Two Special Days...

Reflecting on two Special Days…

It is almost a year since Nicolas Awde & Patrick Stark (Producers) signed Hollywood screenwriter Jay Wolpert (Pirates of the Caribbean / The Count of Monte Cristo) to write the film adaptation based on the highly acclaimed novel by award winning American Author W.D. Wetherell’s A Century of November.

Screenwriter and executive producer Jay Wolpert spent an action-packed two days in Vancouver to meet with Nick and Patrick to go over script and story points. The schedule was tight, but Nick, Patrick and Pacific Empire Corporation 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 Company’s 1969 Cadillac Fleetwood Limo and delivered to his hotel. Before long, Jay, Nick and Patrick were immersed in a 5 hour script and story meeting.

From there, Jay was transported to the Blink Media Works studios where he was interviewed (for a special presentation piece Nick and Patrick assembed for the project) by local EPK/Field Producer Marian Dodd (Entertainment Tonight), where Jay discussed the process of adapting A Century of November as well as regaling those ‘behind-the-scenes’ 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, Nick and Patrick 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 they journeyed across the strait began, they quickly lost track of the time. The voyage from Vancouver to the apple orchard became a tremendous opportunity for all of them to simply converse, break bread together and further solidify their plans to continue to develop the feature film A Century of November.

After a brief but informative stop by Nanaimo’s century-old courthouse, they drove 45 minutes south to the Merridale Estate Cidery, one of the largest of its kind in North America. Everybody involved was thrilled 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, they 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 two Special Days…

Another step forward in their journey from novel to script to screen…