Burning issues behind the scenes on award-winning film

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This article was published 13/12/2023 (1023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Though The Burning Season just won the award for best screenplay at the Whistler Film Festival, the behind-the-scenes development of the script from Jonas Chernick and Diana Frances is an interesting story on its own.

Just as the film was going into prep last year, Frances (Corner Gas Animated, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos) and the Winnipeg-born Chernick (My Awkward Sexual Adventure, The Best Laid Plans) were freaking out: an unexpected scheduling conflict sent them searching for a new director to slide in at the last minute.

If they didn’t find someone fast, the movie — a steamy cottage-country romance told in reverse — would end before it began, but not in the way the screenwriters intended with their labyrinthine script.

Sean Garrity’s phone rang.

If there was one director the writers could trust to swoop in and avert a cinematic disaster, it was Garrity, who had already collaborated with Chernick on six other feature films. At the time of the director dropout, Winnipeg’s Garrity was in Toronto working in post-production on The End of Sex, a comedy starring Chernick and Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek’s Stevie), who shared the screen in My Awkward Sexual Adventure.

“I called my wife for permission,” says Garrity, who had been in Toronto for three months, away from his family, while working on The End of Sex. “She said, ‘You gotta help Jonas.’ So I read the script.”

Garrity had initially perused it a few years earlier and recalled a few structural problems that were still, in his opinion, unaddressed. He was straight with the writers: the ending needed polish and the characters needed to treat a central secret with more subtlety.

He gave his notes, which would cause ripple effects through the entire screenplay, and predicted Chernick’s response.

“I said, ‘You’re going to hang up and you’re going to get angry, and then you’re going to think about it for a day and realize these changes will make the project better,’” the director recalls. Chernick promptly swore at his friend and hung up.

The next day, Garrity’s phone rang again: the director may have been on to something.

Soon, Chernick and Frances were set to work on an updated draft of The Burning Season. In a matter of weeks, the crew was at a scenic summer camp in Algonquin Park with cameras rolling on a cast including Chernick, Sara Canning, Joe Pingue and Tanisha Thammavongsa.

Although the film was shot in Ontario, a compelling argument can be made that The Burning Season was a Manitoba co-production: Jon Gurdebeke edited the film in Winnipeg, and local composer Kevon Cronin provided the music.

The revamped film received a boisterous response at Whistler, where it earned Frances and Chernick the top screenwriting prize for their first collaboration — a happy ending after a rough start.

The Burning Season is screening online at the Whistler festival’s website until Sunday, Dec. 17, though Garrity is hoping for a cinematic run in the spring, plus a few more festival appearances.