Just in the last week I have received three different invitations from Karen Walton to events sponsored by Ink Canada, the loose group of Canadian screenplay and teleplay writers. You may remember Walton from such Canadian feature films as Ginger Snaps, and as a prominent writer on the series that told more lies about gay men than anything in 20th-century television, Amerikanski Queer as Folk.
I note the foregoing because everybody’s favourite teleplay writer Denis McGrath recently wrote me an electronic-mail message that, when not calling me names, claimed that various wymmynz at the Ink Canada boozeup I attended complained I was “leering” at them. I talked to 15 people that night, of whom five were women, and of that number, three of them were Karen Walton and her girlfriends. (The others were a struggling writer and a Film Centre grad.)
Just on a mathematical basis alone, I must have packed a lot of leering into those chitchats. The objection I raise is that I don’t even notice women in the ordinary course of events, and, as an homosexualist, not only do I not look at them closely but would find that somewhat displeasing. I don’t even like watching documentaries about mammograms.
And after all this, they bombard me with invites to their friendly soirées. (Karen, get me a Diet Coke, will you? Twist of lime?)
Meanwhile, I guess it was no problem at all that I said the following to the fellow it applied to: “What’s it like being the only writer who works out?” And I guess nobody but me and Callaghan overheard that atrocious off-colour joke by a writer about his wife’s propensity for oral sex. McGrath also alleged that Walton or somebody had told the Paddock to bar me from the premises, something the Paddock wouldn’t confirm when I followed up on it, as I of course did.
All I remember is having a great time talking to all sorts of interesting writers, and being sneered at by Walton and her princessy girlfriend, who mocked my name.
People are always trying to nail down the difference between American TV and Canadian TV. The difference is: With the Americans, smart people write dumb shows.