Winning words

It’s official – Ryan La Via’s writing is award winning.
 
La Via, who works as a creative writer for Dougall Media, captured the best screenwriter award at the 2011 Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards Conference on Saturday at the awards ceremony in Sudbury. The award nomination and win recognizes La Via’s screenplay Nostalgia.
 
“We were sitting around the table (at the awards show) and all I remember is ‘and the winner is, Ryan,’” La Via said. “I think the individual who called it had trouble with my last name because all he said was Ryan. Then the gentleman to my left turned to me and told me that I had won.
 
“The next thing I knew I was at the front of the auditorium and I had to come up with a speech. I had nothing prepared. I was not expecting to win.” 
 
Nostalgia, which La Via completed in September 2010, is an unproduced feature-length drama about a selectively mute 12-year-old boy and his accidental befriending of a homeless man. Throughout the two hours the 120-page screenplay is written to be, the friendship between the two characters blossom.
 
But there’s more to the main character than his current situation.
 
On Sept. 11, 2001 that character was a firefighter in New York. Unlike most of his firefighter colleagues who were at ground zero, Nostalgia’s main character was in the hospital with his wife who was dying of cancer.
 
“So he took it hard that day, not only because he lost his fellow firefighters, but because he also lost the love of his life,” La Via said.
 
The next step for Nostalgia is to get the written screenplay into the production stages, which the local writer admits isn’t going to be easy. But La Via believes the work will be taken more seriously because of the award.
  
“Everyone thinks what they write is great,” he said. “So I thought the screenplay was great, but to be recognized with the award just blew me away because definitely when I send this out for people to read, it will have won an award and I think people will take it more seriously.
 
“But that doesn’t make it any easier to make.”
 
And in the perfect world, Nostalgia as a feature-length drama would include a bit of Thunder Bay content in the acting department.
 
“The actual lead character was written with (Thunder Bay actor) Kevin Durand in mind,” he said. “So, I would love for him to get a read of this.”