Konyves wins screenwriting award for Barney's Version

CBC News

Posted: Apr 11, 2011 10:17 PM ET

Last Updated: Apr 11, 2011 10:17 PM ET

Paul Giamatti, left, and Dustin Hoffman in a scene from Barney's Version. Montrealer Michael Konyves earned a WGC screenwriting prize for the script Monday. (Takashi Seida/Sony Pictures Classics/Associated Press)

Michael Konyves, the Montreal screenwriter who brought Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version to the screen, has won a Writers Guild of Canada award for his work.

The WGC presented its annual awards for the best in Canadian screenwriting Monday evening in Toronto.

Konyves was the fifth screenwriter hired by producer Robert Lantos to breathe life into Barney Panofsky, Richler's irascible hero. Lantos had been trying to make a Barney's Version film for 12 years and gone through four screenwriters.

Konyves had previously written only TV movies such as Fire & Ice and Solar Strike, but he loved Richler's comic voice and talked Lantos into looking over his 30-page treatment for a feature film. Lantos gave him the go-ahead for Barney's Version, which premiered at the Venice Film festival in 2010 and won seven Genies this year.

In TV categories, Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern won the WGC screenwriting honours for drama for Flashpoint and Chris Sheasgreen won the award for comedy for Less Than Kind.

The Pig Farm, a documentary about serial killer Robert Pickton, earned a documentary screenwriting award for Christine Nielsen.

Other winners:

Animation: Karen Moonah, The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That.
Children and youth: Barbara Haynes, The Latest Buzz.
Shorts and web series: Lisa Hunter, You Are So Undead.
WGC Showrunner Award: Tassie Cameron (Flashpoint, Rookie Blue).
WGC Writers Block Award: Peter Grant, a lawyer who worked to increase support for Canadian drama.
Jim Burton Screenwriting Prize (for new talent): Denise Blinn, 1936.

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