R.W. Gray

R. W. Gray is an award-winning screenwriter and director, and author of two books of short stories. His most recent book, Entropic, won the prestigious Thomas Raddall prize for fiction. His poetry has been published in the Broadview Introduction to Literature, the anthology Seminal, and magazines such as The Malahat Review, The Windsor Review, and ARC Poetry magazine. He has made seven short films, and his feature film Entropic is available on most streaming platforms. He is a professor in the Department of English at the University of New Brunswick.

What led you to become a writer and filmmaker?

I wrote my first short story after a strange dream when I was ten. That’s the great thing about writing: you can just sit down, and you have a story or a poem. Most of the time we are the only obstacles to our creation.

My way into film and screenwriting was far more circuitous. I don’t think I would have ended up writing for film if it wasn’t for Edmonton’s Loud & Queer Theatre Festival which challenged so many of us to play with actors and create something for the stage. And then that same first piece I wrote was selected by the CBC, which turned that story into a radio play. Back when the CBC was well-funded. I’ve not written for the theatre or radio since, but both those experiences showed me what working with talented creatives could achieve. I swing back and forth between the desire to write alone in a cabin and being in awe of what a team of people can create on a set.

How did your training and experience help you to create and innovate in your artistic practices?

Well, my academic background is in literature. I did a PhD in literature. I wanted to study stories, and I really believed they would help me make sense of the world. I actually think studying literature is perfect training for filmmakers. Film is one of the newest art forms, but stories existed long before that, and if you want to be any kind of storyteller, studying literature shows you so many possibilities. Like adding paints to your paint box.

The other education was thanks to film culture. Here is where I sound like an old man on a porch complaining and lamenting the death of independent theatres. If it wasn’t for Cinecenta, the independent theatre at the University of Victoria, and Winnipeg’s Cinemateque, I would never have found a world of cinema. They were my film education. That sort of film culture is so important. I try to recreate that in my courses, but I have recurring fantasies about opening an art-house cinema here.

Does your experience/background with writing inform or leverage your approach in filmmaking, and vice versa? How would you describe the relationship between the two, or do you separate them when you practice one artistic discipline?

Most clearly, I think filmmaking has made my fiction far more visual, and I tell stories very visually. Writing fiction, on the other hand, has mostly taught me how important script development is and how important it is to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Rewrites are where you find the story. I think some filmmakers think they’ll find the story on set or in post. For sure, there are great filmmakers like Wong Kar Wai who seem to do that. But for most of us mere mortals, I think in practice it’s more like my friend Nick, who tastes with his stomach: I once heard him exclaim, down to the last few bites of a foot-long sub, that it was inedible. Don’t wait until post and hope it’s edible. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

What do you enjoy most about creating films and/or writing?

Well, at the risk of sounding cheesy: the alchemy. Writing can be hard work, and there’s a tendency in writers to often suffer about it. But to be able to sit down with me and the page and create whole new characters and worlds on a rainy day out of nothing. Alchemy. Filmmaking is a whole different creature, and I guess these two modes define me as an oddity. I am most happy off on my own writing. Solitude suits me. But then filmmaking showed me these little covens, little spaces of creativity where a team of passionate people work together to create something that couldn’t exist without all of them. Alchemy. Call me Mister Cheese.

As a writer, what was an early experience where you learned that language had power?

Two answers to this, and likely neither makes me look good. In high school, I wrote a lot of poems that were, honestly, mostly reworded Depeche Mode songs, and the popular girls circulated them and whispered to me in the hallways how talented I was. If you look past my glee at feeling special once the popular girls’ light shone on me, there’s that marvelous way words can connect us, even if it’s through teen suffering.

The other was when my first book of stories came out, and one of my first Goodreads reviews was from a woman in Texas who noted she had to put down the book because it made her sick to her stomach. Maybe no other review has stuck with me the way that one did. Words on a page made a woman I had never met sick to her stomach. The power of a few words on a page. It’s enough to lure one over to the dark side of the force.

How does your creative process unfold as you create a written piece and/or film?

Always my process has to be “@ss in chair” first. I think that is based on a quote supposedly attributed to Hemingway, but my go-to here is Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk, where she talks about her relationship with inspiration and the muse. So much about creativity can be ephemeral. But none of it is possible if I am not sitting with the page and the pen.

Once I am there with the blank page, I think the practice of writing works best for me when I can see a step in front of me (and sometimes that means planning). It doesn’t mean I have to take that step. I have to be open, curious to what possibilities will come up. I guess it’s like travel that way. It’s good to buy a plane ticket, it’s good to have a plan, and it’s best to be open to what the world wants to show you, and not get too caught up in the way things were supposed to turn out.

How has living and working in New Brunswick helped and/or inspired you on your journey?

I never would have become a director, and I certainly wouldn’t have made as many films as I have if I hadn’t moved to New Brunswick.

When I moved here from Vancouver in 2008, I created the 48 Hour Film Competition because I thought it would be a good way to meet a few local filmmakers. The response was bonkers. That’s the technical term. Bonkers. Over twenty teams of up to ten people. And it’s been bonkers ever since. I’ve watched people try to start similar competitions in Halifax and other places in NB, and it’s never worked the same way. Fredericton is a surprising hub for creative film energy. On top of that, people here want to help each other. I think maybe we take that for granted. But it’s not the case in other places. A big part of that is the NB Film Co-op and Cat and Tony, who were my first film friends in NB. They and their volunteers provide the hub that connects filmmakers in the province.

It’s through the 48 Hour Film Competition, I was able to meet my close collaborators Jon Dewar and Matt Rogers. We three are very different storytellers, but we lean into how stories can be experiences and not just spectacles. We created Frictive Pictures to help each other make films. I think we keep teaching each other how to fail faster (learn faster). Some people are maybe capital ‘A’ auteurs and don’t work this way, but I want people I trust and inspire with me there at the end of the day, when the whole crew has gone home, standing with me in an empty parking lot discussing how we can do better tomorrow.

And I have to say, as a queer man and artist, Fredericton and New Brunswick were not the most welcoming when I moved here from Vancouver in 2008. Men were being targeted and harassed for their sexual orientation. The mayor refused for there to be a Pride parade. Filmmakers were my welcome wagon. And what a wagon.

What have you learned about yourself and the artistic community through your work?

I tell my students this anecdote about when I attended a writer’s retreat in Crowsnest Pass a bazillion years ago. I was so inspired, and at the end of the week, I wandered into town and found this weird little model train shop. The shop owner asked me what I learned at the retreat that week. I told him I learned to take myself more seriously as a writer. The shop owner, without a pause, asked, “Don’t you mean take the writing more seriously?”

I have written for so many wrong reasons. I wrote to impress the popular girls in high school, wrote to be a “writer,” to feel special, to avoid feeling, to avoid grief. So many reasons that are not about the art. And I will still write for the wrong reasons. This is one of those lessons I think we each have to go on learning. But I know so long as I am worried about what people will think or trying to impress someone, I am working on ego, which sure is a version of storytelling. But it’s not focused on what the story or art needs. I will sometimes, in workshops or receiving feedback, even visualize this. The story held out in front of me, the people giving me feedback, and all of us together trying to help it grow.

What do you think is the impact of artists’ work on communities and the province as a whole?

I wish I could teleport everyone with me back to the first 48 Hour Film Competition screening back in 2009. Sitting in a room with 200 Frederictionians seeing themselves and this place up on the screen. Having to sit on our hands to keep from pointing at the screen, seeing ourselves, these streets, and buildings all up on the big screen. In one of those first festivals, local filmmaker Travis Grant made a short called “Crossing the Great Divide” about a guy who grows up on the north side of Fredericton and dreams of moving to the south side. You can still find it on YouTube. It went Fredericton viral. I think it filled so many of us with joy to recognize us up on the big screen.

I think this is one of the major ways a place can know itself. Film, but also through our art and literature. I think we have miles to go here. We have so many stories to tell, and we have to continue to value those stories and our storytellers. Give NB books as gifts! Go to all the arts festivals!

Describe what you are most proud of in your career.

It’s hard to pick just one. Not because I think I have so much to feel proud about, but I think you just have to find joy (and pride) in the big and the small. I think in the middle of every one of my film shoots, I have a moment where I marvel at all the people who have come together, so many talented people, often for no pay and on their weekends, to join together to create something. I mean, I am proud that we’ve all come together, but there is also terror. There’s a burden of responsibility there.

Also, when I won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for my second book Entropic. The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia that shepherds that prize do such an amazing job of honouring the nominated writers. There was a reading event separate from the awards night, and at the awards night, they had another writer read from your work and talk about it. To hear the Raddall family talk about their father, whose memory the award honours was very touching. I have been lucky to be nominated for a few awards, and it’s not an entirely joyful process because it means a bunch of people losing as well. But the Thomas Raddall Award really made all of us feel so honoured and supported.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a writer and/or filmmaker?

If you’re in New Brunswick, I can’t think of a better place to become a writer or filmmaker. I have been so blessed to have a creative home in the Department of English at UNB. I don’t know if people know this, but our graduate programs in Creative Writing are top tier. Every year, they have a Writer in Residence who will meet with anyone from the community and, similarly, with the Media Arts and Culture in Residence. These are free resources and people who will support you in your creative steps.

There is so much support and so many amazing communities of artists in New Brunswick. There’s nothing to keep a person from making a short story, a poem, or a film every weekend. But these communities are our responsibilities, not just our possibilities. We need to show up to readings. Help other filmmakers with their films. Show up to the Silver Wave Film Festival and the Monday Night Film Series. Go to the Frye Festival, FICFA, and the Atlantic International Film Festival. We are each the keepers of these communities. It’s up to us.