With two TV movies, "Without Malice", and "The Paradise Virus” to my credit, I thought, "Now I’ll just sit back, let the bidding wars begin, and wait for the best offer.".

Eleven months later, the best (and only) offer came in. Regent Entertainment, who had hired me for Paradise Virus, called to ask if I wanted to write another script for them.
In retrospect, perhaps "Oh God, yes! I’ve done nothing for almost a year!" wasn’t my best contract negotiating tactic, but I blew the cobwebs off my laptop and got ready to write. The concept was "Woman versus Nature". Hmmm, I thought, I don’t know, a 90 minute movie about menopause...

Fortunately, it was further explained that this was about a woman battling the elements in the outdoors, and would be filmed here in Vancouver. Great! I’ll put a beautiful woman in a tiny bikini on Kits Beach, her foot caught in rocks as the tide slowly rises for 90 minutes. Sensing this brilliant idea would be shot down, my Plan B was to put her in danger in the mountains.

This was approved, but because of budget restrictions, I couldn’t do expensive natural disaster scenarios like earthquakes, avalanches, bursting dams, leaky condos, etc.. We went with the idea of a female mountain guide being hunted down by three men. It was to be like "Cliffhanger", except on Sylvester Stallone’s body-waxing budget.

Oh, one other thing, Regent added, there has to be a snowman in the title and in the storyline. WTF? It was part of a pre-packaging requirement for the sale, and posed problems. What if they shot this "Snowman" movie in the summer? Does somebody look fondly at a sun-drenched meadow and recall building a snowman there last winter? We came up with calling a mountain path "Snowman’s Pass" and I wrote a campfire story scene, where the heroine tells the tale of the "Snowman", an old gold miner’s ghost haunting the Pass.

I usually name my characters after family, friends, or co-workers, but this time went with "Diana", goddess of the hunt, as the female climbing guide. For the young hunk, "Tyler" sounded young and hunky to me. A menacing bodyguard I christened "Hugo", thinking of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. As for the evil villian, I chose "Curt", a evil villian type name. Apologies to all Curts who are not evil villians.

A minor character who bites it on Page 4 is Brian Moore, after Brian Moore in the News Nest, who helped me with computer stuff. Thanks, Brian, but you die early.

Speaking of names, the director was Rex Piano. I never asked, but maybe he changed it from Rex Mouth Organ.
A high volume New Yorker, Rex read my script and asked, "So, this your first movie?".

Gee, thanks Rex, you ever directed anything except cars to the parking lot before this?

Actually, we got on great, and he did an amazing job on a 12 day shoot. Yeah, you read that right. Twelve days to shoot an action thriller with chase scenes, cliffhanging mountain climbing stunts, and a fight to the death finale in a weather station.

Shooting started June 15th. I went up to Squamish to be on set when they shot the Brian Moore death scene, not a wise choice on a day when they were looking for an expendable dummy to throw over a cliff.

It was fun to meet the actors. One look at Nicole Eggert confirmed my memory that Baywatch tended to hire fairly attractive women. Marc Singer (of Beastmaster and "V" fame) glared down at me and said, "So you’re the reason we’re running up and down these damn mountains.". I said my next script would be about him rescuing a dozen Playmates from their restrictive clothing.

I met George Stults, who plays Tyler and was recently in US magazine’s Top Ten TV Hunks for his role on Seventh Heaven, but was so jealous of his youth and good looks that I could only mutter, "I’m doing research. What’s it like rescuing Playmates from their clothing?".

Then Michael Dopud, a local actor playing Hugo, approached me. "Didn’t you used to live in Kits?", he asked, giving my old exact address. Uh oh….uh, maybe, it depends, did I owe him money? No, as it turned out, we’d been next door neighbours years ago, and I’d once said to him, "Who knows, maybe one day I’ll write a script and you’ll be in the movie.".

As of this writing, I haven’t seen the final cut of "Snowman’s Pass" (which may be re-named), but did sit in on the editing and was pleasantly surprised. It was fun, fast, and exciting, especially Brian Moore’s death. The movie will be coming to a TV channel near you in the fall.
And since I’m writing another script and need names…watch it, or die early!

Peter Layton works somewhere in CBC doing something.