Maddin's father Chas was blinded in one eye when his mother held him close to her as an infant and an open brooch pierced his eyelid. A similar event occurs in Maddin's third feature film, Careful.

I've never bought that cliché that you should never take people out of the narrative, take people out of that dramatic illusion. I'm more of a person who loves his grandmother. I'm thinking when a grandmother sits at the foot of your bed and tells you a bedtime story, you get absorbed into the story, you notice her style of telling a story. Some parts you should tell badly, other parts charmingly. You're totally sucked into the story. You've been scared, moved, engaged, and then every now and then you notice your grandmother has a dental whistle or a nose hair or that she's getting pretty wrinkly and that she's sitting on your foot, and then you go back into the story. I'm one of those filmmakers that likes to show the grandmother.