CBC Ottawa All In A Day Interview Von Allan on Revisiting Artwork for Documentary Film

When I was invited by filmmaker Megan Durnford to participate in the documentary film “I Am Still Your Child”, one of the unique aspects of the film is that Megan wanted to include some of my artwork from my first graphic novel “the road to god knows…”, originally published in 2009. I’m proud of that book, but the artwork is rough. Megan’s request made me pretty damn nervous but we worked out a solution that we were both happy with.

This interview with CBC Ottawa’s Alan Neal on the drive-home radio program “All In A Day” delves into all of that and more.
You can listen to the interview by clicking here, playing it using the audio player below, or you can read the lightly edited transcript of the interview just below the audio player.

Lightly Edited Transcript

Alan Neal: A new documentary called “I Am Still Your Child” opens with two powerful statistics. One in five Canadians experience mental illness. 60% of them have children. It kind of sets up the film telling the story of children with parents who’ve struggled with mental illness. Local comic book artist Von Allan is one of the people featured in the film.

Von Allan (Excerpt from the Documentary Film): “We came to Ottawa, I think, for my mom to try to get more education and sort of change her circumstances. My mom was very ill, mentally ill, which is something I didn’t quite realize when I was very small. But we were struggling with poverty. She just declared bankruptcy and was going through bankruptcy. So, welfare, bankruptcy, schizophrenia, all of that together. This was tough stuff. Later on, I started to realize that I wanted to draw. And I really felt that drawing something that was close to me would be a good way to start.”

Alan Neal: And he did draw something very close to him, a graphic novel that drew from his childhood experiences titled “the road to god knows…”, which we talked about here on the program back in 2009, I believe. Years later, this documentary has given Von Allan the opportunity to revisit both that artwork and his story.

He’s with me now in studio. Hi there.

Von Allan: Hey.

Alan Neal: Obviously you were familiar with telling your story when “the road to god knows…” came out. You were very open about it then, too. Was this something different once a documentary filmmaker comes in and says, “now will you retell your story with me being in control of it?”

Von Allan: Yeah, it really was. It took a while to get used to it. And it was a strange experience to do. I had moved on. So I had done the graphic novel, it was fine. And it was my first book so it’s kind of rough. I had moved on to other projects. I think it was about a six year gap, between when Megan, the director, first contacted me to when the book was actually published. So at that point, I was like, “Whoa.” And then when she said, “we want to talk to you about your story about the situation,” everything you just described. And we want to use some of the artwork in the documentary. I kind of went, “I’m not so sure about that. It’s kind of scary for me.” So to make a long story short, they chose images that they wanted to use and they allowed me to redraw them.

Alan Neal: And was that what was scary? I mean, people may hear that and think, “Oh, what was scary? He doesn’t like his artwork as much from 2009. Was that really… what was scary?”

Von Allan: In some ways, yeah, because I’ve had such an up and down experience with art. Certainly talking about my mom, and talking about my childhood and what have you is not something I find all that easy to do. And it is weird when there’s cameras in your house, sound recorders in your house, and everybody’s great. And I have talked to Megan quite a bit about this since particularly now that the film is out. I’m not in control of it, I had to put a lot of faith and trust in her that I’m not going to look like an idiot. I’m not going to look insensitive, that it’s going to come across well. And it’s also going to work because there’s two other young women involved in the film as well. So it’s going to intercut everything really well. But I find it always tough. I was poor and, you know, my mom died at 48. So she died pretty young. I have a lot of wistful “what ifs,” that maybe she could have beaten it and she didn’t and sort of gotten herself into a better place. And the reality is, as she had gotten older, things got worse, mainly because — and one of the things with mental illness for a lot of people is — the illness itself is a struggle. And then, if you’re younger, your body… you have these physical situations that make it tough, too. So my mom’s health, physical health deteriorated on top of all the mental stuff, the schizophrenia that she was dealing with. And my feeling to this day is that that all sort of became a perfect storm that caught up with her. I’ll never know exactly what happened, but it was probably a simple heart attack. And that was it.

But too young to die and talking about it on camera is not an easy thing. That combination of, you know, visiting the artwork, revisiting the artwork, wondering “what if the graphic novel had been a bit stronger?” It did fine. But I mean, you know, I am a very different artist than I [am] now. How I approach things is different. So there are some wistful “what ifs” on that. And the story itself.

Alan Neal: I’ll come back to artwork in a moment, but were there elements of the story that you found yourself telling on film that you were not able to address back in 2009? Were there ‘pieces’ that you found coming to the surface that had not come to the surface before?

Von Allan: Yeah, in some ways, for sure. Because one of the major differences between me doing the book and the film experience is Megan had questions. And she had questions and she was pretty specific about it. So it wasn’t just me rambling or me in control of the script. She wanted to talk about very specific things. And that was new for me.

I have been interviewed a lot. But being in a situation where somebody is asking fairly probing, pretty sensitive, but pretty probing questions about aspects of my childhood. A good example is “how did I find dealing with friends and what have you?” Well, I fictionalized a lot of that in the story. But the reality of it was, I was a pretty shy kid. I was pretty ashamed of our living situation and my mom’s situation. I didn’t understand my mom’s situation all that well. So talking about that and getting into that, and some of that didn’t make it into the film completely. But that was hard.

And they filmed a lot. I mean, one of the amazing things about this is my screen time is like 12 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever. But the reality is they were at my place twice on two separate filming occasions for probably six hours each time. So 11 or 12 hours of film. So we talked about a lot of different things. And it was also interesting to see in the final screening; I hadn’t seen it until just Friday night, this past Friday night. What made it in, what wasn’t in, you know, and how it all came together. It’s a very unique experience.

Alan Neal: Is there any part of it that you’re not comfortable with how it was edited? Obviously, editing choices have to be made.

Von Allan: Absolutely.

Alan Neal: Sometimes, though, editing choices are made to form a narrative, too. Were there things where you’re like, “oh, that’s not quite what I meant?”

Von Allan: It’s hard. I think the only thing I was sensitive to is I can babble and I can talk quite a bit about it. It’s a shorter film. It’s 45 minutes. So certainly, there are times where I wish we could have gone into more. More context. I think one of my takeaways — and it’s certainly a part of the film — is poverty and how that affects you. Dealing with mental illness, dealing with trying to pay bills. But for my life, and I think for some of the other people involved, and particularly a lot of other people in general who are dealing with this stuff and kids, that’s a huge aspect of it. And if I had a very mild criticism is it would have been awesome for more of that to be [covered in the film]. But it might have been a different film if it was done. It would have had a different focus. All of a sudden, you’re bringing these financial things into it. So, no, I think they did an amazing job with it.

I probably can’t even stress the financial aspects. With my mom, the welfare stuff, I wonder sometimes as an adult — because I was a kid — is what was it like to have the self-awareness and said, “I can’t make it? I need help.” And I have to go to the government. I have to do this. And I know that in terms of our extended family — that I’m not close to — that was a major sore spot.

One of the things that’s not in the film that I remember vividly is my mom having to ask family for financial help. And instead of trusting my mom and going, “here, Judy, here’s 100 bucks, here’s whatever you need.” They made decisions for her. They were like, “no, no, no, we don’t trust you with money. We’re gonna… if you need money, you must need groceries. We’ll buy you groceries.”

We had bills to pay. Actually food at that time might not have been an issue. That kind of thing. And what that does to somebody’s dignity. She also had to explain it to me. “This is why you don’t have the greatest school clothes. This is why you don’t have all the great supplies that other kids have.” I went to Glebe [Collegiate Institute]. I went to Mutchmor [Public School] and Glashan [Public School] in Ottawa. So there were some relatively affluent kids. It was very apparent to me that I wasn’t one of them. And for my mom… I’m a stupid kid. You are just sort of aware of what you don’t have or what other people have. And if it was now, I would love to know… I think it would have been very tough on my mom to have to make those types of sacrifices and choices.

Alan Neal: Before I let you go, you mentioned redoing the art. And I still remember elements of “the road to god knows…”, where the scene where the main character is floating in the sky and all these things are swirling around her, conveying how her brain works at that point, or how she’s dealing with what she’s been going through.¹ Were there major changes to the artwork? Or was it just a matter of — did you change the actual way you portrayed an image like that?

Von Allan: It’s a tricky. It’s hard to answer is because Megan had chosen what images she wanted to use. So she said “page 30,” “this panel on page 35.” So I knew what she wanted and I felt I was obligated to maintain that. So what I tried to do was use the page as a thumbnail and basically not change the compositional approach, not change anything like that, but just approach the page, the redrawn page, with better craftsmanship.

And it was kind of freaky because I hadn’t really revisited the book at all. I sort of put it aside. And I think a lot of artists might pull out an old sketch book, sort of flip [through it], but you don’t get an opportunity to compare the art literally side by side. And that, particularly after I had done it and started looking at them side by side was pretty remarkable. I wanted to keep the tone of it the same. I wanted to keep most of the composition the same, but I wanted to approach it with better craft. And I think that’s what I was able to do. But it was weird.

Alan Neal: I’m encouraging people to check this out. The documentary aired over the weekend, but you can still stream it online. It’s called “I Am Still Your Child” by Megan Durnford. We will tweet out the link from CBC All In A Day. Von Allan is one of the people featured in it. Thanks so much for coming.

Von Allan: That’s fantastic. Thank you.

Alan Neal: Von Allan, comic book artist based here in Ottawa. Once again, the documentary, “I Am Still Your Child” is streaming online right now. And we will tweet out that link from CBC All In A Day.

Footnote

1This is fascinating, because I don’t know what Alan is referencing, but this scene wasn’t in “the road to god knows…”. I would love to know what the source is, so if anyone reading this knows, please contact me!