of Burgeon and Fade (part of Short Cuts Canada Programme 5), she would have considered it a cruel joke.  It?s been an amazing one-year journey for Fairweather, a recent Canadian Film Centre grad, so I caught up with her for the details.  Wannabe writers and filmmakers take note:

MS: Where did you growup?  How old are you?

BF: I?m from Edmonton and I?ve lived there all my life until last year.  I?m 28.

MS: Where did you attend University?

BF: University of Alberta for education.

MS: Was a career in film, or a career as a writer always in the cards for you?

BF: I?ve been writing screenplays since I was 15 years old, although they weren?t very good, but it?s always been something I really loved and felt passionate about, but growing up in Alberta it didn?t seem like a realistic career path, there were not a lot of screenwriters that I met there. (laughs)

MS: When did you move to Toronto?

BF: Last July, when I was accepted into the Canadian Film Centre.  I applied in 2003, and I didn?t get in.  So I kept writing and trying to improve my craft, I re-applied in 2006, they get over 200 applications then take eight writers.  So I flew to Vancouver and interviewed, and I thought it went terribly wrong, but I guess they liked me.

MS: Do you have an agent? How long did it take to get one?

BF: I got an agent after the program, about three months after. It?s hard because you make friends with everyone in the writers program, then you all graduate and you?re all clamoring to find an agent.  There are only so many open spots, and you want to find someone who?s a good fit for you as well.  Some of the agents from the Film Centre that said they?d meet with you are too busy, or aren?t willing to read your stuff.  You?re competing with your fellow writers, but everyone else.  Agents are busy and in the spring for TV hiring season it was hard to get a meeting.  So I felt very privileged to get an agent who was my top choice and a good fit.

MS: Describe your time at the Canadian Film Centre

BF: It?s a five month program, but it?s very intensive, you can?t work during that period, you?re there seven days a week.  We did a lot of production exercises, collaborated with directors, producers and editors who were students there, and working on feature screenplays and work-shopping them and making them better and better and ready to go out to agents.

MS: How many scripts did you write before Burgeon and Fade?

BF: I?ve done a few shorts when I lived in Edmonton which were work-shopped through the National Screen Institute with very low budgets.

MS: What inspired you to write a film like Burgeon and Fade?

BF: I love writing stuff that really happens, that?s based in reality. I really like exploring family relationships, it seems like an interesting premise: an aging woman living in the same house with a daughter coming into her own sexually, that it would be an interesting conflict. 

MS: What sort of process was involved in getting it made?  Were you surprised?

BF: I had pitched the idea to a few directors.  Then Audrey Cummings really responded to the idea.  We started shaping the idea.  We were both very excited, so we did a rough draft script and others looked at it and liked it.  So we submitted it to the Film Centre and they chose it as one of five shorts they made in January.  We felt really lucky to get one of those five spots, shoot something on film, workshop it at the film centre.  It was an awesome process for us.

MS: Did you expect to have a film entered in TIFF at 28-years-old?

BF: It would have blown my mind even a year ago.  When I was making my year plan last year at the Film Centre I would have never believed I?d have a film at TIFF.  It has exceeded my expectations.  It?s pretty amazing.

MS: What?s it feel like to be a first-time TIFF contributor?