There’s a poignance to what’s actually being referenced in the title “Endless Cookie” that shouldn’t be spoiled, but as Seth Scriver and his older brother Pete have gone on the road with the movie since its premiere at Sundance, the most time they’ve been able to spend together in years, it’s taken on another special meaning as the stories are, well, endless.
“I was going up to Shamattawa all the time [where Pete lives to make the movie], but since we finished the film, Pete’s been coming down to show it in different places and every time we hang out, there’s like a new story [he tells] that I’ve never heard where I’m like ‘Oh my God,” says Seth. “It’s amazing.”
Seth knew his brother had at least more than a few good ones when he set out nearly a decade ago to make what would become a sensation this year at Sundance and a recent Spirit Award nominee, but at the start he just wanted to preserve some of the great tales that Pete had from living in the First Nation community in the great North of Canada, far from much of civilization 500 miles from Winnipeg. The two brothers had grown up separately when the two shared a father but when he left Toronto, Pete joined him in the Great North to reconnect with his indigenous roots while Seth stayed behind in the city to be raised by his mother and although the two stayed connected throughout the years, they inevitably wouldn’t see each other as much as they’d like when it is difficult to travel to Shamattawa as travel is limited to small planes and roads that open up in the winter.
Although Pete picks his words carefully, all dripping with hard-earned wisdom and wry humor when he does speak, he makes up for lost time as he sits down with Seth over his kitchen table to share stories about setting up bear traps around his home now or ordering pizza back when he was living in Toronto just out of range of a delivery driver so that he could claim it for free when it didn’t arrive at his door in 30 minutes or less. When both he and all the people he describes are colorful characters, only animation can do them justice and fortunately Seth’s unruly squiggles are just right give shape to tales that take plenty of worthwhile detours and often describe a life with plenty more obstacles than most when the indigenous community have been forced off their land so many times even recently. Yet while “Endless Cookie” can detail hardship, it is predominantly filled with the warmth of a family get-together, particularly when Seth’s plans to merely record Pete for posterity go terribly awry as his kids come and go and Seth draws them into the frame, as the animator does with his own kids who increasingly bug him back in Toronto as he’s trying to put pen to paper and start getting into the act themselves as they get older.
While the chaotic nature of the production may have contributed to the time it took to finally put together — much to the chagrin of the National Film Board of Canada, which contributed a grant to the project and Seth playfully incorporates a minder from to inquire about its progress throughout — the end result is something that is unlike anything audiences have seen before. After a celebrated festival run, “Endless Cookie” is now available to watch at home on digital as it’s gained steam as a contender for Best Animated Film at the Oscars and the Scriver brothers graciously took the time to talk about how the film developed, finding the right stories to tell and having a fun family portrait to look back on like this.
How did this come about?
Seth Scriver: In the very beginning, it was traveling around with the previous film that I made and being in other parts of the world outside of Canada, people would come up to us be like, “Oh, you’re from Canada, the model citizen of the world. They’re so good to the First Nations and the environment. And [I’d think] “Yeah… that’s not true. I don’t know where you heard that. Canada’s a great place. We’ve got lots of good things. But it could do better.” So I found myself telling Pete stories. And after that happened a few times, it was like, “Man, I’ve got to work with Pete on the next project” and that was a really nice excuse to have a reason to go up north and visit Pete and the kids.
Pete, did you know what stories you’d want to tell when the idea for this started to take shape?
Pete Scriver: Some of them I thought, “Okay, which one was that?” And then [Seth would say], “you tell a story and then tell another one.”
Seth Scriver: I’d say half were classic stories that I loved and Pete had told me before and then tons were discoveries that were like, “Whoa, that’s amazing.” Pete’s the kind of storyteller where he has to be triggered into it. He has to smell the smell and then be like, “Oh yeah, you know…” and then you get a really good recording. It was just recording for days and days and days and we probably have four months of solid story recordings where you would just wait till the story came up and then it would be the sweet version.
How did the rest of the family get involved?
Seth Scriver: We were trying to record just two of us, trying to make it sound as professional as possible, but then you could hear the clock on the wall or then [Pete] moved out to another room and then [you heard] the fridge. They unplugged the fridge. Then the dogs would come in or the dogs would be barking. Then we’d try starting over again and then the neighbor comes in. We started a few times and then somebody’s playing video games or somebody flushed the toilet. It’s the byproduct of [the fact this] wasn’t planned at all and that Pete lives in a four-bedroom house with eight kids at the time and 26 dogs or something crazy — he had 16 adult dogs and then all these puppies were born. The puppy interruption in the movie — that’s the real noise, and we didn’t know what it was [initially]. We were like, “What is this squealing noise? And then it was like these puppies being born.
Pete Scriver: Just on the other side of the wall.
Seth Scriver: It was a total recipe for disaster if you’re trying to get a clean audio recording. But once we realized it was funny — like when that first toilet flush happened, that was like a real recording — we started realizing that some of the other interruptions were usable. Sometimes we would get real interruptions or we’d just screw up the recording and we would re-record it, but for the most part, the kids just inserted themselves and we realized it was becoming this family portrait, then we got some of the quiet family members in there as well, which was pretty sweet. In the end, we’re thankful for all the interruptions. It made animating way harder, but made the film more dynamic and amazing.
Did people actually have input in how they would look?
Seth Scriver: That was [involved] doing drawings and showing them to the family and then seeing how they reacted. If people are laughing then you know you’re on the right track. And then oftentimes it was people laughing at other family members who were maybe not laughing, but then if everyone else got it or laughed, you were on the right track. My son, when he was one and a half, I was showing him some of the drawings and he recognized the first three I showed him. He was like, “Uncle Pete, Papa, Chris…” and then he got a bunch wrong, but it still felt like we’re on the right track if somehow this is happening like that.
Pete Scriver: I was laughing at the way it came out, and everyone else when they saw it, all the rest of my kids thought it was pretty good. Even though we could have changed what we wanted, we enjoyed what we saw.
Seth Scriver: Yeah, it was took so long to make, so we’d be showing little bits and pieces [to the family] over the years. I’d go up a couple times a year and show what I’d managed to make and then Cookie [my daughter] said the sweetest thing when we were in Sundance, she was on stage with us and she surprised us by saying, “I didn’t realize we were making a movie. I thought we were just having fun and messing around.”
It was such a beautiful thing to learn the segment near the end is based on Cookie’s drawings, particularly when it becomes a marker of how time has passed during its production, so she was old enough…
Seth Scrivner: Totally. Cookie’s part was her idea l and those were her drawings and then I just animated them. It was kind of a nightmare thinking that the kids are growing up and their voices are changing [because I’d think] “Oh my god, we’ve got to finish this. The kids aren’t going to be cute anymore. They’re going to be adults, but in the end, we embraced all these changes and [thought] we can just add that in there. It was the same with Simone, who had her character that she animated and and drew herself and a lot of the time, the kids had their own vision, so we let them have their own moment. That’s why the movie, it bends and moves and goes around is because we didn’t really try to force the kids into one idea. We let them lead it.
I can see the story map in back of you that you actually include in the film as part of Seth’s office and besides being authentic, it completely goes with the rest of the film in terms of its squiggly lines and shapes. How did you make sense of all this?
Seth Scriver: There was a smaller version. When I was trying to make sense of everything, [I thought] I’ve got to make a little map here and we had the storyboards of each section, but then putting the sections [together] so that it flowed properly because it didn’t always flow. Sometimes it was like, “Wow, this feels so awkward having this story here” and then having to make it flow was a little bit of work. But just making that [map] was to try and make sense of it and to figure out where things were going to go, so I could remember too, because it was like so many years of working on this, sometimes I’d be like, “Where the hell is that part going?” So it would [make it] easier to find things. This [map in back of me] was my crazy version that I used to keep track of stuff, but then luckily we also had Alex or Danis and Sydney Cowper, our editor, help put it all into this spreadsheet so we knew where the names of files were. It was total hell doing that, but once it was done, it was like, “Oh, thank God we have this thing to look at.”
Was there anything that you realized as this was going on and it started to take on a life of its own That um any direction this took you might have been surprised by or something that you could glom on to sort of as something to hold on to?
Seth Scriver: Well, we had to add things sometimes because telling stories with your family often you know the context of who you’re talking about, but we realized sometimes no one will know what the hell this is about, so we added in that [National Film Board of Canada] officer so we could have extra information and extra jokes after the story’s told as a way to make it clearer. That was one tool that we used. There was also a funny thing where sometimes Pete would tell an amazing story and then after the story he would say, “Don’t put that one in the animation. I don’t want the kids to hear that one, but then luckily the kids grew up, so we could put in a couple of those wilder stories. That was another benefit of having the movie take so long.
Pete, when this is your biography in a sense, was there anything that was important for you that it reflected?
Seth Scriver: Pete was asked that question before and he was talking about how you enjoyed that it showed the way that that native people are treated by the police…
Pete Scriver: Yeah, everything in that story isn’t made up. It’s all real, and I totally forgot about some of those sections after a few years, [like] “Oh my god I forgot I told that story,” like the kid experiencing with the interaction with the police, people that aren’t community members in our community, like they just come to work [in the area] for a year or two years. Some of it I was a bit worried about because there were some cultural things there that I thought people living in the city wouldn’t understand, like the the old lady skinning a caribou inside her house [because she thought] if we turn it outside, it’d be frozen. That’s a pretty funny story.
It’s such a wild scene and it’s so great seeing you the two of you together now in one space. What’s this all been like for you to travel with this together over the past year?
Pete Scriver: It’s been quite fascinating. It’s been different. But um it’s kind of um I have to live with the eater. I get this done at home and then when I’m not out If I’m not traveling, I’ll I’m not getting it done.
Seth Scriver: Sometimes more of the kids will come down with Pete for some of the screenings that we’ve had, so we’ve had these mini family reunions every once in a while. And Pete hadn’t been back down in Toronto for 30 years, so that’s been pretty special for Pete to meet up with old friends in the neighborhood, the ones that are still alive. And what a better way to celebrate a family portrait film than to have these family reunions.
The other thing is that Pete’s been trying to retire for the last three years, but trying to find a replacement for him [has been difficult] because he’s pretty important at the nursing station where he lives. They’re going to have to hire a couple of guys and he’s basically made to go back to work because they can’t find anyone to replace him. So I think it’s good every time Pete comes down, it’s like, this is preparing the workplace where Pete works for, trying to find someone for him so that Pete can retire and chase caribou around.
“Endless Cookie” is now available to rent on Amazon or Apple TV.