He has since gone on to bigger and better things, and it’s hard to see what was useful to Vancouver director Carl Bessai in making this TV-grade drama about a young man’s struggle to pick up a pen and write.

Twenty-year-old Cole is played by the much older-looking Richard de Klerk, who, presumably, reined in his charisma as a would-be scribe who struggles fitfully to leave his tiny town just to attend school in Vancouver, three hours away.

Sure, Adam Zang’s pathetically reductive script gives Cole some pitiful po’ folks obstacles. First off, he must help his sister (Sonja Bennett) run the family gas station—not too difficult, since nary a customer is ever seen—while she looks after two small children and her increasingly violent, racist-redneck boyfriend (a bearded Chad Willett).

The siblings are also burdened by a mom suffering from what appears to be late-stage Alzheimer’s, thus giving glamorous Rebecca Jenkins a rare opportunity to stare blankly into space and wander into traffic. And Cole has a literally dopey best friend (Michael Eisner) determined to drink and drug himself into an early grave by the Fraser River.

All this risible melodrama does give our macho Truman Capote good fodder for a creative-writing class led by a challenging teacher (cast standout Stephen E. Miller). The course is likewise attended by a lovely and wealthy woman (Kandyse McClure), essentially spoiled yet impressed by Cole’s way with kids and his surprising knowledge of Harlem Renaissance poets. No sparks fly on-screen, but the story requires an unlikely romance, and in this, as everywhere else, Cole goes through the motions.

The one bright spot is Bessai’s own camera work, which makes Lytton, B.C., look like a place you’d never want to leave.