Cycling Celebrity
The screenwriter is finished with racing, maybe
Screenwriter Matt Hansen is finished with racing, maybe
Too much wine – and not enough exercise – led former Jet Fuel Coffee road racer Matt Hansen back to cycling. “The past couple of years, I started to get a bit chubby,” he laughs. “I figured I needed to get back on the bike.”
Since retiring from competition more than a decade ago, Hansen has spent more time exercising his writing muscles than working out his legs. Hansen has always enjoyed putting pen to paper. For his Grade 7 and 8 English classes, he wrote what he calls Murdershewrote or Agathachristie knock-off novels. As his competitive cycling career peaked, he dabbled as a journalist contributing articles to a variety of bike magazines. Upon retiring from a life in the saddle, he landed a gig in the comic book industry. Hansen first worked as an editor for Dreamwave Productions, publishers of several comic titles including Thetransformers, before becoming the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics/dabel Brothers Productions.
As a competitive cyclist, Hansen travelled to compete in races in North America, Europe and Japan, including Philadelphia’s long-standing race, the Tour de Beauce and the Tour de Hokkaido. He also represented Canada at the cyclocross world championships a few time, including 1994’s event in Koksijde, Belgium. Today, he journeys the globe via his writing. His most recent writing credit is for his first feature film Zoom, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015 and is a Newyork Times critics’ pick. The movie is a multi-dimensional interface between a comic book artist, a novelist and a film director. Each lives in a separate reality but authors a story about one of the others. Directed by Pedro Morelli, Zoom stars Alison Pill, Gael Garcia Bernal and Canadian Jason Priestley. In 2016, Hansen was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for best original screenplay.
Writing the script for Zoom was an arduous task. Hansen worked collaboratively with Morelli; the rewrites were numerous. “It’s like writing an essay in high school,” he explains. “It’s almost a level of hell like Dante’s Inferno. Every time you think you are done, there are more and more edits.” Based in Toronto, Hansen writes and edits away the day from home. His usual routine is a morning ride, followed by lunch, then an afternoon of writing. “When I worked i n an office, I would often ride to work, but I did not ride during the day unless I squeezed it in early before work. This past year, I enjoyed riding a lot. I go when it’s sunny and I don’t have to worry about fitting the ride into my schedule.” “The more I ride, the more I get tired,” he adds. “I used to ride for up to five hours, now three is enough. I realize how tough cycling is. I often come home and need to take a nap.” As a scriptwriter, especially i n Canada, Hansen says you need to always have irons in the fire. “Right now, I have a bunch of scripts in development,” he explains. “It looks like two of them will be fully financed soon, but it takes a long time. It’s like asking six girls out to the prom and hoping one says yes.” Hansen also writes Dark-hunters, a monthly comic book based on a fantasy novel series by Sherrilyn Kenyon. And, of course, to inspire his muse – and work off that wine – each morning he climbs into the saddle and rides for the pure enjoyment of the sport. That said the tug to compete is ever present. “Every now and then I’ll go out riding, have a tailwind, I’ll feel fit, and say, ‘I should do some local races,’” Hansen says. “Most of my friends say, ‘Don’t do it,’ but I’m stubborn. I probably will compete again one of these days.”