All language subtitles for Seths.Dominion.2014.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC5.1-[YTS.MX].eng

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Ladies and gentlemen,
my name is Seth,

and I am a cartoonist.

There is something very lovely

about the stillness
of a comic-book page,

that austere
stacked grid of boxes,

the little people
trapped in time.

I actually think
it is better suited

for portraying the interior life
of a person

than the sort of big,
blown world of fantasy.

I've been asked by the NFB
to repeat questions

as they're asked to me,
to phrase them as a statement.

It may sound
like a ridiculous statement,

but in some ways
cartooning is much like

what the Impressionists
were doing,

in that you're not aiming
for the detail

so much as the overall feeling.

Cartooning to me
isn't about drawing at all;

it's about graphic design,
it's about...

creating iconic images
you move around on the page,

which actually stimulate in
the reader their own experience.

They're like memory drawings,
I call them.

But that simple iconic drawing

operates in many ways
like language does.

I can't draw the texture
of the natural world.

I can create a house and you can
add the boards on it yourself,

the way it really is.

I think something
about that process of recreating

the world in your mind
through these memory drawings

is what brings in
the real world.

In the last few years,
I did autobiographical stories

in my sketchbook.

I have to come up with
an expedient method to do it.

And the simple answer
seemed to me...

I actually I think it came to me

while I was having a phone call
with another cartoonist,

and he was talking
about the difficulty

of trying to write a diary
and I said jokingly,

"You should just get
some rubber stamps and do it."

And then I thought,
I said immediately:

"Actually don't do that;
I'm going to do that."

Um... I have, like,
a stamp of myself at my desk,

I have one of walking.

Just what is memory?
I pondered.

It's an odd thing.

Not a factual record.

It is a flash
of captured experience.

Think of somewhere in a memory.

You don't see the place
so much as feel it.

You can't look around and
itemize what was in the room,

but you sense
the details around you.

You feel the proximity
of people and objects about you.

It's almost
a textural experience.

A memory is like a photograph
of a sensation.

October 11, 2005.

Left the house today.
Errands.

Wine, bakery
and the Italian market.

Walking is the best time
to reflect.

Saw an old woman
sitting on a bench.

Just an old woman
like any other.

A little feeble,
a little addled.

It occurred to me that when
Mother had been out shopping,

this is probably
how she looked to others.

My beloved mother,
just another doddering old lady.

The thought of this caused
such a sudden rush of emotion

that tears almost popped out
of my eyes.

I don't know how he does this,
but he... he somehow, you know,

made a day into, you know,
35 hours instead of 24 hours.

And not only has he become

extremely prolific
as a cartoonist,

but aside from doing
all this work he's known for,

so well known for,

I mean, he has
all these other side projects,

and none of us
can figure it out,

how he gets any of this done.

His progression over the years
has been fantastic,

and his dedication
to his art form

is amazing as well.

I mean, he's the type of guy
that can easily...

have given up comics years ago,

in favour
of an illustration career,

or a fine-art career,
for that matter.

The generation of cartoonists
I was working with

were coming out of...
were benefiting from the work

the underground cartoonists
had done before us.

They'd opened the door to the
idea that comics could be art.

My focus has always been
on just doing the comics,

panel-to-panel,

whereas he...
he would be doing paintings,

and then he would want to create
the frame for the painting

and he would be doing...

these little handcrafted boxes.

And it would all be gorgeous.

And I'd be, like, "Yeah,

why don't I want to do
this sort of stuff?"

Our melodrama tonight,
ladies and gentlemen,

is entitled,
The Apology of Albert Batch.

This evening, his life
comes to its conclusion.

As an artist,
you should have work

that isn't just to be published,

and that's why I have
all these little hobbies.

Why I have
my rubber-stamp diary,

my sketchbook,
the City of Dominion.

It's very different
than working on a comic page

where you know
the minute you start it

that you're planning
to publish it.

That's a straightforward
artistic goal

of trying to communicate
with another person.

There's something
really valuable about doing art

that's just for yourself.

I suspect many people
have had a place like this

in their childhood,

a place where they encountered
the natural world

without the watchful eye
of an adult,

a place that remains unnaturally
vivid in the imagination.

The creek was within
easy walking distance,

just beyond a new subdivision,
on the edge of town.

A wild area of little streams
in the shadow of the bush.

Over a fence
and into a grassy field,

and in that field a pond,
simply brimming with life.

Dragonflies,

painted turtles,

water striders,

whirligig beetles

and, of course, frogs.

Frogs in all stages
of their lives.

Always so startling to see them

on the threshold
of being that final creature.

In the field, the milkweed,
the cattail and wheatgrass,

Queen Anne's lace,
the skunk cabbage.

And in the bush, the trillium.

The trillium
held a special fascination.

Being the provincial flower,
we were forbidden to pick it.

Schoolyard lore warned
that if a trillium was picked...

...it would bleed red blood.

I promised never to touch one.

I purchased an old postcard
of Strathroy, Ontario,

postmarked 1909.

The old swimming hole.

Was this the same spot?

Had we inherited it,
and its name?

Was I just one
of a long line of boys

who played and swam there?

I remember how unpleasant
the creek bottom felt,

with just bare feet.

The mud and the reeds,

and the crayfish
skittering between your legs.

I remember how it felt
to be there

when you were in a group,

and how different it felt
to be there alone.

When I returned as an adult
in the 1990s,

the creek was unchanged.

It was eerily familiar.

However,

when last I visited,
the bush had grown so thick,

I couldn't even get near.

Shit!

One of the great things about
being able to do a comic book

anyway you wanted it
is that you could tell the story

as slow as you liked
and as long as you liked.

I wanted to capture
some of the qualities

you would have in a reverie,
and for that,

you really need
to have a slow pace.

Somewhere on the Prairies,
at the edge of a little town,

there is a closed-up
drive-in theatre.

Closed 10 years.

Next to that drive-in,

you'll find a rusted-out
kiddie carousel

that no child has touched
since 1973.

And on the shores of Lake Huron,
there is a cottage.

And in that cottage,
there is a backroom.

And in that backroom,
there is an old cardboard box,

filled with road maps,
insurance folders,

appliance pamphlets,
mimeographed recipes,

and black-and-white snapshots.

A box that has remained
unopened in 35 years.

Further on,

down a gravel road
near Algonquin,

stands the nailed-up
information booth

of an out-of-business
tourist camp.

Inside, under its main counter,

is a dusty book,
opened to page 126.

This is where it has sat
since the door closed for good,

since it was absent-mindedly
left behind, half read.

In these places
and others like them...

...time is standing still.

Nostalgia implies...

a kind
of Hallmark-card sentiment

that there is a golden past
that you're yearning for.

And there's lots of yearning
in my work,

but I don't think of it
as being that kind of nostalgia.

In fact, I always think
the stories I'm writing

to flatter myself
are more complicated

about the past
and that my characters...

I'm not presenting people
who lived in some golden past.

I tend to like to write about
people whose lives have been...

there's some complexity

about whether or not
their life was a success or not.

Albert Batch was a well-known
Canadian cartoonist

from the 20th century.

Trout Haven was quite
a gentle comic strip,

a sort of bucolic, actually,

all about the little events
in a small village.

He had 10 collections
of his famous comic strip

published during his lifetime.
They were published

by the Narwhal Press
of Dominion, Ontario.

They sold very well.

"Graphic novel" -
what a horrible term.

A misshapen thing stitched
together from two words,

which I must assume
are considered

more respectable-sounding
than comic and book combined.

People recognize the phrase
"graphic novel,"

and I now find myself saying it
in interviews,

simply because it is easier
to use than to try and institute

some new name
of my own invention.

That's hard work,

to rename something
and make it stick.

I did that once, years ago,

when I changed my name
from Gregory Gallant to Seth.

That was a big chore.

First, introducing the new name
and then enforcing its use.

Correcting friends or family

every time
they used the old name.

Reinforcing it constantly,

until it became second nature
for everyone.

That's a young man's game.

I don't have the stomach
for that sort

of highly disciplined assholism
any longer.

And that was kind
of the process of being involved

in the punk scene
in the early '80s

and looking for a pretentious,
scary name,

and so that's why I picked Seth.

I had a last name then, too,
which I'll never tell.

Aw...
Oh, no.

I'd show you my tattoo
before I'd tell you that.

They're sleeping
in their usual spots.

- That's good.
- Beautiful.

Thank you, darlin'.
No problem.

You always look so good
when you're done.

Thank you.

I like routine.

And...

my days are pretty structured.

I get up early in the morning,
'cause my wife Tanya's a barber.

And when she goes off to work,

I generally come down
to the studio.

I begin with some work
I've left from the night before.

The rest of the morning,

I like to work
on one of my private projects.

Time to eat. Time to read.

If there's any commercial work
to be done at that point,

any specific jobs
that have a deadline,

usually I work on that
in the afternoon.

Dealing with the daily problems
of business, checking the email,

making phone calls.
Make dinner.

Tanya arrives home,
we have dinner,

spend some time together,
have a glass of wine, relax.

Being a 50-year-old man,
I go and take a nap.

The evening: best time for
working on the comics, I find.

I'll work
till about 11:00 at night.

If it's a little busier,
I might work till 11:30 or 12.

And then I come upstairs
and Tanya and I...

will usually sit down,

I'll drink a couple of glasses
of wine,

we'll watch a movie;
and then it's reading time,

and then to bed by 1:00.
Actually, 1:30. Always 1:30.

Next day,
exactly the same thing.

I'm a pretty extroverted person,
but... and I think probably

you're more naturally
introverted

and yet you've got the career
with people

and I've got the career
where I'm alone.

But it works good for us
that way.

You have that interior world
that you let me peek into,

once in a while,
and I find that fascinating.

That's why I like
to leave him alone.

There's some Protestant work
ethic in the back of my brain

that makes me feel good
when I work.

Like if I have a day
where I get five things done -

work in my sketchbook,

do my diary,

get part of some commercial job,

work on my comic
and one of my little buildings -

a day like that,

there is such a good feeling
to that.

You want that feeling
when you go to bed

that you've accomplished
something.

You know, when I wanted to
be a cartoonist in my twenties,

I thought it would be cool.

What I wasn't thinking
was crafting a life for myself

where I'd spend all my time
alone as a 50-year-old man

in the basement,
but that's where it ended up,

and that is where I'm happiest.

I like that feeling of being
by myself most of the time,

but the comfortable feeling
of being by myself,

where loneliness
is removed by Tanya.

Hearing Tanya laughing upstairs
when I'm working.

Not knowing
what she's laughing about.

I know she wouldn't be insulted,
because we've talked about it,

but it's the same feeling
I had with my own mother,

when I was in my room,
working away,

hearing her in the other part
of the house.

This supplied some need to me
that removed loneliness.

This is a book I put together
a few years ago.

It's titled The History
of the Cosmic Comics Company,

which is kind of
a deliberately grand title

for what it really is
just a collection

of what survives of the strips
I drew when I was a child.

One of the great powers
of comics when you're a child

is that there is a range
of intense emotions

you can have from reading these,

from the genuine excitement
of genre pulp adventure -

people fighting each other,
of course -

but also these feelings

of coming to deeper
understanding of life.

When you see
like Superman facing death,

and you're a little kid,

it's like a kind of childish
profundity that you relate to.

And so when I made up
the Kao-Kuk Story,

I wanted it to have
that same quality.

I drew many, many hundreds
of pages of comic books,

maybe 1,000 pages
of comic books,

from when I was a little kid
until I went to art school.

And I never showed them.
Maybe once or twice,

showed something
to some other kids.

It was a private little world,
and Mother, really,

was the main person
I showed anything to.

And her support
was really very important.

Coming home
from kindergarten,

I stand for a moment
in the driveway.

I wet my cheeks with spit
and dash in the house,

pretending to cry.
Mom!!!

An act contrived purely
to get affection from mother.

Mom! They were mean to me.

Was I that starved for love?

Oh, you poor thing.

I guess I was.

Let's get you a cup of tea.

Looking back,

I can't recall
ever being held as a child.

Thanks, Mom!

And foolishly,
it was around this time

when I stopped
kissing Mother goodnight.

Night-night.

I had decided I was a big boy.

And a good-night kiss
was for babies.

I didn't regret my decision
immediately, but in time,

I saw it
as an irreversible mistake.

I longed to kiss her again,
but couldn't go back on it.

Mom, I'm bored.

Go do your drawings.

I never stopped regretting it.

Right into my teens,

I would daily resolve
to kiss her.

Tomorrow... for sure.

But I never did.

In fact, I didn't kiss her again
until I was a grown man.

I'm heading home now,
Mother.

I always think of memory
as being...

it's like a blueprint
of a sensation, somehow,

that you have in your brain.

And this blueprint
has to be studied

when you go back
to look at it.

And much like composing
a panel,

it's like you're in the centre
of that blueprint, the memory,

and you go, "Here I am,
I'm 8 years old,

I'm in the backyard."

The brick of the house
is over here.

Or you start to build
the memory in your brain,

much the way you might
move around little toy figures,

or something, in a diorama.

For a time,

we lived in a small house
on Milner Street.

In my tiny bedroom,
on top of a dresser,

I kept my stuffed animals.

My best-loved toys.

A bland assortment
of cheap stuffed animals,

haphazardly acquired.

At least two of them
carnival prizes.

Their faces remembered better
than any childhood friend,

recalled clearer
than any teacher from that time.

Several years later,
I had a large dresser.

I kept one drawer for models
which had fallen from favour.

They'd be demoted
from shelf to drawer.

Each time I opened
or closed the drawer,

something would break.

The damage only got worse

as I crammed
more and more models in there.

Eventually,
the drawer was filled

only with small,
shattered pieces.

My father grew up
in the Depression,

in Prince-Edward Island,

and he'd always told me
the stories,

when I was a child,
about his childhood.

I thought of them
as good stories,

stories I liked to listen to,
even though they were stories

about being poor
and having to steal food,

and parental neglect.

I wanted to record them
somehow.

So I just asked him
to write them down.

Sometimes it's funny,

I'll look back at photographs
of places we went together

where I would snap pictures.

They're the same kind of places
I would go to now.

And these things are still
imprinted in my brain somehow.

In Grade 5,
we moved to Elmwood Street,

though we lived there
only about a year.

The scene of so many terrible
fights between my parents.

They were always fighting,
or I should say he was.

Mother and I were terrorized
by my father's temper.

It's strange how horrible
the sound of an adult's anger

is to a child.

I often tried to block it out.

At night, if he were shouting,

I would play
my transistor radio.

An earphone in one ear,

and a finger in the other.

It never worked.

That sort of thing
just can't be ignored.

I think I was brought up

with that feeling of fear
of his temper,

which was the temper
of a frustrated person,

who felt they'd missed out
on certain opportunities.

He never felt he got to do
what he wanted to do in life.

I think he was always
kind of hoping

something would happen.
I don't know what it was.

When I think of Seth,

sometimes I think
of Marcel Proust.

A dozen memories of childhood,

and you go over them
in your mind so much,

covet them so much,
that you polish them.

Well, memory is funny, too.

Who knows
why you remember anything?

Things take on significance
as times goes on.

I sometimes wonder, like,
how much control you even have

over what you pick
to remember as significant.

One bright day,
I went up to the attic.

I gathered up my beloved
stuffed toys from Milner Street,

I carried them out
into the backyard

and carefully hung them,
one by one, from a tree.

I went back inside

and got my pellet gun.

I laid down,
I carefully took aim,

and shot them all to pieces.

I felt nothing special
in doing it.

It wasn't a meaningful act,
just something to pass the time.

But looking back,

I can think
of no more fitting event

to signify the end of childhood.

I was not a happy teenager,

and when I came from
the little town to the big city,

this was my opportunity
to become a new person.

It took me
about a year and a half maybe

to reach the point
where Seth was born.

If you do anything long enough,
it becomes real.

I mean, good advice is:
Be the person you want to be,

because you'll start out faking,

but eventually
you'll be that person.

On Tuesday night,
I went for a late-night stroll.

It was a beautiful night.
A bit of a chill in the air.

Not really cold, though.

Still, winter was coming.

Believe it or not,
in this small town,

I could actually see the stars.

I walked down London Street,
lost in thought.

My mind was fixated on a girl

I was disastrously pursuing
in another city.

I stopped for a moment,
and as I stood there,

I heard an almost imperceptible,
tinny sound.

It was music.

I recognized the song.

I quickly realized
that it was coming

from a garbage bag on the curb.

Someone had obviously thrown out

one of these cards
with a computer chip in it.

Alone, in the darkness,

this seemed deeply funny.

And profoundly sad.

His personal approach
to his work,

and taking everything
he does so seriously,

although with a sense of humour,

it definitely made me think
of my work in a different way.

I was a big fan
of Chester's comic books...

when I was living in Montreal.

Seth was always with Chester.

The minute the three of us
started hanging around,

the friendship worked,

and we all spoke
the same language.

- Take it, Chet.
- That's mine?

- Yes.
- Did you play the Jack?

I played the Jack.

You're irritated by qualities
you see in me

that are actually of yourself
or something.

I don't buy that theory.

Seth, Chester Brown
and Joe Matt

were called The Toronto Three.

They were just always together.

They always got together,

and at one point or another,

they all did
autobiographical comics.

So naturally
they would draw their friends,

and their friends
happened to be each other.

I don't know if you read this,
but you'll see,

it's like the two of them
against me.

This is true. This is true.

I'm not denying that.

Seth probably does feel
superior to a lot of people.

But he also, you know,
has a built-in humility.

And I think artists in general
are probably like this.

To make you commit something
to paper or film,

you've gotta have that arrogance
that whatever you're gonna say

is worth taking up
people's time to be said.

Writing about yourself
is a double-edged sword.

Yes, you could get
at the real things,

but you became overly aware

of how you were choosing
to portray yourself.

And that's why in Good Life,
though I'm the main character,

it was fiction, and I felt free
to no longer worry about it.

Seth has always liked mixing
fiction and fact together.

Everybody who works with fiction
does that.

But Seth really wants to blur
the lines between the two.

He does want us to question
what's real and what isn't.

That interior experience
is so hard to get outside

of the shell of the human body.

That's where the comics
are like an important way

to try to communicate that.

Fourteen hours ago,

Albert Batch put down his pencil
and took to his bed.

Here he has remained,

drifting in and out
of consciousness.

He recalls the faces
of the people he's known.

He thinks
of the places he's seen.

What did any of it mean?

In this moment, he realizes
this is what his work

should have been about.

The idea is so vivid

that Albert almost rises up
to go back to the drawing table.

But he doesn't.

We hear the death rattle.

Perhaps it had been a mistake
moving to a town

where I didn't know
a single soul.

By December, though,

I had become pretty used
to spending

almost every waking moment
alone in my studio.

When that became unbearable,
I'd read a book,

or listen to a record.

No one ever spoke to me.

And as the months passed,
I began to imagine

that I was living
an invisible life.

Often I'd go for a walk,

and then eat lunch
at a nearby restaurant.

Egg salad, please.

At times, it seemed grim.

On the way to that restaurant,
there was a large vacant lot

surrounded, for some odd reason,
with big concrete blocks.

In my silence,
this empty space

began to take on
a solemn quality,

a sort of charged presence.

On one sad, lonely morning,

I found myself speaking aloud
as I walked through it.

Good God...

give me some happiness.

The perfect spot
for an atheist prayer.

Knowing full well
that no supreme being

was listening
or looking out for me.

Still, a few weeks later,
when I first saw her sweet face,

I couldn't help but wonder.

Hi.

Well, um, we met in art class.

Um... but I don't draw
and I don't teach.

I'm a model.

I didn't come up
and talk to you.

As one of the artists,
you don't start talking

to the nude model
in a life-drawing class;

that's just inappropriate.

So you came up and talked
to me, which was nice.

And within a couple of months,
we were married.

So it was really, you know,
a surprising turn of events.

Uh, we're both
into persona building.

That's part of the appeal
of design and fashion and art.

He's always got a dream world,
and that's who he is.

My interest
in the aesthetics in the past

is clearly predicated
on the fact

that I live here in this world
as it is now.

The marquee, yeah, I love it.
It's so beautiful.

It's certainly
a Guelph landmark.

Even the house, I'm not trying
to transform that house

back into, like, 1920.
It's more of an art project

than it is like
a historical project.

I'm just trying to make it
the world I wanna live in.

The fact that is says
"Nothing Lasts" on that,

is what they used to call,
I believe, a memento mori,

to remind everyone
that kings and paupers,

we're all gonna die.

The Middle Ages were great
for bringing you down.

But nothing does last;

everything is transient.

And even though I say that,
we still,

like all romantic couples,
you still say,

"I hope I see you
in the afterlife."

There's still always that, like,

somewhere
in the back of the mind,

that you don't really
want anything to end.

A year or so
after Albert's death,

an oddball fan
approached psychics

to see if they could communicate
with the cartoonist.

Apparently
Albert had found his way

to some otherworldly
cartoonist Valhalla.

George Harriman was there,
Charles Schultz,

Doug Wright,

and Peter Arnold.

Robert Crumb, as well.

This cast some doubt

on the validity
of Madame Flotsky's vision,

since Crumb is still
very much alive at present.

You can certainly have all
the self-doubts in the world,

but that's why an artist
has to make a leap of faith.

And so when you have that book
in your hands, it says:

"This is what my life is about,"
then my life has meaning.

And since I do feel that,
I wanted to pass that experience

onto my father.
I wanted to be able

for him to have
a book of his life,

that he could hold it
in his hands and say:

"I wasn't just here ephemerally.
I've left a record behind."

"How dare you
disturb my comfort?

State your business and get out.
I told him my problem.

He told me he had no money
for the poor,

and opened the door
for me to leave."

As soon as you got an apple
from the old lady next door,

you had a bunch of friends,
"Oh, Johnny, Johnny!" Yes?

"Can I have the core?"

"Well, okay,
wait till I get to it, then."

Finally another guy:
"Can I have the seeds?"

"The seeds are no good to eat."
"I like 'em."

That's how bad it was.

When the book came out
and I sent it to him,

I didn't really get
much of a response initially.

I remember thinking:

Well,
that's a little disappointing.

I thought maybe it just doesn't
mean as much to him

to have a book out
as it means to me.

But then about a year,
maybe a year and half later,

I was out visiting him
and he said some things to me

and we had a moment together
where I could see

that it had been a very
meaningful experience to him.

He knew I'd had a complicated
childhood with him,

and that as a teenager,
we had our problems, too.

But I think
that was that realization

that there was a real depth
of connection.

And, um...
that was very touching to me,

because... it's, you know,

it's very hard
to tell anyone else that, um...

to, like, impart
the depth of feeling you have

for someone like that,
for your mother or your father.

I step out
for a late-night smoke.

A beautiful night,

cool and clear.

I amble up
towards Mother's stone,

a kind of memorial

I've installed to her
in a corner of the yard.

Where are you now, Mother?

And naturally, I look up.

A large full moon in the sky,
and a single star,

as if in its orbit.

For such a clear night,
I can't see another star.

It seems
pretty obvious symbolism.

The female moon: Mother;

and I, a circling star.

When your mother dies,
there's a real feeling

that some real connection
to the world is gone.

Like many stiff-upper-lip
kind of Brits,

she had kept her pain to herself
all her life.

And even to the end,
she did that to a big degree.

She... but you could see

that there was genuine fear
and sadness in her.

And that was really painful
to see.

And it was also really painful

to know that she had forgotten
everything about me.

To feel such a close connection
to someone,

and to know they don't remember
any of your childhood anymore,

and maybe
they don't even remember you.

All my work is created
from that sense of loss.

I feel the strong sense
that the baseline

to human experience
is sadness.

I mean, it doesn't feel too sad
that this moment's passing away.

That's not a slight towards you.

I just mean this particular
moment, it's fresh.

So when it passes, you know,
it's just a few minutes,

but in a year
this experience of being here

will be completely
beyond my grasp.

There will just be bits
and pieces of it left.

That whole process
of constantly losing everything,

and as you get older,
places vanish into the past,

they're not even existing
in the world anymore,

people you loved
end up being just in the past.

I think that whole experience
of being trapped in the present

while everything is constantly
moving in the past

creates a deep feeling
of sadness in me.

And I think all my work
is about that.

So even though in that city,

I did not create it specifically
with that in mind,

that is an underlying force
behind its creation.

I guess to recapture
some of the pleasures

of building things as a child...

I started building
these buildings

as I started figuring out
the history of this town.

The town itself
is an imaginary town

set in northern Ontario.

What you see here, really,

is just the tip of the iceberg
of the amount...

of imaginative thought
I'm going to have to put

in to constructing
the history of the city.

Originally the purpose was
for this possible graphic novel.

As the city
has grown in complexity

and the history has grown
more interesting to me,

in some levels
I think I'm just enjoying

making it up
and going through it.

I'm not sure
what the actual purpose is.

The Ott Typewriter Building.

The North Star Restaurant.

There's probably 40 or 50
buildings here at the moment.

This will probably double
at some point to at least 100.

I'll probably stop building them

when I run out of space
in the basement.

1949. I was correct.

It was the 85th anniversary
of the founding of the town.

Each parade is opened

with a large figure
of their founder,

J. Morgan Smith,
in his coffin.

The parade always ends
with a large live figure

of him carrying
the key to the city.

So it's got a bit

of that death and rebirth
kind of imagery to it as well.

I realized that with a city

of roughly 300,000,
which is what I imagined,

that means I have an infinite
amount of material to work with,

that I could be thinking
about this until I die.

Remarkable weather today.

It started out light
in the morning,

but quickly got heavier.

By mid-afternoon,
the town felt snowbound.

I spent the day
down in the studio,

wrapped in a wonderful feeling
of isolation.

By evening,

I had to come up
and take a look.

The accumulation
was breathtaking.

Literally several feet
of new snow.

A fresh, glittering blanket
of pearl.

It's hard to imagine
any concept of heaven

that could be more beautiful
than this world.

And if there's one thing I can
take away from this experience,

it's that I will never do
another documentary

in the rest of my life.

Subtitling: CNST, Montreal