Konyves wins screenwriting award for Barney's Version

Michael Konyves, the Montreal screenwriter who brought Mordecai Richler's Barney's Version to the screen, has won a Writers Guild of Canada award for his work.

The WGC presented its annual awards for the best in Canadian screenwriting Monday eveningin Toronto.

Konyves was the fifth screenwriter hired by producer Robert Lantos to breathe life into Barney Panofsky, Richler's irascible hero. Lantos had been trying to make a Barney's Version film for 12 years and gone through fourscreenwriters.

Konyves hadpreviously written onlyTV movies such as Fire & Ice and Solar Strike, but he loved Richler's comic voice and talked Lantos into looking over his 30-page treatment for a feature film. Lantos gave him the go-ahead for Barney's Version, which premiered at the Venice Film festival in 2010 and wonseven Genies this year.

In TV categories, Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern won the WGC screenwriting honours fordrama for Flashpoint and Chris Sheasgreen won the award for comedy for Less Than Kind.

The Pig Farm, a documentary about serial killer Robert Pickton, earned a documentary screenwriting award for Christine Nielsen.

Other winners:

• Animation: Karen Moonah, The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That.
• Children and youth: Barbara Haynes, The Latest Buzz.
• Shorts and web series: Lisa Hunter, You Are So Undead.
• WGC Showrunner Award: Tassie Cameron (Flashpoint, Rookie Blue).
• WGC Writers Block Award: Peter Grant, a lawyerwho worked to increase support for Canadian drama.
• Jim Burton Screenwriting Prize (for new talent): Denise Blinn, 1936.