Jay Wolpert - Vancouver Arrival...

Our screenwriter and executive producer Jay Wolpert spent an action-packed two days in Vancouver (May 19 & 20) to meet with Nick and me to go over script points. The schedule was tight, but our team managed to pull it off without a hitch.

Jay was in for a busy two days: not long after being picked up from the airport he was whisked away in Pacific Empire’s customized 1969 Cadillac limo and delivered to his hotel. Before long, Jay, Nick and I were immersed in a 5 hour story meeting.

From there, Jay was transported to the Blink Media Works studios where he was interviewed (for a special presentation piece we are assembling for the project) by local EPK/Field Producer Marian Dodd (Entertainment Tonight), where he discussed the process of adapting A Century of November as well as regaling those of us ‘behind-the-scenes’ with stories of his life and career in Hollywood.

Research is key to staying true to the authenticity of the film and the ‘when’ and ‘where’ the story takes place – so at Jay’s request, we discovered an apple orchard to visit on Vancouver Island, very close to where our protagonist, Charles Marden made his home, and from where his journey half way around the world to find the exact spot his son fell, began.

It was a brutally early start to the next day in an effort to catch the 6:30AM ferry from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver to Nanaimo’s Departure Bay: once our journey across the strait began, however, we quickly lost track of the time. The voyage from Vancouver to the apple orchard became a tremendous opportunity for all of us to simply converse, break bread together and further solidify our plans for the film.

After a brief but informative stop by Nanaimo’s century-old courthouse, we drove 45 minutes south to the Merridale Estate Cidery, one of the largest of its kind in North America. It was fantastic to be able to stroll through the orchard consisting of numerous varieties of cider apple trees, all from Europe and to take in the same air our characters would have breathed, experiencing life as they may have experienced it.

After some cider sampling, we drove back to Nanaimo in time to catch a 12:30 ferry back to the mainland and straight to the airport to conclude Jay’s whirlwind tour: another step forward in our journey from novel to script to screen.