The Short List - East
Rita Lianga (St. Catharines, ON)
MOVIE PITCH
Small Saskatchewan prairie town.
summer, hot, heat wave.
middle of no-where and (somewhere)
major heat spell hot hot hot.
A farmer. One farm, bucked the trend
Grew popcorn. Popcorn instead of wheat like the rest.
Danny grew popcorn, the one and only popcorn.
“Danny’s PopcornNium,
Kernels of Exponential Growth”
Oddball. Ridicule of the town.
Heat, hot spell, hot.
ground so dry you could break an ankle.
just big square farm fields and small square farm houses all around town .
Pop, pop, pop, heard at neighbour’s farmyard house.
Thought it was Jake,
Jake the town drunk, shooting off rifle, again.
Pop, pop, popping, still.
Fear. Women go to windows.
Pop, pop, popping, Women’s eyes-popping.
Danny, the popcorn farmer’s farm.
All hell breaks loose.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Popping, popcorn, popping all over,
Hot sun. Hot popcorn.
Popcorn popping as high as shoulder.
Field full of the pure white.
Danny resourceful/playful, brings out farm machinery,
makes big hills of “snow” (popcorn)
kids giddy,
bring out toboggans and slide down white popcorn hills have riots of fun.
Whole (dire) town comes out
Elders become children.
Much play among all
and joy and reminiscence.
All in the middle of the summer….
(cicada dronnnnnning……)
« Back to the Short List
How It Works
-
Write In!
Out of hundreds and hundreds of entries, just twenty Canadians made it to the Short List and won themselves an audition with Canada Writes. Then eight semi-finalists were picked to play in the Eastern semi-finals and Western/Northern semi-finals.
Read their winning songs, blogs, ads, rants and movie pitches!
-
On March 14th and April 4th, tune in to GO! on CBC Radio One at 10 am (10:30 am NT) for the Eastern and Western/Northern semi-final games in Halifax and Vancouver. The finals will be held in Toronto on April 18th. Or join us at any of the three shows to root for the contestants in person. Go to cbc.ca/go for tickets.
-
The Canada Writes 09 Online Challenge is now over. Thanks for playing!
Updates
(Toronto, April 25, 2009)
It was a very tight race in the end. Our four finalists fought it out by blog, song, ad and a three-line story. First, they each drew a blog topic, from “the best hundred dollars I ever spent” to “one fact I would like to ‘un-know’”. Challenge number 2 was to re-write a song by Queen, with Valerie Stanois from the musical We Will Rock You bringing power vocals to their surprising new words. Then judges Geri Hall, Terry O’Reilly and Darrell Dennis sent Kaveh Mohebbi through the infamous Trap Door. Challenge number 3 was the radio ad. Clever ads for Cornhobbler’s Crematorium and Juice Bar (obviously not a real business) and Christmas greetings from the makers of Flank Chainsaws won Katie Sanders and Laurie Schwartz a last chance at writing glory, but it was Margaret Beach’s turn to go through the Trap Door. Finally, Laurie and Katie had to come up with the first two lines of a three-line story… on yellow writing pads on their laps…and in 90 seconds….
After weeks of effort and tension and achievement -- from the writing contest in January, through the auditions, the short list, the semi-finals and the finals – it was all over in a couple of minutes. Katie pulled ahead by a crucial point -- and became the winner of Canada Writes 09! Listen to the show! Read the blogs!
For more photos, go to http://www.cbc.ca/go/photogallery.html.
Winner of the Online Challenge! Ontario's Heather Smith is the winner of this year's People's Choice Award. Her winning entry was a re-write of the ABBA song 'Waterloo.' Take a look!
Western semi-finalist 09
