"Screenwriting is a blighted ghetto, a literary no-man's-land. Screenwriting serves as a medium which does not prize language, poetry, wordplay, or conversation." - Noel S. Baker, "Hard Core Roadshow"

But if you're one of the lucky ones, screenwriting can also pay off. True, you have a better chance of getting into the NBA, being struck by lightning and meeting J.D. Salinger than you do of getting your screenplay produced. To let your life dangle by a thread for two years while you type and compromise and drink and type and type and drink, you must either be very determined or extremely crazy.

Hard Core Roadshow proves that screenwriter Noel S. Baker is both.

"It's a rags-to-burlap kind of story," he shrugs. Getting a script made into a film doesn't mean swimming pools and fur coats, especially in this country. But it should be worth a medal of honor and a career boost if you can pull it off. Director Bruce McDonald made Hard Core Logo against all odds and Noel S. Baker was not only on the front lines rewriting the final shots, he could also be found ducking away to scribble in his diary. What eventually became his first book, Hard Core Roadshow is a discouraging but even more inspiring account of a struggling writer's impetus in what many have dubbed the "best rock and roll movie ever made." It's also a must read for anyone interested in film, survival games and adventure stories.

"There are few things harder I think than making a decent movie," Baker says over a hotel beer. "I was kind of a tourist in this for the first time, taking in these development meetings with all these people and just dealing with what struck me as a preposterous Kafkaesque nightmare when you're in the middle of it." Baker doesn't sugarcoat the experience either. There were no scandals to uncover, but plenty of big egos and bad decisions. He insists that all the entries are true to his feelings of the day and it would have been wrong to go back and insert rainbows and puppy dogs into the "days of hell."

In that sense, Hard Core Roadshow is more than a standard production book to the film. It comes across as an unofficial companion to Michael Turner's fictional rock diary from which Hard Core Logo was based. Both books are about following an impossible artistic dream day by day, no matter the consequences. It sometimes strikes Baker as odd that he becomes a character of himself in his own book - who he convincingly pokes fun at alongside the rest. But even if his candid account was welcomed by most, it still managed to ruffle some feathers.

"Bruce and I are better friends than ever because he still knows it's all true. But Callum Keith Rennie (who plays Billy and the guitar in the film) still called me up and called me a "dink." Callum's one of those actors that cultivates a cool persona for himself and I think he saw me pull the veil back on it - like the Wizard of Oz. That's something actors aren't too happy about."

In fact, the making of Hard Core Logo was such a daunting task - worth the work of a trilogy of movies - Baker seems to get away with speaking like a weathered, wounded veteran.

On compromising: "I sometimes resent input. But as any film gathers force and momentum, everyone has a say. Money puts fear into creative people. Money doesn't care about anything except more money. But the people that are attached to the money have to speak for it. It doesn't make them idiots."

On rewrites: "Every day you think you're ready is not necessarily the day you're ready - it's the day when the shooting falls into place. That's the truth of it."

On the job: There's a certain myth - maybe glamorous - attached to screenwriters, but it's hard work. It's like being a student and you have term papers due or funding deadlines. You have to pull all-nighters sometimes."

For Noel Baker the work has paid off. Coming off the Hard Core wave, he's now busy writing another film with McDonald, finishing a TV pilot, a CBC documentary series, a novel and a "bunch of rewrite jobs if I can squeeze them in."

But for a guy that knows he's still only beginning a career in a mean and fickle industry, Baker is convinced that anything is possible. "The work is its own pleasure," he says. "If it's worth doing, it's worth mastering."