The Green Chain Script Scores a Canadian Screenwriting Award Nomination

Tony Wosk here with a special guest blog for The Green Chain. Usually I prefer to let Mark handle the blogging, but today is really a special circumstance. On behalf of the producers of the film, I wanted to congratulate our esteemed (and way too busy) writer/director Mark Leiren-Young on being named a finalist for the Writer's Guild of Canada’s 2008 Canadian Screenwriting Awards. Knowing all the wonderful films produced in Canada this past year, I find this peer voted award pretty darn cool.

From my first reading of The Green Chain, I always thought it was wonderfully written; and the script is actually why I got involved in the film in the first place, so it’s great to see that Mark’s being recognized for it and that others found the screenplay as compelling as I did.

Last year Sarah Polley won the award with her screenplay for Away From Her, which went on to garner an Oscar nomination.

This year the competition is just as fierce with screenwriters including Travis Macdonald (Normal), Clement Virgo & Chaz Thorne (Poor Boy’s Game) and Kari Skogland (The Stone Angel). Congrats to all of them as well.

Looking forward to the awards ceremony on April 14th, and not just because of the open bar.

(photo of Mark Leiren-Young by Tim Safranek, courtesy of The 2008 Cleveland International Film Festival.)

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The Green Chain Meets Garbage Warrior!

Here's the scoop on the latest Green Chain podcast on The Tyee.

Building Treeless Houses

Doc director OIiver Hodge

A Trees and Us podcast with 'Garbage Warriors' director Oliver Hodge.

By Mark Leiren-Young
Published: November 2, 2007

TheTyee.ca

Imagine building your house out of garbage.

American architect Michael Reynolds turns old tires, beer cans and plastic bottles into "earthships."

Oliver Hodge was a movie props maker who helped design and create the stuff you find on spaceships -- including the light sabers for The Phantom Menace. But Hodge left the Oompa Loompas at Charlie's Chocolate Factory and suspended his license to create killer weapons for James Bond to chronicle Reynold's adventures for his first feature film, Garbage Warrior.

Hodge spent three years following Reynolds as he fought to change the laws in New Mexico to create a self-sustaining community and flew into disaster areas to build -- and teach locals to build -- homes that require no heating, no outside sewage or water systems and redefine the meaning and possibilities of "living off the grid."

Garbage Warrior just finished a run at the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival where it won the inaugural People's Choice Award for the Most Popular International Nonfiction Film. Last week Hodge won the award for Best Debut Director at the British Independent Film Awards. And Dorothy Woodend at The Tyee wrote, "This is perhaps my favorite film in the entire festival, simply because it says, "You want to do something? Okay, do this!""

In the latest "Trees and Us" podcast, Mark Leiren-Young talks trash with Hodge as he explains how to build houses without trees.

Click Mark Leiren-Young talks with Oliver Hodge to hear Oliver Hodge talk about recycled houses, the stories the movie doesn't tell about visiting the Andaman Islands after a tsunami and making the ultimate light sabre.

Or listen and subscribe to Tyee podcasts on iTunes.

George Bowering Talks Trees on the Latest Green Chain Podcast

Tree Love and Murder

Bowering: Haunting stories and poems about trees.

A Trees and Us podcast with George Bowering.

By Mark Leiren-Young
Published: October 19, 2007

TheTyee.ca

Novelist, poet, editor, professor and the first Poet Laureate of Canada, George Bowering is famous for his words. But he first started working in the woods, and his family works in the forest industry.

So while those words have an international profile, they are inescapably rooted in B.C.'s trees, with stories of growing up in the Okanagan, haunting poems of urban Vancouver, and his innovative treatment of historical B.C. events.

LISTEN TO THIS!

Mark Leiren-Young talks to George Bowering.

In today's podcast, internationally-renowned poet George Bowering talks about those forests and sings about chainsaws.

Click the Listen to This! link to hear Mark Leiren-Young talk to him about risking his life on logging roads, "tree murder" and cruising for the B.C. government.

Or listen and subscribe to Tyee podcasts on iTunes.

Red Carpetting for The Green Chain

Tricia Helfer and Mark Leiren-Young did the red carpet for The Green Chain at the Vancouver International Film Festival. The photo is by efilmcritic.com's Jason Whyte, who interviewed Mark for the movie's premiere.
Here's the start of the interview. For the full interview, click here.
Is this your first film in the VIFF? (Or the first film you have) Do you have any other festival experience? If you’re a festival veteran, let us know your favourite and least-favourite parts of the festival experience.
Yes. It’s my first film at VIFF and my first film. I’ve had a lot of amazing festival experiences, but in theatre, comedy and music festivals. Film festivals are a whole new ride that I’m thrilled to be taking.
Could you give me a little look into your background (your own personal biography, if you will), and what led you to the desire to want to make film?
When I was a reporter at The Williams Lake Tribune I interviewed a logger about his brand new machine that he described as, “a mill on wheels.” While he boasted about his beautiful machine, he was complaining about the damn environmentalists from the cities who were taking away all the jobs. As one of those damn environmentalists, the interview always stuck with me and created the first link in The Green Chain.
Growing up, you were no doubt asked the eternal question “When I grow up I want to be a …” Finish this sentence, please!
“Writer.” I started giving that answer when I was in elementary school. In high school I told people I was a writer.
While you were making the movie, were you thinking about the future release of the film, be it film festivals, paying customers, critical response, and so forth?
Yes and no. A big part of making a movie is funding it, so I think you have to consider those questions unless you want to pay all the bills yourself. In terms of response, what mattered most to me was getting the stories right.