1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:11,402 --> 00:00:13,665 - Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Seth, 4 00:00:13,796 --> 00:00:15,841 and I am a cartoonist. 5 00:00:15,972 --> 00:00:17,669 There is something very lovely 6 00:00:17,800 --> 00:00:20,368 about the stillness of a comic-book page, 7 00:00:20,498 --> 00:00:22,457 that austere stacked grid of boxes, 8 00:00:22,587 --> 00:00:25,242 the little people trapped in time. 9 00:00:25,373 --> 00:00:28,115 I actually think it is better suited 10 00:00:28,245 --> 00:00:31,292 for portraying the interior life of a person 11 00:00:31,422 --> 00:00:34,904 than the sort of big, blown world of fantasy. 12 00:00:35,035 --> 00:00:37,646 I've been asked by the NFB to repeat questions 13 00:00:37,776 --> 00:00:41,128 as they're asked to me, to phrase them as a statement. 14 00:00:41,258 --> 00:00:43,173 [laughter] 15 00:00:55,272 --> 00:00:57,144 It may sound like a ridiculous statement, 16 00:00:57,274 --> 00:00:59,624 but in some ways cartooning is much like 17 00:00:59,755 --> 00:01:01,148 what the Impressionists were doing, 18 00:01:01,278 --> 00:01:03,672 in that you're not aiming for the detail 19 00:01:03,802 --> 00:01:07,371 so much as the overall feeling. 20 00:01:13,725 --> 00:01:15,640 [music] 21 00:01:28,131 --> 00:01:30,655 Cartooning to me isn't about drawing at all; 22 00:01:30,786 --> 00:01:33,223 it's about graphic design, it's about... 23 00:01:33,354 --> 00:01:36,487 creating iconic images you move around on the page, 24 00:01:36,618 --> 00:01:39,708 which actually stimulate in the reader their own experience. 25 00:01:39,838 --> 00:01:42,319 They're like memory drawings, I call them. 26 00:01:42,450 --> 00:01:44,539 But that simple iconic drawing 27 00:01:44,669 --> 00:01:47,890 operates in many ways like language does. 28 00:01:48,020 --> 00:01:50,545 I can't draw the texture of the natural world. 29 00:01:50,675 --> 00:01:54,592 I can create a house and you can add the boards on it yourself, 30 00:01:54,723 --> 00:01:56,246 the way it really is. 31 00:01:56,377 --> 00:01:58,814 I think something about that process of recreating 32 00:01:58,944 --> 00:02:01,817 the world in your mind through these memory drawings 33 00:02:01,947 --> 00:02:04,167 is what brings in the real world. 34 00:02:04,298 --> 00:02:07,170 In the last few years, I did autobiographical stories 35 00:02:07,301 --> 00:02:08,954 in my sketchbook. 36 00:02:09,085 --> 00:02:11,957 I have to come up with an expedient method to do it. 37 00:02:12,088 --> 00:02:13,742 And the simple answer seemed to me... 38 00:02:13,872 --> 00:02:15,787 I actually I think it came to me 39 00:02:15,918 --> 00:02:18,181 while I was having a phone call with another cartoonist, 40 00:02:18,312 --> 00:02:19,922 and he was talking about the difficulty 41 00:02:20,052 --> 00:02:22,359 of trying to write a diary and I said jokingly, 42 00:02:22,490 --> 00:02:25,057 "You should just get some rubber stamps and do it." 43 00:02:25,188 --> 00:02:26,711 And then I thought, I said immediately: 44 00:02:26,842 --> 00:02:29,149 "Actually don't do that; I'm going to do that." 45 00:02:29,279 --> 00:02:34,632 Um... I have, like, a stamp of myself at my desk, 46 00:02:34,763 --> 00:02:37,026 I have one of walking. 47 00:02:37,157 --> 00:02:40,508 Just what is memory? I pondered. 48 00:02:41,944 --> 00:02:43,641 It's an odd thing. 49 00:02:43,772 --> 00:02:45,382 Not a factual record. 50 00:02:45,513 --> 00:02:48,864 It is a flash of captured experience. 51 00:02:48,994 --> 00:02:50,996 Think of somewhere in a memory. 52 00:02:51,127 --> 00:02:54,609 You don't see the place so much as feel it. 53 00:02:54,739 --> 00:02:58,221 You can't look around and itemize what was in the room, 54 00:02:58,352 --> 00:03:00,615 but you sense the details around you. 55 00:03:00,745 --> 00:03:04,401 You feel the proximity of people and objects about you. 56 00:03:04,532 --> 00:03:07,839 It's almost a textural experience. 57 00:03:07,970 --> 00:03:12,540 A memory is like a photograph of a sensation. 58 00:03:12,670 --> 00:03:15,238 October 11, 2005. 59 00:03:16,718 --> 00:03:19,024 Left the house today. Errands. 60 00:03:19,155 --> 00:03:22,550 Wine, bakery and the Italian market. 61 00:03:22,680 --> 00:03:25,683 Walking is the best time to reflect. 62 00:03:26,815 --> 00:03:29,557 Saw an old woman sitting on a bench. 63 00:03:29,687 --> 00:03:32,908 Just an old woman like any other. 64 00:03:33,038 --> 00:03:35,737 A little feeble, a little addled. 65 00:03:35,867 --> 00:03:39,349 It occurred to me that when Mother had been out shopping, 66 00:03:39,480 --> 00:03:42,091 this is probably how she looked to others. 67 00:03:42,222 --> 00:03:47,096 My beloved mother, just another doddering old lady. 68 00:03:47,227 --> 00:03:51,013 The thought of this caused such a sudden rush of emotion 69 00:03:51,143 --> 00:03:54,016 that tears almost popped out of my eyes. 70 00:03:56,192 --> 00:04:00,588 - I don't know how he does this, but he... he somehow, you know, 71 00:04:00,718 --> 00:04:04,809 made a day into, you know, 35 hours instead of 24 hours. 72 00:04:04,940 --> 00:04:06,942 And not only has he become 73 00:04:07,072 --> 00:04:08,770 extremely prolific as a cartoonist, 74 00:04:08,900 --> 00:04:12,295 but aside from doing all this work he's known for, 75 00:04:12,426 --> 00:04:14,079 so well known for, 76 00:04:14,210 --> 00:04:16,299 I mean, he has all these other side projects, 77 00:04:16,430 --> 00:04:18,301 and none of us can figure it out, 78 00:04:18,432 --> 00:04:20,216 how he gets any of this done. 79 00:04:20,347 --> 00:04:22,740 - His progression over the years has been fantastic, 80 00:04:22,871 --> 00:04:25,047 and his dedication to his art form 81 00:04:25,177 --> 00:04:26,701 is amazing as well. 82 00:04:26,831 --> 00:04:30,835 I mean, he's the type of guy that can easily... 83 00:04:30,966 --> 00:04:33,273 have given up comics years ago, 84 00:04:33,403 --> 00:04:35,187 in favour of an illustration career, 85 00:04:35,318 --> 00:04:37,625 or a fine-art career, for that matter. 86 00:04:37,755 --> 00:04:39,888 - The generation of cartoonists I was working with 87 00:04:40,018 --> 00:04:42,412 were coming out of... were benefiting from the work 88 00:04:42,543 --> 00:04:44,284 the underground cartoonists had done before us. 89 00:04:44,414 --> 00:04:47,635 They'd opened the door to the idea that comics could be art. 90 00:04:47,765 --> 00:04:51,552 - My focus has always been on just doing the comics, 91 00:04:51,682 --> 00:04:53,510 panel-to-panel, 92 00:04:53,641 --> 00:04:56,948 whereas he... he would be doing paintings, 93 00:04:57,079 --> 00:05:00,822 and then he would want to create the frame for the painting 94 00:05:00,952 --> 00:05:02,519 and he would be doing... 95 00:05:02,650 --> 00:05:04,478 these little handcrafted boxes. 96 00:05:04,608 --> 00:05:07,611 And it would all be gorgeous. 97 00:05:07,742 --> 00:05:09,134 And I'd be, like, "Yeah, 98 00:05:09,265 --> 00:05:11,136 why don't I want to do this sort of stuff?" 99 00:05:11,267 --> 00:05:14,052 - Our melodrama tonight, ladies and gentlemen, 100 00:05:14,183 --> 00:05:17,447 is entitled, The Apology of Albert Batch. 101 00:05:17,578 --> 00:05:21,190 This evening, his life comes to its conclusion. 102 00:05:21,321 --> 00:05:23,148 As an artist, you should have work 103 00:05:23,279 --> 00:05:24,759 that isn't just to be published, 104 00:05:24,889 --> 00:05:27,370 and that's why I have all these little hobbies. 105 00:05:27,501 --> 00:05:29,154 Why I have my rubber-stamp diary, 106 00:05:29,285 --> 00:05:32,549 my sketchbook, the City of Dominion. 107 00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:35,378 It's very different than working on a comic page 108 00:05:35,509 --> 00:05:37,859 where you know the minute you start it 109 00:05:37,989 --> 00:05:39,730 that you're planning to publish it. 110 00:05:39,861 --> 00:05:41,384 That's a straightforward artistic goal 111 00:05:41,515 --> 00:05:43,604 of trying to communicate with another person. 112 00:05:43,734 --> 00:05:46,998 There's something really valuable about doing art 113 00:05:47,129 --> 00:05:49,653 that's just for yourself. 114 00:05:54,745 --> 00:05:57,661 I suspect many people have had a place like this 115 00:05:57,792 --> 00:05:59,402 in their childhood, 116 00:05:59,533 --> 00:06:02,405 a place where they encountered the natural world 117 00:06:02,536 --> 00:06:05,147 without the watchful eye of an adult, 118 00:06:05,277 --> 00:06:08,585 a place that remains unnaturally vivid in the imagination. 119 00:06:08,716 --> 00:06:11,371 The creek was within easy walking distance, 120 00:06:11,501 --> 00:06:15,375 just beyond a new subdivision, on the edge of town. 121 00:06:15,505 --> 00:06:19,944 A wild area of little streams in the shadow of the bush. 122 00:06:21,076 --> 00:06:23,818 Over a fence and into a grassy field, 123 00:06:23,948 --> 00:06:27,735 and in that field a pond, simply brimming with life. 124 00:06:28,953 --> 00:06:30,955 Dragonflies, 125 00:06:31,086 --> 00:06:32,827 painted turtles, 126 00:06:32,957 --> 00:06:34,872 water striders, 127 00:06:35,003 --> 00:06:36,526 whirligig beetles 128 00:06:36,657 --> 00:06:39,007 and, of course, frogs. 129 00:06:39,137 --> 00:06:40,965 [croaking] 130 00:06:41,096 --> 00:06:43,794 Frogs in all stages of their lives. 131 00:06:44,795 --> 00:06:46,667 Always so startling to see them 132 00:06:46,797 --> 00:06:49,496 on the threshold of being that final creature. 133 00:06:49,626 --> 00:06:51,541 [cawing] 134 00:06:56,807 --> 00:07:00,855 In the field, the milkweed, the cattail and wheatgrass, 135 00:07:00,985 --> 00:07:04,249 Queen Anne's lace, the skunk cabbage. 136 00:07:04,380 --> 00:07:07,992 And in the bush, the trillium. 137 00:07:10,386 --> 00:07:12,823 The trillium held a special fascination. 138 00:07:12,954 --> 00:07:17,001 Being the provincial flower, we were forbidden to pick it. 139 00:07:18,525 --> 00:07:21,571 Schoolyard lore warned that if a trillium was picked... 140 00:07:23,051 --> 00:07:24,792 ...it would bleed red blood. 141 00:07:26,097 --> 00:07:28,578 I promised never to touch one. 142 00:07:30,624 --> 00:07:34,279 I purchased an old postcard of Strathroy, Ontario, 143 00:07:34,410 --> 00:07:36,673 postmarked 1909. 144 00:07:36,804 --> 00:07:39,023 The old swimming hole. 145 00:07:41,069 --> 00:07:42,897 Was this the same spot? 146 00:07:43,027 --> 00:07:46,466 Had we inherited it, and its name? 147 00:07:46,596 --> 00:07:49,164 Was I just one of a long line of boys 148 00:07:49,294 --> 00:07:50,905 who played and swam there? 149 00:07:51,035 --> 00:07:52,820 [birds chirping] 150 00:07:58,390 --> 00:08:00,480 I remember how unpleasant the creek bottom felt, 151 00:08:00,610 --> 00:08:02,177 with just bare feet. 152 00:08:02,307 --> 00:08:04,179 The mud and the reeds, 153 00:08:04,309 --> 00:08:07,051 and the crayfish skittering between your legs. 154 00:08:07,182 --> 00:08:09,314 I remember how it felt to be there 155 00:08:09,445 --> 00:08:11,055 when you were in a group, 156 00:08:11,186 --> 00:08:14,058 and how different it felt to be there alone. 157 00:08:17,453 --> 00:08:20,500 When I returned as an adult in the 1990s, 158 00:08:20,630 --> 00:08:23,154 the creek was unchanged. 159 00:08:23,285 --> 00:08:25,461 It was eerily familiar. 160 00:08:27,898 --> 00:08:29,378 However, 161 00:08:29,509 --> 00:08:32,337 when last I visited, the bush had grown so thick, 162 00:08:32,468 --> 00:08:34,644 I couldn't even get near. 163 00:08:35,863 --> 00:08:38,256 Shit! 164 00:08:39,954 --> 00:08:42,217 One of the great things about being able to do a comic book 165 00:08:42,347 --> 00:08:44,654 anyway you wanted it is that you could tell the story 166 00:08:44,785 --> 00:08:47,135 as slow as you liked and as long as you liked. 167 00:08:47,265 --> 00:08:48,919 I wanted to capture some of the qualities 168 00:08:49,050 --> 00:08:50,965 you would have in a reverie, and for that, 169 00:08:51,095 --> 00:08:52,880 you really need to have a slow pace. 170 00:09:03,151 --> 00:09:06,328 Somewhere on the Prairies, at the edge of a little town, 171 00:09:06,458 --> 00:09:08,896 there is a closed-up drive-in theatre. 172 00:09:09,940 --> 00:09:11,899 Closed 10 years. 173 00:09:13,335 --> 00:09:14,989 Next to that drive-in, 174 00:09:15,119 --> 00:09:18,209 you'll find a rusted-out kiddie carousel 175 00:09:18,340 --> 00:09:21,517 that no child has touched since 1973. 176 00:09:23,127 --> 00:09:26,348 And on the shores of Lake Huron, there is a cottage. 177 00:09:26,478 --> 00:09:29,830 And in that cottage, there is a backroom. 178 00:09:29,960 --> 00:09:32,006 [door creaking] 179 00:09:32,136 --> 00:09:35,009 And in that backroom, there is an old cardboard box, 180 00:09:35,139 --> 00:09:39,796 filled with road maps, insurance folders, 181 00:09:39,927 --> 00:09:43,104 appliance pamphlets, mimeographed recipes, 182 00:09:43,234 --> 00:09:45,410 and black-and-white snapshots. 183 00:09:45,541 --> 00:09:49,719 A box that has remained unopened in 35 years. 184 00:09:49,850 --> 00:09:51,808 Further on, 185 00:09:51,939 --> 00:09:54,071 down a gravel road near Algonquin, 186 00:09:54,202 --> 00:09:56,378 stands the nailed-up information booth 187 00:09:56,508 --> 00:09:59,816 of an out-of-business tourist camp. 188 00:09:59,947 --> 00:10:02,384 Inside, under its main counter, 189 00:10:02,514 --> 00:10:05,430 is a dusty book, opened to page 126. 190 00:10:05,561 --> 00:10:10,044 This is where it has sat since the door closed for good, 191 00:10:10,174 --> 00:10:14,570 since it was absent-mindedly left behind, half read. 192 00:10:24,841 --> 00:10:28,410 In these places and others like them... 193 00:10:29,411 --> 00:10:31,282 ...time is standing still. 194 00:10:31,413 --> 00:10:33,415 [wind blowing] 195 00:10:40,248 --> 00:10:42,337 Nostalgia implies... 196 00:10:42,467 --> 00:10:45,645 a kind of Hallmark-card sentiment 197 00:10:45,775 --> 00:10:48,735 that there is a golden past that you're yearning for. 198 00:10:48,865 --> 00:10:51,259 And there's lots of yearning in my work, 199 00:10:51,389 --> 00:10:55,089 but I don't think of it as being that kind of nostalgia. 200 00:10:55,219 --> 00:10:57,482 In fact, I always think the stories I'm writing 201 00:10:57,613 --> 00:10:59,223 to flatter myself are more complicated 202 00:10:59,354 --> 00:11:01,182 about the past and that my characters... 203 00:11:01,312 --> 00:11:04,054 I'm not presenting people who lived in some golden past. 204 00:11:04,185 --> 00:11:07,492 I tend to like to write about people whose lives have been... 205 00:11:07,623 --> 00:11:09,103 there's some complexity 206 00:11:09,233 --> 00:11:12,410 about whether or not their life was a success or not. 207 00:11:13,890 --> 00:11:16,327 Albert Batch was a well-known Canadian cartoonist 208 00:11:16,458 --> 00:11:17,851 from the 20th century. 209 00:11:17,981 --> 00:11:20,462 Trout Haven was quite a gentle comic strip, 210 00:11:20,592 --> 00:11:22,507 a sort of bucolic, actually, 211 00:11:22,638 --> 00:11:25,641 all about the little events in a small village. 212 00:11:25,772 --> 00:11:28,688 He had 10 collections of his famous comic strip 213 00:11:28,818 --> 00:11:31,516 published during his lifetime. They were published 214 00:11:31,647 --> 00:11:33,823 by the Narwhal Press of Dominion, Ontario. 215 00:11:33,954 --> 00:11:36,652 They sold very well. 216 00:11:36,783 --> 00:11:39,046 [old-time music] 217 00:11:55,279 --> 00:11:58,326 "Graphic novel" - what a horrible term. 218 00:11:58,456 --> 00:12:01,721 A misshapen thing stitched together from two words, 219 00:12:01,851 --> 00:12:04,332 which I must assume are considered 220 00:12:04,462 --> 00:12:07,814 more respectable-sounding than comic and book combined. 221 00:12:07,944 --> 00:12:09,903 People recognize the phrase "graphic novel," 222 00:12:10,033 --> 00:12:12,601 and I now find myself saying it in interviews, 223 00:12:12,732 --> 00:12:16,170 simply because it is easier to use than to try and institute 224 00:12:16,300 --> 00:12:18,346 some new name of my own invention. 225 00:12:18,476 --> 00:12:19,956 That's hard work, 226 00:12:20,087 --> 00:12:22,393 to rename something and make it stick. 227 00:12:22,524 --> 00:12:24,395 I did that once, years ago, 228 00:12:24,526 --> 00:12:27,572 when I changed my name from Gregory Gallant to Seth. 229 00:12:27,703 --> 00:12:29,400 That was a big chore. 230 00:12:29,531 --> 00:12:33,404 First, introducing the new name and then enforcing its use. 231 00:12:33,535 --> 00:12:34,928 Correcting friends or family 232 00:12:35,058 --> 00:12:37,800 every time they used the old name. 233 00:12:37,931 --> 00:12:39,802 Reinforcing it constantly, 234 00:12:39,933 --> 00:12:42,457 until it became second nature for everyone. 235 00:12:42,587 --> 00:12:44,807 That's a young man's game. 236 00:12:44,938 --> 00:12:47,897 I don't have the stomach for that sort 237 00:12:48,028 --> 00:12:50,160 of highly disciplined assholism any longer. 238 00:12:50,291 --> 00:12:51,901 [laughter] 239 00:12:52,032 --> 00:12:54,686 And that was kind of the process of being involved 240 00:12:54,817 --> 00:12:56,906 in the punk scene in the early '80s 241 00:12:57,037 --> 00:12:58,952 and looking for a pretentious, scary name, 242 00:12:59,082 --> 00:13:00,910 and so that's why I picked Seth. 243 00:13:01,041 --> 00:13:04,000 I had a last name then, too, which I'll never tell. 244 00:13:04,131 --> 00:13:05,915 [man]: Aw... - Oh, no. 245 00:13:06,046 --> 00:13:09,049 I'd show you my tattoo before I'd tell you that. 246 00:13:09,179 --> 00:13:11,878 [classical music] [bell dinging] 247 00:13:24,151 --> 00:13:26,327 They're sleeping in their usual spots. 248 00:13:26,457 --> 00:13:28,372 - That's good. - Beautiful. 249 00:13:30,592 --> 00:13:32,637 Thank you, darlin'. - No problem. 250 00:13:32,768 --> 00:13:35,249 You always look so good when you're done. 251 00:13:35,379 --> 00:13:36,772 - Thank you. 252 00:13:43,387 --> 00:13:45,868 I like routine. 253 00:13:45,999 --> 00:13:47,652 And... 254 00:13:47,783 --> 00:13:50,351 my days are pretty structured. 255 00:13:50,481 --> 00:13:55,008 I get up early in the morning, 'cause my wife Tanya's a barber. 256 00:13:55,138 --> 00:13:56,879 And when she goes off to work, 257 00:13:57,010 --> 00:13:58,750 I generally come down to the studio. 258 00:13:58,881 --> 00:14:01,623 I begin with some work I've left from the night before. 259 00:14:01,753 --> 00:14:03,059 The rest of the morning, 260 00:14:03,190 --> 00:14:05,801 I like to work on one of my private projects. 261 00:14:05,932 --> 00:14:08,456 Time to eat. Time to read. 262 00:14:08,586 --> 00:14:11,154 If there's any commercial work to be done at that point, 263 00:14:11,285 --> 00:14:12,939 any specific jobs that have a deadline, 264 00:14:13,069 --> 00:14:15,550 usually I work on that in the afternoon. 265 00:14:15,680 --> 00:14:19,554 Dealing with the daily problems of business, checking the email, 266 00:14:19,684 --> 00:14:21,512 making phone calls. Make dinner. 267 00:14:21,643 --> 00:14:23,645 Tanya arrives home, we have dinner, 268 00:14:23,775 --> 00:14:27,127 spend some time together, have a glass of wine, relax. 269 00:14:27,257 --> 00:14:29,564 Being a 50-year-old man, I go and take a nap. 270 00:14:29,694 --> 00:14:32,654 The evening: best time for working on the comics, I find. 271 00:14:32,784 --> 00:14:34,874 I'll work till about 11:00 at night. 272 00:14:35,004 --> 00:14:38,529 If it's a little busier, I might work till 11:30 or 12. 273 00:14:38,660 --> 00:14:41,054 And then I come upstairs and Tanya and I... 274 00:14:41,184 --> 00:14:42,707 will usually sit down, 275 00:14:42,838 --> 00:14:44,709 I'll drink a couple of glasses of wine, 276 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:46,929 we'll watch a movie; and then it's reading time, 277 00:14:47,060 --> 00:14:50,193 and then to bed by 1:00. Actually, 1:30. Always 1:30. 278 00:14:50,324 --> 00:14:52,065 Next day, exactly the same thing. 279 00:14:54,067 --> 00:14:56,939 I'm a pretty extroverted person, but... and I think probably 280 00:14:57,070 --> 00:14:58,462 you're more naturally introverted 281 00:14:58,593 --> 00:15:00,943 and yet you've got the career with people 282 00:15:01,074 --> 00:15:03,424 and I've got the career where I'm alone. 283 00:15:03,554 --> 00:15:05,905 But it works good for us that way. 284 00:15:06,035 --> 00:15:09,125 - You have that interior world that you let me peek into, 285 00:15:09,256 --> 00:15:11,823 once in a while, and I find that fascinating. 286 00:15:11,954 --> 00:15:13,825 That's why I like to leave him alone. 287 00:15:13,956 --> 00:15:16,567 - There's some Protestant work ethic in the back of my brain 288 00:15:16,698 --> 00:15:18,613 that makes me feel good when I work. 289 00:15:18,743 --> 00:15:21,529 Like if I have a day where I get five things done - 290 00:15:21,659 --> 00:15:23,487 work in my sketchbook, 291 00:15:23,618 --> 00:15:25,272 do my diary, 292 00:15:25,402 --> 00:15:27,535 get part of some commercial job, 293 00:15:27,665 --> 00:15:30,581 work on my comic and one of my little buildings - 294 00:15:30,712 --> 00:15:31,931 a day like that, 295 00:15:32,061 --> 00:15:33,933 there is such a good feeling to that. 296 00:15:34,063 --> 00:15:36,370 You want that feeling when you go to bed 297 00:15:36,500 --> 00:15:38,285 that you've accomplished something. 298 00:15:40,330 --> 00:15:42,724 You know, when I wanted to be a cartoonist in my twenties, 299 00:15:42,854 --> 00:15:44,421 I thought it would be cool. 300 00:15:44,552 --> 00:15:47,468 What I wasn't thinking was crafting a life for myself 301 00:15:47,598 --> 00:15:51,428 where I'd spend all my time alone as a 50-year-old man 302 00:15:51,559 --> 00:15:54,301 in the basement, but that's where it ended up, 303 00:15:54,431 --> 00:15:56,129 and that is where I'm happiest. 304 00:15:56,259 --> 00:15:58,740 I like that feeling of being by myself most of the time, 305 00:15:58,870 --> 00:16:02,309 but the comfortable feeling of being by myself, 306 00:16:02,439 --> 00:16:05,051 where loneliness is removed by Tanya. 307 00:16:05,181 --> 00:16:06,617 [laughter] 308 00:16:06,748 --> 00:16:09,316 Hearing Tanya laughing upstairs when I'm working. 309 00:16:11,840 --> 00:16:13,189 [laughter] 310 00:16:13,320 --> 00:16:15,931 Not knowing what she's laughing about. 311 00:16:18,281 --> 00:16:21,197 I know she wouldn't be insulted, because we've talked about it, 312 00:16:21,328 --> 00:16:24,287 but it's the same feeling I had with my own mother, 313 00:16:24,418 --> 00:16:27,160 when I was in my room, working away, 314 00:16:27,290 --> 00:16:28,988 hearing her in the other part of the house. 315 00:16:29,118 --> 00:16:32,382 This supplied some need to me that removed loneliness. 316 00:16:32,513 --> 00:16:35,559 This is a book I put together a few years ago. 317 00:16:35,690 --> 00:16:39,085 It's titled The History of the Cosmic Comics Company, 318 00:16:39,215 --> 00:16:42,218 which is kind of a deliberately grand title 319 00:16:42,349 --> 00:16:44,438 for what it really is just a collection 320 00:16:44,568 --> 00:16:48,007 of what survives of the strips I drew when I was a child. 321 00:16:48,137 --> 00:16:50,139 [dramatic music] 322 00:16:52,141 --> 00:16:55,231 One of the great powers of comics when you're a child 323 00:16:55,362 --> 00:16:58,626 is that there is a range of intense emotions 324 00:16:58,756 --> 00:17:00,889 you can have from reading these, 325 00:17:01,020 --> 00:17:03,848 from the genuine excitement of genre pulp adventure - 326 00:17:03,979 --> 00:17:06,068 people fighting each other, of course - 327 00:17:06,199 --> 00:17:08,114 but also these feelings 328 00:17:08,244 --> 00:17:10,768 of coming to deeper understanding of life. 329 00:17:10,899 --> 00:17:12,509 When you see like Superman facing death, 330 00:17:12,640 --> 00:17:14,294 and you're a little kid, 331 00:17:14,424 --> 00:17:17,688 it's like a kind of childish profundity that you relate to. 332 00:17:17,819 --> 00:17:21,344 And so when I made up the Kao-Kuk Story, 333 00:17:21,475 --> 00:17:24,391 I wanted it to have that same quality. 334 00:17:27,002 --> 00:17:31,050 I drew many, many hundreds of pages of comic books, 335 00:17:31,180 --> 00:17:32,877 maybe 1,000 pages of comic books, 336 00:17:33,008 --> 00:17:36,316 from when I was a little kid until I went to art school. 337 00:17:36,446 --> 00:17:39,058 And I never showed them. Maybe once or twice, 338 00:17:39,188 --> 00:17:40,929 showed something to some other kids. 339 00:17:41,060 --> 00:17:43,671 It was a private little world, and Mother, really, 340 00:17:43,801 --> 00:17:46,152 was the main person I showed anything to. 341 00:17:46,282 --> 00:17:48,371 And her support was really very important. 342 00:17:54,421 --> 00:17:55,944 Coming home from kindergarten, 343 00:17:56,075 --> 00:17:59,295 I stand for a moment in the driveway. 344 00:17:59,426 --> 00:18:03,604 I wet my cheeks with spit and dash in the house, 345 00:18:03,734 --> 00:18:06,128 pretending to cry. Mom!!! 346 00:18:06,259 --> 00:18:09,827 An act contrived purely to get affection from mother. 347 00:18:09,958 --> 00:18:12,743 Mom! They were mean to me. [sniffling] 348 00:18:12,874 --> 00:18:15,790 Was I that starved for love? 349 00:18:15,920 --> 00:18:17,879 - Oh, you poor thing. 350 00:18:18,009 --> 00:18:19,533 - I guess I was. 351 00:18:19,663 --> 00:18:21,752 - Let's get you a cup of tea. 352 00:18:21,883 --> 00:18:23,363 - Looking back, 353 00:18:23,493 --> 00:18:26,366 I can't recall ever being held as a child. 354 00:18:26,496 --> 00:18:28,368 Thanks, Mom! 355 00:18:28,498 --> 00:18:30,718 And foolishly, it was around this time 356 00:18:30,848 --> 00:18:32,763 when I stopped kissing Mother goodnight. 357 00:18:32,894 --> 00:18:34,243 Night-night. 358 00:18:35,940 --> 00:18:37,768 I had decided I was a big boy. 359 00:18:37,899 --> 00:18:40,902 And a good-night kiss was for babies. 360 00:18:43,557 --> 00:18:47,387 I didn't regret my decision immediately, but in time, 361 00:18:47,517 --> 00:18:50,607 I saw it as an irreversible mistake. 362 00:18:50,738 --> 00:18:54,220 I longed to kiss her again, but couldn't go back on it. 363 00:18:54,350 --> 00:18:55,917 [mother humming] 364 00:18:56,047 --> 00:18:57,919 Mom, I'm bored. 365 00:18:58,049 --> 00:19:00,095 - Go do your drawings. 366 00:19:01,270 --> 00:19:04,317 - I never stopped regretting it. 367 00:19:05,318 --> 00:19:07,015 Right into my teens, 368 00:19:07,146 --> 00:19:09,931 I would daily resolve to kiss her. 369 00:19:10,061 --> 00:19:12,934 Tomorrow... for sure. 370 00:19:15,066 --> 00:19:16,590 But I never did. 371 00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:20,159 In fact, I didn't kiss her again until I was a grown man. 372 00:19:20,289 --> 00:19:22,509 I'm heading home now, Mother. 373 00:19:30,778 --> 00:19:32,606 I always think of memory as being... 374 00:19:32,736 --> 00:19:34,912 it's like a blueprint of a sensation, somehow, 375 00:19:35,043 --> 00:19:36,653 that you have in your brain. 376 00:19:36,784 --> 00:19:38,612 And this blueprint has to be studied 377 00:19:38,742 --> 00:19:40,962 when you go back to look at it. 378 00:19:41,092 --> 00:19:42,833 And much like composing a panel, 379 00:19:42,964 --> 00:19:45,967 it's like you're in the centre of that blueprint, the memory, 380 00:19:46,097 --> 00:19:48,187 and you go, "Here I am, I'm 8 years old, 381 00:19:48,317 --> 00:19:50,014 I'm in the backyard." 382 00:19:50,145 --> 00:19:52,452 The brick of the house is over here. 383 00:19:52,582 --> 00:19:55,585 Or you start to build the memory in your brain, 384 00:19:55,716 --> 00:19:58,675 much the way you might move around little toy figures, 385 00:19:58,806 --> 00:20:00,242 or something, in a diorama. 386 00:20:04,768 --> 00:20:06,205 [birdsong] 387 00:20:06,335 --> 00:20:08,032 For a time, 388 00:20:08,163 --> 00:20:11,210 we lived in a small house on Milner Street. 389 00:20:11,340 --> 00:20:13,690 In my tiny bedroom, on top of a dresser, 390 00:20:13,821 --> 00:20:15,692 I kept my stuffed animals. 391 00:20:15,823 --> 00:20:17,781 My best-loved toys. 392 00:20:19,087 --> 00:20:22,046 A bland assortment of cheap stuffed animals, 393 00:20:22,177 --> 00:20:24,135 haphazardly acquired. 394 00:20:24,266 --> 00:20:27,182 At least two of them carnival prizes. 395 00:20:29,097 --> 00:20:32,405 Their faces remembered better than any childhood friend, 396 00:20:32,535 --> 00:20:35,799 recalled clearer than any teacher from that time. 397 00:20:38,193 --> 00:20:41,805 Several years later, I had a large dresser. 398 00:20:41,936 --> 00:20:45,722 I kept one drawer for models which had fallen from favour. 399 00:20:45,853 --> 00:20:48,334 They'd be demoted from shelf to drawer. 400 00:20:48,464 --> 00:20:51,075 Each time I opened or closed the drawer, 401 00:20:51,206 --> 00:20:53,077 something would break. 402 00:20:53,208 --> 00:20:54,992 The damage only got worse 403 00:20:55,123 --> 00:20:58,213 as I crammed more and more models in there. 404 00:20:58,344 --> 00:21:00,824 Eventually, the drawer was filled 405 00:21:00,955 --> 00:21:03,436 only with small, shattered pieces. 406 00:21:10,312 --> 00:21:12,923 My father grew up in the Depression, 407 00:21:13,054 --> 00:21:14,403 in Prince-Edward Island, 408 00:21:14,534 --> 00:21:17,101 and he'd always told me the stories, 409 00:21:17,232 --> 00:21:20,061 when I was a child, about his childhood. 410 00:21:20,191 --> 00:21:22,063 [indistinct chatter] 411 00:21:23,282 --> 00:21:25,501 I thought of them as good stories, 412 00:21:25,632 --> 00:21:28,330 stories I liked to listen to, even though they were stories 413 00:21:28,461 --> 00:21:30,941 about being poor and having to steal food, 414 00:21:31,072 --> 00:21:32,291 and parental neglect. 415 00:21:32,421 --> 00:21:35,859 I wanted to record them somehow. 416 00:21:35,990 --> 00:21:38,427 So I just asked him to write them down. 417 00:21:40,124 --> 00:21:42,475 Sometimes it's funny, 418 00:21:42,605 --> 00:21:45,608 I'll look back at photographs of places we went together 419 00:21:45,739 --> 00:21:47,306 where I would snap pictures. 420 00:21:47,436 --> 00:21:51,135 They're the same kind of places I would go to now. 421 00:21:51,266 --> 00:21:55,096 And these things are still imprinted in my brain somehow. 422 00:22:05,106 --> 00:22:08,152 In Grade 5, we moved to Elmwood Street, 423 00:22:08,283 --> 00:22:11,417 though we lived there only about a year. 424 00:22:11,547 --> 00:22:13,157 [distorted voice] [dishes breaking] 425 00:22:13,288 --> 00:22:16,378 The scene of so many terrible fights between my parents. 426 00:22:16,509 --> 00:22:20,948 They were always fighting, or I should say he was. 427 00:22:21,078 --> 00:22:25,605 Mother and I were terrorized by my father's temper. 428 00:22:27,171 --> 00:22:30,174 It's strange how horrible the sound of an adult's anger 429 00:22:30,305 --> 00:22:32,046 is to a child. 430 00:22:32,176 --> 00:22:34,527 I often tried to block it out. 431 00:22:34,657 --> 00:22:36,529 At night, if he were shouting, 432 00:22:36,659 --> 00:22:38,661 I would play my transistor radio. 433 00:22:38,792 --> 00:22:41,185 ['60s music] An earphone in one ear, 434 00:22:41,316 --> 00:22:43,492 and a finger in the other. 435 00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:47,583 It never worked. 436 00:22:47,714 --> 00:22:51,326 That sort of thing just can't be ignored. 437 00:22:57,158 --> 00:22:58,812 I think I was brought up 438 00:22:58,942 --> 00:23:01,771 with that feeling of fear of his temper, 439 00:23:01,902 --> 00:23:04,078 which was the temper of a frustrated person, 440 00:23:04,208 --> 00:23:06,385 who felt they'd missed out on certain opportunities. 441 00:23:06,515 --> 00:23:10,476 He never felt he got to do what he wanted to do in life. 442 00:23:10,606 --> 00:23:12,608 I think he was always kind of hoping 443 00:23:12,739 --> 00:23:15,045 something would happen. I don't know what it was. 444 00:23:15,176 --> 00:23:16,656 - When I think of Seth, 445 00:23:16,786 --> 00:23:19,920 sometimes I think of Marcel Proust. 446 00:23:20,050 --> 00:23:22,139 A dozen memories of childhood, 447 00:23:22,270 --> 00:23:24,707 and you go over them in your mind so much, 448 00:23:24,838 --> 00:23:26,796 covet them so much, that you polish them. 449 00:23:26,927 --> 00:23:28,319 - Well, memory is funny, too. 450 00:23:28,450 --> 00:23:30,147 Who knows why you remember anything? 451 00:23:30,278 --> 00:23:33,716 Things take on significance as times goes on. 452 00:23:33,847 --> 00:23:37,677 I sometimes wonder, like, how much control you even have 453 00:23:37,807 --> 00:23:41,028 over what you pick to remember as significant. 454 00:23:49,776 --> 00:23:53,214 One bright day, I went up to the attic. 455 00:23:54,781 --> 00:23:58,306 I gathered up my beloved stuffed toys from Milner Street, 456 00:23:58,437 --> 00:24:02,005 I carried them out into the backyard 457 00:24:02,136 --> 00:24:05,400 and carefully hung them, one by one, from a tree. 458 00:24:10,187 --> 00:24:12,494 I went back inside 459 00:24:12,625 --> 00:24:14,583 and got my pellet gun. 460 00:24:19,022 --> 00:24:21,938 I laid down, I carefully took aim, 461 00:24:22,069 --> 00:24:24,593 and shot them all to pieces. 462 00:24:28,815 --> 00:24:31,382 I felt nothing special in doing it. 463 00:24:31,513 --> 00:24:36,039 It wasn't a meaningful act, just something to pass the time. 464 00:24:36,170 --> 00:24:39,042 But looking back, 465 00:24:39,173 --> 00:24:42,176 I can think of no more fitting event 466 00:24:42,306 --> 00:24:44,613 to signify the end of childhood. 467 00:24:44,744 --> 00:24:46,528 I was not a happy teenager, 468 00:24:46,659 --> 00:24:50,532 and when I came from the little town to the big city, 469 00:24:50,663 --> 00:24:53,579 this was my opportunity to become a new person. 470 00:24:53,709 --> 00:24:56,277 It took me about a year and a half maybe 471 00:24:56,407 --> 00:24:58,453 to reach the point where Seth was born. 472 00:24:58,584 --> 00:25:00,890 If you do anything long enough, it becomes real. 473 00:25:01,021 --> 00:25:03,502 I mean, good advice is: Be the person you want to be, 474 00:25:03,632 --> 00:25:05,895 because you'll start out faking, 475 00:25:06,026 --> 00:25:08,855 but eventually you'll be that person. 476 00:25:14,469 --> 00:25:17,951 On Tuesday night, I went for a late-night stroll. 477 00:25:18,081 --> 00:25:21,345 It was a beautiful night. A bit of a chill in the air. 478 00:25:21,476 --> 00:25:24,174 Not really cold, though. 479 00:25:24,305 --> 00:25:27,482 Still, winter was coming. 480 00:25:33,096 --> 00:25:35,359 Believe it or not, in this small town, 481 00:25:35,490 --> 00:25:38,537 I could actually see the stars. 482 00:25:40,539 --> 00:25:43,890 I walked down London Street, lost in thought. 483 00:25:45,369 --> 00:25:47,763 My mind was fixated on a girl 484 00:25:47,894 --> 00:25:50,374 I was disastrously pursuing in another city. 485 00:25:50,505 --> 00:25:52,420 [bird cawing] 486 00:25:55,510 --> 00:25:58,992 I stopped for a moment, and as I stood there, 487 00:25:59,122 --> 00:26:01,560 I heard an almost imperceptible, tinny sound. 488 00:26:01,690 --> 00:26:04,214 [tinny sound] It was music. 489 00:26:04,345 --> 00:26:06,782 I recognized the song. 490 00:26:06,913 --> 00:26:09,089 I quickly realized that it was coming 491 00:26:09,219 --> 00:26:11,395 from a garbage bag on the curb. 492 00:26:11,526 --> 00:26:13,397 Someone had obviously thrown out 493 00:26:13,528 --> 00:26:16,531 one of these cards with a computer chip in it. 494 00:26:20,753 --> 00:26:23,233 Alone, in the darkness, 495 00:26:23,364 --> 00:26:25,888 this seemed deeply funny. 496 00:26:26,019 --> 00:26:28,151 And profoundly sad. 497 00:26:31,459 --> 00:26:34,549 - His personal approach to his work, 498 00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,030 and taking everything he does so seriously, 499 00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,162 although with a sense of humour, 500 00:26:39,293 --> 00:26:42,165 it definitely made me think of my work in a different way. 501 00:26:44,298 --> 00:26:46,953 - I was a big fan of Chester's comic books... 502 00:26:47,083 --> 00:26:48,781 when I was living in Montreal. 503 00:26:48,911 --> 00:26:50,652 Seth was always with Chester. 504 00:26:50,783 --> 00:26:54,090 The minute the three of us started hanging around, 505 00:26:54,221 --> 00:26:55,483 the friendship worked, 506 00:26:55,614 --> 00:26:57,398 and we all spoke the same language. 507 00:26:57,528 --> 00:26:59,182 - Take it, Chet. - That's mine? 508 00:26:59,313 --> 00:27:01,228 - Yes. - Did you play the Jack? 509 00:27:01,358 --> 00:27:03,404 - I played the Jack. [indistinct chatter] 510 00:27:03,534 --> 00:27:05,798 - You're irritated by qualities you see in me 511 00:27:05,928 --> 00:27:07,930 that are actually of yourself or something. 512 00:27:08,061 --> 00:27:09,497 - I don't buy that theory. 513 00:27:09,628 --> 00:27:11,630 - Seth, Chester Brown and Joe Matt 514 00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:13,370 were called The Toronto Three. 515 00:27:13,501 --> 00:27:15,111 They were just always together. 516 00:27:15,242 --> 00:27:16,460 They always got together, 517 00:27:16,591 --> 00:27:19,246 and at one point or another, 518 00:27:19,376 --> 00:27:20,900 they all did autobiographical comics. 519 00:27:21,030 --> 00:27:23,250 So naturally they would draw their friends, 520 00:27:23,380 --> 00:27:25,905 and their friends happened to be each other. 521 00:27:26,035 --> 00:27:28,559 - I don't know if you read this, but you'll see, 522 00:27:28,690 --> 00:27:30,605 it's like the two of them against me. 523 00:27:30,736 --> 00:27:32,476 [laughter] - This is true. This is true. 524 00:27:32,607 --> 00:27:34,261 I'm not denying that. 525 00:27:34,391 --> 00:27:37,046 - Seth probably does feel superior to a lot of people. 526 00:27:37,177 --> 00:27:39,875 But he also, you know, has a built-in humility. 527 00:27:40,006 --> 00:27:42,835 And I think artists in general are probably like this. 528 00:27:42,965 --> 00:27:46,490 To make you commit something to paper or film, 529 00:27:46,621 --> 00:27:49,580 you've gotta have that arrogance that whatever you're gonna say 530 00:27:49,711 --> 00:27:52,453 is worth taking up people's time to be said. 531 00:27:52,583 --> 00:27:55,499 - Writing about yourself is a double-edged sword. 532 00:27:55,630 --> 00:27:58,546 Yes, you could get at the real things, 533 00:27:58,677 --> 00:28:00,113 but you became overly aware 534 00:28:00,243 --> 00:28:02,681 of how you were choosing to portray yourself. 535 00:28:02,811 --> 00:28:06,206 And that's why in Good Life, though I'm the main character, 536 00:28:06,336 --> 00:28:10,210 it was fiction, and I felt free to no longer worry about it. 537 00:28:10,340 --> 00:28:15,781 - Seth has always liked mixing fiction and fact together. 538 00:28:15,911 --> 00:28:18,871 Everybody who works with fiction does that. 539 00:28:19,001 --> 00:28:21,743 But Seth really wants to blur the lines between the two. 540 00:28:21,874 --> 00:28:25,051 He does want us to question what's real and what isn't. 541 00:28:25,181 --> 00:28:28,228 - That interior experience is so hard to get outside 542 00:28:28,358 --> 00:28:30,665 of the shell of the human body. 543 00:28:30,796 --> 00:28:33,712 That's where the comics are like an important way 544 00:28:33,842 --> 00:28:35,583 to try to communicate that. 545 00:28:35,714 --> 00:28:37,585 [music] Fourteen hours ago, 546 00:28:37,716 --> 00:28:41,328 Albert Batch put down his pencil and took to his bed. 547 00:28:41,458 --> 00:28:42,764 Here he has remained, 548 00:28:42,895 --> 00:28:45,027 drifting in and out of consciousness. 549 00:28:45,158 --> 00:28:48,161 He recalls the faces of the people he's known. 550 00:28:48,291 --> 00:28:50,511 He thinks of the places he's seen. 551 00:28:50,641 --> 00:28:52,643 What did any of it mean? 552 00:28:54,167 --> 00:28:57,387 In this moment, he realizes this is what his work 553 00:28:57,518 --> 00:28:59,041 should have been about. 554 00:28:59,172 --> 00:29:01,087 The idea is so vivid 555 00:29:01,217 --> 00:29:05,482 that Albert almost rises up to go back to the drawing table. 556 00:29:05,613 --> 00:29:07,093 But he doesn't. 557 00:29:10,270 --> 00:29:12,011 We hear the death rattle. 558 00:29:23,979 --> 00:29:26,373 Perhaps it had been a mistake moving to a town 559 00:29:26,503 --> 00:29:28,244 where I didn't know a single soul. 560 00:29:28,375 --> 00:29:29,768 By December, though, 561 00:29:29,898 --> 00:29:32,205 I had become pretty used to spending 562 00:29:32,335 --> 00:29:35,034 almost every waking moment alone in my studio. 563 00:29:35,164 --> 00:29:37,950 When that became unbearable, I'd read a book, 564 00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:41,257 or listen to a record. 565 00:29:41,388 --> 00:29:43,869 No one ever spoke to me. 566 00:29:43,999 --> 00:29:47,568 And as the months passed, I began to imagine 567 00:29:47,698 --> 00:29:50,571 that I was living an invisible life. 568 00:29:50,701 --> 00:29:52,225 Often I'd go for a walk, 569 00:29:52,355 --> 00:29:55,271 and then eat lunch at a nearby restaurant. 570 00:29:55,402 --> 00:29:57,143 Egg salad, please. 571 00:29:58,971 --> 00:30:01,756 At times, it seemed grim. 572 00:30:05,412 --> 00:30:09,764 On the way to that restaurant, there was a large vacant lot 573 00:30:09,895 --> 00:30:13,028 surrounded, for some odd reason, with big concrete blocks. 574 00:30:13,159 --> 00:30:15,901 In my silence, this empty space 575 00:30:16,031 --> 00:30:19,295 began to take on a solemn quality, 576 00:30:19,426 --> 00:30:21,776 a sort of charged presence. 577 00:30:25,736 --> 00:30:27,477 On one sad, lonely morning, 578 00:30:27,608 --> 00:30:31,481 I found myself speaking aloud as I walked through it. 579 00:30:31,612 --> 00:30:33,483 Good God... 580 00:30:33,614 --> 00:30:35,746 give me some happiness. 581 00:30:37,792 --> 00:30:40,664 The perfect spot for an atheist prayer. 582 00:30:40,795 --> 00:30:43,667 Knowing full well that no supreme being 583 00:30:43,798 --> 00:30:46,714 was listening or looking out for me. 584 00:30:46,845 --> 00:30:50,979 Still, a few weeks later, when I first saw her sweet face, 585 00:30:51,110 --> 00:30:52,894 I couldn't help but wonder. 586 00:30:53,025 --> 00:30:54,635 - Hi. 587 00:30:56,028 --> 00:30:58,073 Well, um, we met in art class. 588 00:30:58,204 --> 00:31:01,468 Um... but I don't draw and I don't teach. 589 00:31:01,598 --> 00:31:03,383 I'm a model. 590 00:31:03,513 --> 00:31:05,559 - I didn't come up and talk to you. 591 00:31:05,689 --> 00:31:08,083 As one of the artists, you don't start talking 592 00:31:08,214 --> 00:31:10,520 to the nude model in a life-drawing class; 593 00:31:10,651 --> 00:31:12,131 that's just inappropriate. 594 00:31:12,261 --> 00:31:14,263 So you came up and talked to me, which was nice. 595 00:31:14,394 --> 00:31:17,701 And within a couple of months, we were married. 596 00:31:17,832 --> 00:31:21,923 So it was really, you know, a surprising turn of events. 597 00:31:22,054 --> 00:31:25,361 - Uh, we're both into persona building. 598 00:31:25,492 --> 00:31:30,192 That's part of the appeal of design and fashion and art. 599 00:31:30,323 --> 00:31:33,326 He's always got a dream world, and that's who he is. 600 00:31:33,456 --> 00:31:36,851 - My interest in the aesthetics in the past 601 00:31:36,982 --> 00:31:40,811 is clearly predicated on the fact 602 00:31:40,942 --> 00:31:43,249 that I live here in this world as it is now. 603 00:31:43,379 --> 00:31:47,427 - The marquee, yeah, I love it. It's so beautiful. 604 00:31:47,557 --> 00:31:50,604 It's certainly a Guelph landmark. 605 00:31:50,734 --> 00:31:53,389 - Even the house, I'm not trying to transform that house 606 00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:55,957 back into, like, 1920. It's more of an art project 607 00:31:56,088 --> 00:31:59,047 than it is like a historical project. 608 00:31:59,178 --> 00:32:03,051 I'm just trying to make it the world I wanna live in. 609 00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:06,707 The fact that is says "Nothing Lasts" on that, 610 00:32:06,837 --> 00:32:10,015 is what they used to call, I believe, a memento mori, 611 00:32:10,145 --> 00:32:12,713 to remind everyone that kings and paupers, 612 00:32:12,843 --> 00:32:14,584 we're all gonna die. 613 00:32:14,715 --> 00:32:17,761 The Middle Ages were great for bringing you down. 614 00:32:17,892 --> 00:32:19,720 But nothing does last; 615 00:32:19,850 --> 00:32:21,374 everything is transient. 616 00:32:21,504 --> 00:32:24,072 And even though I say that, we still, 617 00:32:24,203 --> 00:32:26,466 like all romantic couples, you still say, 618 00:32:26,596 --> 00:32:29,643 "I hope I see you in the afterlife." 619 00:32:29,773 --> 00:32:31,166 There's still always that, like, 620 00:32:31,297 --> 00:32:33,255 somewhere in the back of the mind, 621 00:32:33,386 --> 00:32:35,779 that you don't really want anything to end. 622 00:32:35,910 --> 00:32:38,608 [solemn music] 623 00:32:38,739 --> 00:32:41,481 A year or so after Albert's death, 624 00:32:41,611 --> 00:32:43,570 an oddball fan approached psychics 625 00:32:43,700 --> 00:32:46,486 to see if they could communicate with the cartoonist. 626 00:32:46,616 --> 00:32:48,531 Apparently Albert had found his way 627 00:32:48,662 --> 00:32:50,881 to some otherworldly cartoonist Valhalla. 628 00:32:51,012 --> 00:32:53,580 George Harriman was there, Charles Schultz, 629 00:32:53,710 --> 00:32:55,495 Doug Wright, 630 00:32:55,625 --> 00:32:57,149 and Peter Arnold. 631 00:32:57,279 --> 00:32:59,760 Robert Crumb, as well. 632 00:32:59,890 --> 00:33:01,414 This cast some doubt 633 00:33:01,544 --> 00:33:03,590 on the validity of Madame Flotsky's vision, 634 00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,462 since Crumb is still very much alive at present. 635 00:33:08,943 --> 00:33:12,033 You can certainly have all the self-doubts in the world, 636 00:33:12,164 --> 00:33:15,602 but that's why an artist has to make a leap of faith. 637 00:33:15,732 --> 00:33:17,952 And so when you have that book in your hands, it says: 638 00:33:18,083 --> 00:33:22,304 "This is what my life is about," then my life has meaning. 639 00:33:22,435 --> 00:33:26,004 And since I do feel that, I wanted to pass that experience 640 00:33:26,134 --> 00:33:28,571 onto my father. I wanted to be able 641 00:33:28,702 --> 00:33:30,660 for him to have a book of his life, 642 00:33:30,791 --> 00:33:33,098 that he could hold it in his hands and say: 643 00:33:33,228 --> 00:33:36,275 "I wasn't just here ephemerally. I've left a record behind." 644 00:33:36,405 --> 00:33:40,627 - "How dare you disturb my comfort? 645 00:33:40,757 --> 00:33:43,108 State your business and get out. I told him my problem. 646 00:33:43,238 --> 00:33:45,414 He told me he had no money for the poor, 647 00:33:45,545 --> 00:33:48,591 and opened the door for me to leave." 648 00:33:48,722 --> 00:33:52,987 As soon as you got an apple from the old lady next door, 649 00:33:53,118 --> 00:33:56,686 you had a bunch of friends, "Oh, Johnny, Johnny!" Yes? 650 00:33:56,817 --> 00:33:58,340 "Can I have the core?" 651 00:33:59,646 --> 00:34:02,866 "Well, okay, wait till I get to it, then." 652 00:34:02,997 --> 00:34:05,347 Finally another guy: "Can I have the seeds?" 653 00:34:05,478 --> 00:34:08,742 "The seeds are no good to eat." "I like 'em." 654 00:34:08,872 --> 00:34:11,310 [laughter] That's how bad it was. 655 00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:13,703 - When the book came out and I sent it to him, 656 00:34:13,834 --> 00:34:15,662 I didn't really get much of a response initially. 657 00:34:15,792 --> 00:34:17,098 I remember thinking: 658 00:34:17,229 --> 00:34:18,839 Well, that's a little disappointing. 659 00:34:18,969 --> 00:34:21,842 I thought maybe it just doesn't mean as much to him 660 00:34:21,972 --> 00:34:24,671 to have a book out as it means to me. 661 00:34:24,801 --> 00:34:27,674 But then about a year, maybe a year and half later, 662 00:34:27,804 --> 00:34:31,025 I was out visiting him and he said some things to me 663 00:34:31,156 --> 00:34:33,810 and we had a moment together where I could see 664 00:34:33,941 --> 00:34:36,596 that it had been a very meaningful experience to him. 665 00:34:36,726 --> 00:34:39,251 He knew I'd had a complicated childhood with him, 666 00:34:39,381 --> 00:34:42,123 and that as a teenager, we had our problems, too. 667 00:34:42,254 --> 00:34:44,169 But I think that was that realization 668 00:34:44,299 --> 00:34:46,475 that there was a real depth of connection. 669 00:34:46,606 --> 00:34:50,044 And, um... that was very touching to me, 670 00:34:50,175 --> 00:34:51,785 because... it's, you know, 671 00:34:51,915 --> 00:34:55,789 it's very hard to tell anyone else that, um... 672 00:34:55,919 --> 00:34:59,706 to, like, impart the depth of feeling you have 673 00:34:59,836 --> 00:35:04,232 for someone like that, for your mother or your father. 674 00:35:12,066 --> 00:35:15,069 I step out for a late-night smoke. 675 00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:17,376 [owl hooting] 676 00:35:17,506 --> 00:35:19,029 A beautiful night, 677 00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:21,075 cool and clear. 678 00:35:24,687 --> 00:35:27,386 I amble up towards Mother's stone, 679 00:35:27,516 --> 00:35:29,083 a kind of memorial 680 00:35:29,214 --> 00:35:32,782 I've installed to her in a corner of the yard. 681 00:35:32,913 --> 00:35:35,655 Where are you now, Mother? 682 00:35:35,785 --> 00:35:38,788 And naturally, I look up. 683 00:35:38,919 --> 00:35:42,923 A large full moon in the sky, and a single star, 684 00:35:43,053 --> 00:35:44,925 as if in its orbit. 685 00:35:46,405 --> 00:35:48,624 For such a clear night, I can't see another star. 686 00:35:54,543 --> 00:35:57,633 It seems pretty obvious symbolism. 687 00:35:57,764 --> 00:36:01,159 The female moon: Mother; 688 00:36:01,289 --> 00:36:03,726 and I, a circling star. 689 00:36:09,515 --> 00:36:12,300 When your mother dies, there's a real feeling 690 00:36:12,431 --> 00:36:15,434 that some real connection to the world is gone. 691 00:36:16,696 --> 00:36:18,741 Like many stiff-upper-lip kind of Brits, 692 00:36:18,872 --> 00:36:21,527 she had kept her pain to herself all her life. 693 00:36:21,657 --> 00:36:25,008 And even to the end, she did that to a big degree. 694 00:36:25,139 --> 00:36:27,315 She... but you could see 695 00:36:27,446 --> 00:36:30,188 that there was genuine fear and sadness in her. 696 00:36:30,318 --> 00:36:32,364 And that was really painful to see. 697 00:36:32,494 --> 00:36:34,366 And it was also really painful 698 00:36:34,496 --> 00:36:37,586 to know that she had forgotten everything about me. 699 00:36:37,717 --> 00:36:40,546 To feel such a close connection to someone, 700 00:36:40,676 --> 00:36:44,463 and to know they don't remember any of your childhood anymore, 701 00:36:44,593 --> 00:36:46,769 and maybe they don't even remember you. 702 00:36:48,989 --> 00:36:52,035 All my work is created from that sense of loss. 703 00:36:52,166 --> 00:36:54,560 I feel the strong sense that the baseline 704 00:36:54,690 --> 00:36:56,431 to human experience is sadness. 705 00:36:56,562 --> 00:37:00,870 I mean, it doesn't feel too sad that this moment's passing away. 706 00:37:01,001 --> 00:37:03,438 [laughter] That's not a slight towards you. 707 00:37:03,569 --> 00:37:06,441 I just mean this particular moment, it's fresh. 708 00:37:06,572 --> 00:37:10,445 So when it passes, you know, it's just a few minutes, 709 00:37:10,576 --> 00:37:13,796 but in a year this experience of being here 710 00:37:13,927 --> 00:37:16,059 will be completely beyond my grasp. 711 00:37:16,190 --> 00:37:19,062 There will just be bits and pieces of it left. 712 00:37:19,193 --> 00:37:21,195 That whole process of constantly losing everything, 713 00:37:21,326 --> 00:37:24,198 and as you get older, places vanish into the past, 714 00:37:24,329 --> 00:37:26,548 they're not even existing in the world anymore, 715 00:37:26,679 --> 00:37:29,595 people you loved end up being just in the past. 716 00:37:29,725 --> 00:37:32,859 I think that whole experience of being trapped in the present 717 00:37:32,989 --> 00:37:35,296 while everything is constantly moving in the past 718 00:37:35,427 --> 00:37:37,690 creates a deep feeling of sadness in me. 719 00:37:37,820 --> 00:37:40,388 And I think all my work is about that. 720 00:37:40,519 --> 00:37:42,085 So even though in that city, 721 00:37:42,216 --> 00:37:45,524 I did not create it specifically with that in mind, 722 00:37:45,654 --> 00:37:48,309 that is an underlying force behind its creation. 723 00:37:50,616 --> 00:37:53,096 I guess to recapture some of the pleasures 724 00:37:53,227 --> 00:37:55,142 of building things as a child... 725 00:37:55,273 --> 00:37:56,796 I started building these buildings 726 00:37:56,926 --> 00:38:00,190 as I started figuring out the history of this town. 727 00:38:00,321 --> 00:38:02,889 The town itself is an imaginary town 728 00:38:03,019 --> 00:38:04,543 set in northern Ontario. 729 00:38:04,673 --> 00:38:06,545 What you see here, really, 730 00:38:06,675 --> 00:38:10,853 is just the tip of the iceberg of the amount... 731 00:38:10,984 --> 00:38:13,769 of imaginative thought I'm going to have to put 732 00:38:13,900 --> 00:38:16,772 in to constructing the history of the city. 733 00:38:16,903 --> 00:38:20,210 Originally the purpose was for this possible graphic novel. 734 00:38:20,341 --> 00:38:21,951 As the city has grown in complexity 735 00:38:22,082 --> 00:38:24,258 and the history has grown more interesting to me, 736 00:38:24,389 --> 00:38:26,260 in some levels I think I'm just enjoying 737 00:38:26,391 --> 00:38:28,393 making it up and going through it. 738 00:38:28,523 --> 00:38:30,786 I'm not sure what the actual purpose is. 739 00:38:30,917 --> 00:38:33,136 [old-time music] 740 00:38:49,109 --> 00:38:51,459 The Ott Typewriter Building. 741 00:38:51,590 --> 00:38:53,505 The North Star Restaurant. 742 00:38:54,897 --> 00:38:57,117 There's probably 40 or 50 buildings here at the moment. 743 00:38:57,247 --> 00:39:00,947 This will probably double at some point to at least 100. 744 00:39:01,077 --> 00:39:02,601 I'll probably stop building them 745 00:39:02,731 --> 00:39:04,907 when I run out of space in the basement. 746 00:39:05,038 --> 00:39:07,127 [grandiose music] 747 00:39:09,608 --> 00:39:11,392 1949. I was correct. 748 00:39:11,523 --> 00:39:14,917 It was the 85th anniversary of the founding of the town. 749 00:39:15,048 --> 00:39:17,529 [epic music] 750 00:39:22,011 --> 00:39:23,796 Each parade is opened 751 00:39:23,926 --> 00:39:26,233 with a large figure of their founder, 752 00:39:26,364 --> 00:39:29,323 J. Morgan Smith, in his coffin. 753 00:39:30,672 --> 00:39:34,502 [music and cheering] 754 00:39:46,732 --> 00:39:49,604 The parade always ends with a large live figure 755 00:39:49,735 --> 00:39:51,954 of him carrying the key to the city. 756 00:39:52,085 --> 00:39:53,695 So it's got a bit 757 00:39:53,826 --> 00:39:57,743 of that death and rebirth kind of imagery to it as well. 758 00:40:00,789 --> 00:40:02,791 I realized that with a city 759 00:40:02,922 --> 00:40:05,664 of roughly 300,000, which is what I imagined, 760 00:40:05,794 --> 00:40:09,363 that means I have an infinite amount of material to work with, 761 00:40:09,494 --> 00:40:12,584 that I could be thinking about this until I die. 762 00:40:24,378 --> 00:40:26,467 Remarkable weather today. 763 00:40:26,598 --> 00:40:29,252 It started out light in the morning, 764 00:40:29,383 --> 00:40:31,211 but quickly got heavier. 765 00:40:31,341 --> 00:40:34,693 By mid-afternoon, the town felt snowbound. 766 00:40:37,783 --> 00:40:41,134 I spent the day down in the studio, 767 00:40:41,264 --> 00:40:44,703 wrapped in a wonderful feeling of isolation. 768 00:40:44,833 --> 00:40:46,269 By evening, 769 00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,489 I had to come up and take a look. 770 00:40:48,620 --> 00:40:51,187 The accumulation was breathtaking. 771 00:40:52,145 --> 00:40:54,582 Literally several feet of new snow. 772 00:40:57,803 --> 00:41:01,241 A fresh, glittering blanket of pearl. 773 00:41:03,809 --> 00:41:07,203 It's hard to imagine any concept of heaven 774 00:41:07,334 --> 00:41:10,816 that could be more beautiful than this world. 775 00:41:54,294 --> 00:41:58,733 And if there's one thing I can take away from this experience, 776 00:41:58,864 --> 00:42:01,736 it's that I will never do another documentary 777 00:42:01,867 --> 00:42:04,217 in the rest of my life. 778 00:42:04,347 --> 00:42:06,306 Subtitling: CNST, Montreal