The Denny Man is a feature film script I wrote, a slice of life story about a homeless aboriginal man named Denny, living in Yellowknife and seeking forgiveness from a person of his past. It’s a rather personal story for me, me trying to condense my time and experience in Yellowknife, and find if there’s something I’d like to say about residential schools. I wanted to tackle the topics of how can you forgive the unforgivable, as well as how to you move on from irreparable damage, while enjoying the small things in life. I really like this script. It makes me laugh, feel sad, and I like Denny as a character quite a lot. I’m not sure how I’m selling it, rambling and talking about it here, but like most projects that take years and lots of thought, I’m happy with where this one is in the timeline of projects I’ve seen through to the end.
The Denny Man (2020)
The Book of Norman(2017)
Norman is a very simple character to explain. He's a middle aged man, works in an office, and lives by himself with a cat. He's divorced, he has a son in college, and lives a rather unremarkable life.
And for the past three years, I've been writing about this character, as well as working as the editor in chief for a collaborative novel about him.
I'm the administrator of a community about this character, which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeofnorman/
The subreddit is essentially a fan-fiction site for this character, where anyone can write a story about Norman, so long as it follows the loose canon. Over the years of being one of the owners of the sub, I've helped it grow from 5,000 subscribers to nearly 60,000. I also started a project called The Book of Norman, which is a collection of stories written by people in the subreddit. The book is 365 days in Norman's life, 365 separate short stories, all tying together to give an idea of a living breathing person, who slowly comes to life as we see him handle all sorts of situations; from car troubles, to being uncomfortable with trying to flirt with women, to struggling to stay connected with his son, as well as dealing with fluctuating depression.
When I started the project, I thought it would have been done in a few months; collect some stories, paste them together, and self-publish it as an e-book. However, the more stories that I read and the more work that went into it, I realized it was something special I was working on. Norman was not just the butt joke of the quintessential normal person, but he was a special character that resonated with a lot of people. The book took a turn, and became more polished and refined as to what the goals are for the character.
You can go to reddit.com/r/lifeofnorman for more information on the book, as well as Norman.
So this is a follow up to the story of Norman, both one of my own and related to the character. After finishing the book, quite a few things changed. I stopped writing as much, I think part of me realized with the book that perhaps being a writer wasn’t my true calling in life, even though I still loved, my creative passion to do it consistently dwindled. I wrote The Denny Man after the book, and after that… Not much, for years. Until the last year, I broke that rusty chain by returning to Norman, something comfortable, but also something with a lot of unresolved feelings. I felt like I never really finished the story, at least in my own head, after the failed TV show. I always had this plotline in my head, vaguely there, to tell the most full Norman story. One that shows his origins, his life paths, what makes him the man that he is, and how does he grow as a person passed the trapped persona that he is on the subreddit. What came of that was this plotline- something that took me a full year to finish writing, something I thought that I would finish in ten pages in a month turned into a 57 part storyline.
At the end of the day, I was very proud of it all, for sure a lot of my favorite writing that I’ve ever done was in this series. It’s an odd thing to share since, it wasn’t really for anything. I just posted it to the subreddit whenever I had the next season of stories ready, and with how it’s formatted, I don’t know if there’s any better way to read it.
Norman, Part Series(2021)
Kismet Series(2015)
The Kismet series is a strange one, and one I was debating whether or not I wanted to share. Essentially, it's a series of vignettes, 20-30 page scripts I wrote with the one common connection being the protagonist, a man named Sam. Really it's something I started because of my love for the show Louie, and it certainly doesn't compare to that fantastic television show, but having a series of short films that would be easy to create, and focuses on the characters within, is what I liked most. So I wrote a bunch, and I'll share some of them here. I think they're a good idea of my voice as a writer, as most of these stories are near verbatim of real stories, and I like writing them quite a bit.
Miyasis(2016)
Miyasis is an odd one. It's not the strongest script, since the entire thing was planned out to be a strongly visual film. It's about a deaf man who gets a hearing aid for the first time, and slowly starts to develop schizophrenic voices in his head because of it. It was written near the end of October, let's say inspired by the horror film season as well as this video here, and we were going to shoot it in December; a skeleton crew of three people. What we needed most for the film was a hearing aid, and a dummy head that I bought online. The hearing aid was very important to the story, since it's in near half of the shots in the film, and the dummy head was for the biggest scene of the film- where the protagonist pulls out the broken hearing aid, ripping a hole in his ear, allowing goo and maggots to pour out of the canal. I was going to use the dummy head as the stunt ear, hollow out the head, and fill it full of interesting things; oil, mealworms, blood. Then we could squeeze the innards out and have it just come out of the rubber canal.
However, what killed the filming was darn Amazon.com. 5-7 days for shipping was not what happened; in fact I only received confirmation of the orders being shipped two weeks ago. So while the project certainly isn't dead- I think it'll be a lot of fun to film- it'll have to wait until those two props finally show in the mail before I can start to replan the film from wherever I'm living.
The Office Fanfiction (2016)
Pilot Script
This one here is very new, and certainly not one I would use for something, considering the copyrighting behind a big brand like TheOffice. I'm a fan of both the UK and US versions of the show- I think they're brilliantly written and have a particular mix of characters and story that makes it feel so warm and close to my heart. So, for fun, I wrote a pilot script for a so called "Canadian" version of the show, following its own cast of characters and plot line. The humor and tone is similar, but that's about it. I had a lot of fun writing something like this, and it scratched the itch of having no new episodes from the shows.
Finite Love(2015)
Finite Love is set in a modern day world where immortality exists- and it's very simple to become one. You order a pill online, take the pill, and that's it. The only catch is never having the option to turn back. The story follows Aubrey, a man who recently ordered a pill, and is looking for anyone to agree with him that becoming immortal is the right choice.
Finite Love is a short film project I was developing last year. While the script reached a point I was happy with, the actual filming of the project was rickety at best and resulted in never being completed.