My Story
I was trying to imagine what someone coming to my website might be curious to read. The answer is probably: How the hell did this guy get a TV series made? It’s a fair question. 5 years ago, I would have asked the same thing. So, to the other writers and creators of art out there, while there is no definitive roadmap to any creative goal, the short version is that I try to write, learn, and create art as often as I possibly can, and I don’t give up when I fail (happens a bunch). Here’s the longer version:
MY PREVIOUS WORK
In the not-so-distant past, I was an independent filmmaker. Professionally, I produced documentaries, worked as a camera operator and editor on smaller TV series, worked on commercial gigs and produced hundreds of independent productions for organizations and not-for-profits all over Alberta. My goal was to hone my skills as a storyteller and I found myself doing it all. Writing, producing, directing, camera operating, and editing projects from start to finish. I didn’t wait for the oportuntiy to fall in my lap. I took every paying gig I could for fifteen years because each one taught me something new about storytelling while paying the bills. I spent my free time writing and creating passion projects because this is what I love. The harsh reality of this industry is that you go into it thinking that if you write that killer script, everyone will come knocking at your door… and then you find out that your first script isn’t that great and no one knows who you are yet. There are no easy wins, you’ve got to work. And even then it takes a little luck to really succeed.
MY PASSIONS
I just have a passion for creating. So, alongside building my production company, Townend Films, and creating videos in ways that paid the bills, I found a love for photography. I got into woodworking. I wrote and played songs on piano and guitar. I fell in love with painting terrible puns… or painting characters into other paintings. Why not Zoidberg?
One of the hardest parts about working in a creative field is that it makes the thing you love most feel a lot like work. With that in mind, I make sure to create art that’s just for me as well. I’m not selling these paintings… they’re terrible! But, I kind of love how terrible they are. I write short stories just to explore an idea, not to send out to publishers. I build things in my garage because I find that working with your hands is important when most of your job requires you to sit at a computer. If you can get paid to create art, that’s amazing. I feel very fortunate to be in that position, but creating for yourself is important too.
MY HISTORY WITH WRITING
I have 3 features written that no one will ever see. I don’t mean that they won’t get made, I mean I will never share them with anyone. Something I learned early on in my career is that looking back on your previous work is always going to be hard. You see every mistake. You see how naive you were. You see that the choices you were most confident in making were often wrong, and it makes you wonder if in ten years you’re going to look back on what you’re making now and cringe in the same way.
I wrote a feature in film school that I was damn proud of at the time. A year into professionally filmmaking, I re-read it and questioned my whole career. It was not good. The idea behind it was pretty solid, but the writing was terrible… and why wouldn’t it be? The first time you sit down at a piano, you play chopsticks, so why is it that we expect our first scripts to be good?
With that revalation, I decided to write 2 more. Not to sell, not to share, just to practise. They are… mediocre at best. I then wrote another one that I am actually happy with. When I have a little more time, I will polish it up and see if I can sell it. I then co-write a couple scripts, hundreds of commercial productions, a few short stories, a bunch of comedy shorts, and a pilot for an animated series that I still intend to sell. It took all of that before we sold the pilot to Run The Burbs, and even now, I look back on that original pilot after a year of intensive television script writing and see everything I would change.
For anyone reading this who wants to get into writing, I can’t emphasize this fact enough. No matter how talented you are, every time you start a script you are a better writer than you were on the last one. So get writing.
A FRIENDSHIP
Andrew Phung and I met through mutual friends when I was fresh out of film school in 2005, and we started making comedy shorts with a bunch of our pals. It was a lot of fun. I loved the writing, the tech, the editing, all the behind the scenes elements that bring a story to life. Combine that with Andrew’s comedic mind, improv skills, and his ability to make it all come alive on screen and we knew we had something unique. We quickly became BFFs and our careers grew, occasionally overlapping, as we explored this wild world of television and film.
Eventually Andrew and I decided that we wanted to do something big. Andrew was crushing it on Kim’s Convenience and I had been building my career up, having just finished producing, co-directing and editing my first feature length documentary. The time was right to do something together. We wanted to create our own show. So we produced a sizzle reel for a travel show about sneakers and sneaker culture.
This show… failed miserably. In the end it was probably a good thing, since there was a worldwide pandemic shortly after and having a travel show would not have been ideal. For a couple Alberta boys who’ve been grinding it out their entire careers, Andrew and I figured, if the world doesn’t want a travel show, let’s just go way bigger. let’s write a fictional half-hour comedy. Let’s write a sitcom that has the heart of the classic TGIF shows we grew up with, but represents the world as it is today. Maybe the world as it should be. Something that makes us really laugh. A show that brings the love and fun from Andrew’s actually family onto the screen. So we did. That show became Run The Burbs.
RUN THE BURBS
This part feels like a whirlwind. Andrew and I wrote the pilot, partnered with Pier 21 Films, created a show bible, pitched the show, got a development deal with CBC, sold the project, produced the show in a pandemic, and turned our little two person creative partnership into a team of hundreds of incredibly talented people all working together to bring this vision to life.
Just click the photo to check it out on CBC Gem