Dennis Heaton, Canadian Screenwriter

Dennis Heaton, a hugely popular screenwriter, almost wasn’t. Heaton has produced projects such as ‘The Brothers Grunt,’ ‘Motive,’ and ‘The Order.’ The Vancouver native has been nominated for awards such as ‘Canadian Screen Award - The Shaw Media Award for Best Dramatic Series,’ ‘Gemini Award for Best Writing in a Children's or Youth Program or Series,’ and ‘Gemini Award for Best Direction in a Documentary Series,’ and has been awarded the ‘Bell Media Award for Best Comedy Program or Series.’

“When I was growing up, I knew I wanted to make movies, but the initial ambition was to become a special effects make-up artist. Writing–and eventually screenwriting,” says Heaton, “was a hobby, but it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I began to consider screenwriting as a career.”

Dennis Heaton

“Because I wasn’t thinking of screenwriting as a career during film school, any classes I took were part of the overall requirements for the film programs I was enrolled in.” Dennis Heaton, who was in the Media Resources program at Capilano College and the Simon Fraser University film program, touches on how exactly he made his way into screenwriting. Upon graduating, Heaton describes his training as ‘largely self-directed’ with occasional education courses, but “as I mentioned earlier, at this point, writing was really more of a hobby… I was moving toward producing animation. It was while I was producing an animated TV series for MTV with Danny Antonucci (The Brothers Grunt) that I started writing professionally. We needed scripts for the show, so I wrote some. After we finished that series, I realized that 1) writing could be a career and 2) I really preferred writing to producing. When I decided to shift from producing to writing, I enrolled into a writing program at the Canadian Film Centre, but most importantly, I made the concerted effort to write every day.”

"I made the concerted effort to write every day.”

With so many successful shows behind him, Heaton has executed both animated and live action projects. However, is there a difference in how one shapes dialogue? Heaton says the only difference was “the level of specificity I would put into the action descriptions for an animated script. The principal difference in the dialogue was driven more by the conceit of comedy versus drama. With an animated script, I was trying to get as many jokes per page as possible.”

Creative responsibilities as a screenwriter change from creating a show and being a writer, Heaton explains. “When I’m staffing on another writer’s show, it’s my job to figure out their tone and style and to try to infuse that as much as possible into my pitches for that show. When I’m showrunning, it’s my responsibility to act as the creative sieve and to sift through the pitches and ideas and collect the ones that fit the tone and style of the show I’m trying to create.”

The restrictions implemented in response to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic have stalled life, bringing many things to a standstill. Events, education, work, and many outings. The toll on creativity has been felt by writers everywhere, and Dennis Heaton is no exception. He says that “At the beginning of the pandemic, I was lucky if I could generate two pages a day… In terms of the online process and the ‘virtual room,’ I have to admit that I am not much of a fan. As helpful as Zoom has been in allowing us to resume the creative process and maintaining important safety protocols, there’s a loss of spontaneity. The room has to be much more structured in terms of meeting and break time to avoid screen fatigue, and I personally find that I have to work a lot harder to stay focused on the conversation. We’ve been finding that after about seven hours of zoom meeting time per day (including break times), we’re all pretty wiped.”

When asked if there were any book adaptions he would remake, Heaton says, “When it comes to the concept of remaking/rebooting, I tend to lean towards the idea of making something that had an excellent idea (or at least one that I found very entertaining) but a lousy execution. So, it tends to be movies like THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE (which I’d love to see as a comedy) that I think would be fun to do.

“With the evolution of streamers (Netflix et al), I’ve also started to think about utilizing the binge-model as a way of bringing new take to a reboot. For example, I’d love to do (or at least see) ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK done for a streamer using a “24” style real time model, or see the WARRIORS re-conceptualized as a limited series, with their journey back to the Bronx being the thrust of that season arc. The problem here is that those are two movies that I love, so I go back to my theory above, which is derived from “what’s to be gained from remaking good movies? I also want to redo RED DAWN, as a series, but with the express intention of making the invading force Canada, so that the majority of the story can be about the Americans trying to figure out not only why, but how Canada is doing this? The title of the pilot would be ‘Canada? Really?! Canada?!’”

In terms of production itself, Heaton answers our burning question on how long the idea of a show takes to come into production with a simple, “Forever.”

A day on set varies for Heaton. A full day usually “comes toward the end of the production, when all the writing is finally done. In terms of the writer’s relationship to the set, that’s very much dependent on both the showrunner and the production (and these days, Covid). A typical day for me is generally split between set, the writing room, and the production office and post-production.

“When we’re filming, I tend to start the day on set. It gives me a chance to check in with the cast in case there are any questions about the day’s material… It also allows me to connect with the director and the assistant directors about the day’s workload. Sometimes we’ll need to cut something to make the day ‘shootable,’ which means cutting some darlings on the floor. I’ll usually hang around for a couple of hours, then head into the production office, meet with my writing staff, line producer, and department heads and go over any notes, rewrites, questions for upcoming episodes to make sure the upcoming episodes are producible ( ie, I haven’t written a scene involving ten thousand extras and an earthquake). After that, I’ll head down to post and check in on how episodes are proceeding, review VFX shots, and generally make sure that the episodes are shaping up as I want them to.”

When we prepare a script for production, we start with a process we call ‘locking,’

With making cuts and changes to the script in mind, how much does the screenplay actually change during the filming process? “When we prepare a script for production, we start with a process we call ‘locking,’” explains Heaton. “This means that all scene numbers and page numbers are locked for ease of production management and to help us all stay on the same page, literally. But there can and will be changes to the script for a variety of reasons (actor availability, location availability, network revisions, director revisions, story tracking… the list is infinite), and these changes can either modify a script slightly, or require a major rethink of the story. It’s really a case by case question, depending on the show and the showrunner. I’ve known showrunners who refuse to make a change in a script unless absolutely necessary, and I’ve known showrunners who completely rewrite the last half of a script because they came up with a better ending.”

We look forward to seeing future works by Dennis Heaton (and bingeing his previous shows) and thank him for offering insight into the life of a screenwriter.