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March 18, 2011
Unconventionality pays off
Ryan Smith writes for Mr. Young, a new tween show on YTV.
JEANIE KEOGH
Behind the scenes at the Burnaby studios where a new YTV series called Mr. Young is being produced, screenwriter Ryan Smith is hard at work at his first “real” job in the field. Meeting regularly with senior writers who brought him on board, 28-year-old Smith has been working with a team of three other writers to churn out 26 episodes since September of last year. The show, about a whiz kid university graduate who becomes a high school teacher at 14, premièred on March 1.
“I’m the lowest- rung writer,” Smith said of his entry-level position as story editor for the tween show. But Smith isn’t complaining. He made a sacrifice to get here, betraying his reputation as a “good Jewish boy,” he said, and dropping out of law school to live his dream.
“I found myself in law school and, after one semester, I actually just really missed screen writing and all of the creative pursuits that I had been following, so I made a really difficult decision to leave and essentially broke my mother’s heart – but she’s recovered. It was the best decision I ever made, I think.”
Smith’s path has been less than conventional. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia in religion, literature and the arts and a minor in theatre. He is currently midway through the completion of a master’s degree in screenwriting by correspondence from York University in Toronto. His stroke of professional luck is not something he takes for granted, so much so that he is reluctant to admit he is a successful writer.
“It takes a lot of time for people to get an opportunity like this, if it happens at all,” he admitted.
The show’s co-executive producers, Dan Signer and Howard Nemetz, gave Smith the job based on story samples he had written for other film projects. Once hired, he followed the direction of Nemetz and Signer, who created the concept and characters. Each writer is assigned an episode after the members of the team agree on a story outline. Then the first draft comes back for a collaborative editing process.
Smith isn’t squeamish about his work being rewritten scene by scene if that’s what it takes to make a good show. He is content to keep his mind open to the invaluable criticism he is exposed to on a daily basis as he grows as a writer.
“It’s very hopeful to have the immediate feedback from the show writers and other senior writers who have more experience than me in that area and I feel like I’m learning a lot watching them operate,” he said.
Although some might feel the need to prove themselves while they cut their teeth as emerging talent, Smith doesn’t find the junior role daunting. In fact, the process is liberating – the six-person team jokes about what doesn’t work until they find what does and, in the meantime, he taps into what his young audience wants to see.
“We’re pretty much a big room of kids, basically, so there is constant joking. Also, in the writers’ room, you’re encouraged to say whatever you want and basically pitch out as many bad jokes as you can until something good comes along so there is a great amount of freedom, I think, to sort of do anything and say anything. You’re able to connect with children because kids have less of a filter,” he said.
To fully get a grasp on the medium of sitcoms, Smith has studied the history of comedy. “You can see a direct line all the way back to Vaudeville and the Marx brothers and old forms of comedy like that, which have led to the creation of sitcom. Mr. Young really follows in that tradition,” he said.
He also glued himself to the tube to watch The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, a Disney show for which Signer and Nemetz were senior writers. “On top of this, I am definitely paying more attention to that sort of teen world,” he noted.
Smith said he credits his Jewish upbringing for his exposure to comedy. “There’s a sense of humor that just seems to be a part of the Jewish tradition, even in terms of the folk mythology. The school plays that we used to do, like The Village of Chelm, an old Yiddish-based folklore about a village of comedic characters in the shtetl days, I think those comedies definitely had an influence on me as a child. I think there is just something inherently funny about the Jewish mentality,” he said.
Mr. Young airs new episodes on Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m., with repeat episodes on Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. and Sundays at 8:30 p.m.
Jeanie Keogh is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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