Jefferson Lewis

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Howard Jefferson Lewis (born 1951) is a Canadian screenwriter and film producer from Montreal, Quebec. [1] He is most noted as the writer of the film Ordinary Magic , for which he was a Genie Award nominee for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 15th Genie Awards in 1994. [2]

Contents

Background

Born and raised in Montreal, he is the grandson of Wilder Penfield. [3] After graduating from Queen's University with a degree in film studies, he worked as a journalist for the Ottawa Citizen , CBC Radio and Southam News before publishing Something Hidden, a biography of his grandfather, in 1981. [3]

Film career

His book was also adapted into a National Film Board of Canada documentary by filmmaker Bob Lower, [4] which drew Lewis more directly into filmmaking. He wrote a number of documentary shorts for the NFB in the 1980s, and was a writer for the short-lived television soap opera Mount Royal , before making his feature film debut with the screenplay for The Paper Wedding (Les noces de papier) in 1989. [1]

His second screenplay, Ordinary Magic, was directed by Giles Walker and released in 1993. [5] The following year, Michel Brault released My Friend Max (Mon amie Max), from a script cowritten by Lewis and Guy Fournier. [6] For that film, he won the award for Best Screenplay at the 1994 Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois. [7]

In 2002 he wrote Paule Baillargeon's NFB documentary Claude Jutra: An Unfinished Story (Claude Jutra, portrait sur film), for which he won both the Gemini Award for Best Writing in a Documentary Program or Series at the 18th Gemini Awards, [8] and the Writers Guild of Canada award for best writing in a documentary. [9]

His later screenplays included the feature films Emotional Arithmetic [10] and French Immersion , [11] and the documentary film Outbreak: Anatomy of a Plague.

Personal life

He was married in the 1970s to Catherine Keachie, a marketer in the publishing industry. [12] After that marriage ended in the mid-1980s, he remarried to actress Andrée Pelletier. [7]

Filmography

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References

  1. 1 2 John Griffin, "French director, anglo script-writer generate marital bliss with Paper Wedding". Montreal Gazette , April 29, 1990.
  2. ↑ "The 1994 Genie nominees". Playback . November 7, 1994. Archived from the original on June 3, 2021. Retrieved June 1, 2021.
  3. 1 2 Charles Godfrey, "With Bible reading, hard work and obeying the Golden Rule, Penfield could do anything". The Globe and Mail , October 31, 1981.
  4. ↑ Rick Groen, "Engrossing NFB documentary on a brilliant man Penfield's life-long quest". The Globe and Mail , November 21, 1981.
  5. ↑ Bill Brownstein, "Filming magic on a shoestring; Despite little fanfare, Canadian movies can hold their own". Montreal Gazette , January 15, 1994.
  6. ↑ Charles-Henri Ramond, "Mon amie Max – Film de Michel Brault". Films du Québec, February 3, 2009.
  7. 1 2 John Griffin, "Max caused award-winning writer some pain". Montreal Gazette , February 20, 1994.
  8. ↑ "Best of documentary, news, sports honoured". North Bay Nugget , October 20, 2003.
  9. ↑ "Screenwriters honoured". Toronto Star , April 15, 2003.
  10. ↑ Matthew Hays, "Lewis does the Arithmetic". Playback , October 2, 2006.
  11. ↑ Brendan Kelly, "Immersed in confusion; Kevin Tierney hopes to offend people on both sides of the language divide in film about Anglos coming to Quebec to learn French". Postmedia Network, September 26, 2011.
  12. ↑ Doug Saunders, "Tireless magazine lobbyist faced trade challenge". The Globe and Mail , December 17, 1997.
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