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Peyton's Place

Inside Brad Peyton's What It's Like Being Alone

The residents of the Gurney Orphanage in Brad Peyton's What It's Like Being Alone. Top row, from left: Aldous, Seymore Talkless, Charlie. Bottom row: Princess Lucy, Beasley and Byron, Sammy Fishboy, Armie and Brian Brain. (Image CBC)
The residents of the Gurney Orphanage in Brad Peyton's What It's Like Being Alone. Top row, from left: Aldous, Seymore Talkless, Charlie. Bottom row: Princess Lucy, Beasley and Byron, Sammy Fishboy, Armie and Brian Brain. (Image CBC)

Watching the debut episode of Brad Peyton’s squirrel-crossing-the-highway frantic, stop-animation series, What It’s Like Being Alone, you want to bombard the 27-year-old Newfoundland-born filmmaker with questions.

CBC-TV’s new prime time comedy (premiering June 26) boasts what is arguably the most surreal opening sequence in TV history. First, we see a close-up of a black-and-white Canadian flag; then the camera pulls down to a ramshackle orphanage and nine and a half fidgeting clay-model foundlings. 

Yeah, nine and a half. One character has two heads, and he isn’t even the kid you notice first. Another orphan, a gay boy named Charlie, is literally flaming. The series star, a pink meteor who answers to Princess Lucy, arrives seconds into the pilot, obliterating a rabbit. Despite the messy stain, the interstellar mutant eventually bags a prospective parent. Alas, her protein-rich diet (insects, house pets) conspires against her, and Lucy lets loose a gust of unnatural gas that strikes her bossy benefactor dead.  

Questions, questions: Peyton, a Canadian Film Centre graduate, co-produced his new 13-part series with Fred Fuchs prior to Fuchs taking over as executive director of CBC arts and entertainment programming. Does What It’s Like Being Alone represent a shift by the nation’s broadcaster to Addams Family values? And what about Peyton? How does the self-described “shyest kid in grade school” go from keeping a private stash of illustrator Edward Gorey's works hidden in a Gander, N.L., library to making the wildest CBC comedy since Twitch City — as he’s racing to prepare an animated feature for Tom Hanks’ film production company in Los Angeles?

Hey, and what’s up with the black-and-white Canadian flag in WILBA’s credits? To answer these and other questions, CBC Arts Online spoke with Peyton by phone in Los Angeles.

Sammy Fishboy cools down. (Image CBC)
Sammy Fishboy cools down. (Image CBC)
Q: There is a tradition of enlightened TV satire coming from Newfoundland: CODCO, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Do you feel part of that?

A: I remember CODCO, but I was pretty young. I would say what I share with the CODCO people is a love of Monty Python. Also, we drink from the same well. People from Newfoundland have a sarcastic, ironic view of the world. And maybe because we’re isolated, we’ve grown used to entertaining ourselves. My grandmother, Amy Louise Peyton, published two books. My mother is an artist. Every wall in my place in Toronto is covered with her work. I wasn’t at all surprised to see Newfoundlanders like CODCO on CBC as a kid. Telling stories and being funny is a way of life there.

Q: How does the shyest kid in grade school go to becoming a two-country filmmaker? You’ve just finished a series for CBC in Toronto while developing an animated film, The Spider and the Fly, for Tom Hanks’ company in Los Angeles.

A: Being shy doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t confident. I just got an opportunity to make films and those films interested people. I went from Gander to study art at Dalhousie in Halifax, then to Ryerson [in Toronto] to study filmmaking. But I really wasn’t happy at school. I got a grant to make a short film, Full, which played on CBC.

Q: I saw a call for interview subjects for that film that begins, “My name is Brad Peyton, and I’m a young filmmaker who is recovering from anorexia and bulimia …” Why did you choose to make that film?

A: To cure myself. It’s funny, I once asked my grandmother why she stopped writing books, and she said, “interviewers.” She didn’t want to talk about her books, she just wanted to write them. I know what she means. I made Full so I didn’t have to talk about anorexia or bulimia anymore.

Q: After that, in 2002, you made a short at the Canadian Film Centre, Evelyn, the Cutest Evil Dead Girl, which won festival awards in France and the U.S. And pretty soon you were taking film and TV meetings in Hollywood and Toronto. Do you ever fear your carefully cultivated talent might get trampled by the entertainment industry?

A: Last year I got an opportunity to direct a Hollywood movie. At first, I figured I had to do it; the film was too big an opportunity to pass up. Problem was, I just didn’t feel like it. After a lot of reflection, I said no and felt an enormous relief. Today, I think I understand – I hope I understand! – that I will sabotage whatever talent I have by doing a project foreign to me. I would’ve done a terrible job making that movie, then where would I be? To succeed, I have to keep doing what I did as a kid, drawing up little stories in a notebook.

Q: That’s how What It’s Like Being Alone was born.

A: Yeah, I had a friend who was depressed, so I went over to her house and started drawing. I made her a little book. She liked it and said I should try to sell it. So I photocopied 200 at Kinkos and sold them at Pages Books [in downtown Toronto]. Made like $150 dollars. That book turned into What It’s Like Being Alone.

Q: All the characters were there, even Charlie, the flaming little gay boy?

A: Yeah, he came out of a line I wrote, “What’s it like being alone? Like a sunset, but only if you’re on fire.”

Q: What drew you to stop-animation storytelling?

A: I have a naïve attraction to the technique. I love Ray Harryhausen’s stop-animation fantasies, films like Jason and the Argonauts. And I hold something he said in an interview — “stop-animation is very close to dreaming” — to be true. Moving a figure around and taking a series of pictures of it is similar to playing with toys as a child. I remember watching Harryhausen’s films as a kid and marvelling at how he was playing with toys, but you couldn’t see him – where were his hands?

Q: It’s a laborious way to make movies.

A: Tell me about it. You work frame by frame. Twenty-four frames and you have a second of film. We had eight animators and a crew of 30; we’d work all day and come back next day to review seven seconds of work.

Q: Tell us about the animated film for Tom Hanks you’re working on now. It’s based on the 19th-century poem, The Spider and the Fly. “‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly ...”

A: I’ve been working on the script off and on for two years. It’s going to studio next month. Other than that there isn’t much to say right now.

Q: What about the Canadian flag in the opening credits to What It's Like Being Alone? It’s the first thing you see, and it’s in black and white. But the rest of the credits, and the show itself, is in vibrant colour.

A: Working in Canada, it’s funny, everyone wants you to put a tag on things. Like people would see what we were doing and ask, “Can we say that Charlie is from Saskatchewan,” or can we somehow do something to make sure people understand the show is Canadian. And I go, “Well. I’m Canadian, everyone working on the show is Canadian, it’s a Canadian show.” Anyways, the black-and-white flag was my way of making sure that the show was Canadian on my own terms.

Q: Maybe because you started off as a kid doodling with a black ink on white paper.

A: Maybe. You know what my hope is: I hope the show gets picked up elsewhere and people all over the world will see our little cast of orphans and go, “Hey, so that’s what Canadians do with their spare time.” That’d be cool.

Stephen Cole writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.

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