First screenplay's the charm for Single Man writer

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Vancouver lawyer read how-to books before adapting Isherwood novel for film

By GLEN SCHAEFER, Canwest News ServiceJanuary 2, 2010

The phrase “don’t quit your day job” is meant for people who try their hands at creative endeavours and fall flat.

That wouldn’t apply to Vancouver lawyer David Scearce, who thought he’d try screenwriting four years ago. He read screenwriting magazines and how-to books before attempting his adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood novel A Single Man.

Since then — lightning speed by movie-industry standards — his script was picked up by American designer Tom Ford as Ford’s directing debut, and filmed in Los Angeles with a cast that included Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. A Single Man screened this fall at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, where it drew standing ovations and multiple awards.

Boosted by a clutch of critics, prizes and Golden Globe nominations, A Single Man opened in theatres across North America Christmas Day.

Meanwhile, Scearce hasn’t quit his day job, vetting native reserve real-estate deals for the federal Indian and Northern Affairs Department.

“There’s a time lag in film between actually doing the writing and any financial and critical success from it,” says Scearce. “Until then, I still have to make the mortgage payments.”

Other offers shouldn’t be too long in coming, even though Scearce doesn’t have an agent yet.

Scearce is nominated along with director Ford for best screenplay by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and best first screenplay by the Independent Spirit Awards.

Firth is up for multiple awards, including a Golden Globe for best actor, and he won the best-actor prize at Venice.

The Ontario-born Scearce, 44, had dabbled in writing for years, back to his law school days at the University of B.C.

He’d read Isherwood’s mid-1960s novel several times, and started seeing a frame around the story of a university professor grief-stricken at the death of his lover. Scearce met the late author’s former partner, Don Bachardy, a Santa Monica portrait artist who held the rights to Isherwood’s works.

He told Bachardy he wanted to adapt the novel’s mostly inner-monologue story as a screenplay.

“He said, ‘Go ahead.’ At that point, I didn’t know other people had tried and he’d said no after seeing their products. Had I known that before, it might have been a little more daunting.”

Scearce wrote on evenings after work and on weekends, at the Vancouver home he shares with his own partner, an education professor, and at their Mayne Island weekend home.

“I didn’t know anything about how the industry worked really, other than the bits I was reading in screenwriting magazines,” he says. “Part of me thought it was a writing exercise if nothing else.”

Eight months later, he had a script he was satisfied with. An American agent took it, and the book, to Ford, who was represented by the same firm.

Ford optioned the work in 2006 and did his own revision of Scearce’s script. The director introduced the idea that the book’s professor was contemplating his own suicide after his lover’s death, which Scearce saw as an improvement.

Scearce was on set for one day during filming “I went down as a visitor, which was wonderful because you had none of the pressure. I saw about nine hours of work and it might have been three minutes of screentime.”

Scearce and his partner joined the movie people in Venice for the première and then went to Toronto for the screening there.

“My life hasn’t changed a lot yet, but I get snippets from the Hollywood world,” he says.

“But just to be zipping in and out of that, and then coming back here was great,” he says. “I go back to work and start looking at leases again, developments, the usual stack of stuff.”

Posted by Lee Gabel - Jan 3, 07:03 PM