North Vancouver's most famous author, Douglas Coupland, has been out of town a lot lately. First he was in St. John's, Newfoundland, to launch his tribute book Terry. Then he was off to Montreal for the opening of his Super City art installation. Coupland is understandably excited that his next project brings him back to the green, green glass of home. On June 5, principal photography began in Vancouver for Everything's Gone Green, Coupland's debut as a screenwriter, produced by Toronto's Radke Films and Vancouver's True West Films (Canadian producers of It's All Gone Pete Tong). Actor Paul Costanza, recently seen on NBC's Joey, will star in the feature film, which is being directed by Paul Fox.

Although his novel All Families Are Psychotic was previously optioned for film adaptation, Green is the author's first work written purely for the screen. He says that the demands of a largely visual medium presented him with a unique challenge.

"In film," he observes, "you have to take maybe 10 pages of regular fiction and collapse it into a page and a half of script, which is about one minute. It's all about economy. It almost reminds me of magazine caption writing."

Coupland is also excited that his beloved Vancouver gets to play itself on film for a change as opposed to standing in for Seattle or San Francisco.

"Vancouver," Coupland says, "is one of the few cities on Earth which still hasn't become what it's finally going to be. We still have the chance to completely decide our fate. I mean, Cleveland in 100 years won't be that different, really. But Vancouver-who knows?"