The Oscar-winning animated charmer The Originals recalls Brooklyn in the 70s, when kids played in the streets and neighbors knew each other

If you grew up in a certain part of Brooklyn in the 70s and played a game called Hot Peas and Butter with neighborhood kids, you might still have welts to show.

Like the Oscar-winning animated short The original shows that in old fashioned asides, the “winner” had to beat other kids with a belt.

“Most of our games came with pain,” one of the characters in the true story recalls with some fondness. The tone for the film comes from the memories of a group of friends who have known each other “since we were babies” in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens: Matteo Ruggiero, Carmine Ruggiero, Anthony DeMaio, Sal Alioto and Matteo Alioto. The short film was directed by Cristina Costantini and Alfie Koetter, a young couple who used to live in a building in Carroll Gardens owned by Matty “Square” Ruggiero.

“We met our landlord the day he got out of jail,” Costantini said at a recent Q&A for the film at XTR Studios in Los Angeles. “We were fascinated by it [Matty] and the stories he would tell us. He was one of the best story tellers we have ever met. He made us laugh every day as we sat with him on the sidewalk sharing these incredible stories. And we wanted to figure out how to capture that and bring it to life.”

When the pandemic hit, Costantini was a well-known filmmaker Mucho Mucho Amor and science exhibition, and her husband Alfie, an architect, decided to “combine their strengths and their weaknesses” to turn the soundtrack into a short film. The title The original comes from what Matty Square and friends called themselves in their Italian-American enclave in the 1970s.

“One of the difficult problems to overcome was that there was no archival material to back up Matty’s stories. And as Christina said, Matty is a great storyteller who tends to exaggerate,” Koetter said. “And even if we had pictures of those moments in his life that he told us about, I don’t think they would match the way he told the stories. And so animation and modeling gave us the ability to stretch the truth, change relationships and make things better than they really were in a way that I think in hindsight was the only way, the way to tell stories about how he and his friends are respected. .”

The original is available on newyorker.com and you can watch the full 10 minute short film below. It begins with Cristina and Alfie building a realistic model of the street they lived on in Carroll Gardens out of blades of grass growing in the cracks in the pavement. Then the animated story unfolds itself, with the guys talking about how things used to be.

“Imagine a whole block where 75 to 80 percent of the children speak Italian,” one of them describes a kind of communal life in which everyone knew each other. Another says: “It was an open concept where mothers and grandmothers would grab their chairs at night and sit outside while we played in the street.” It was tight.

They remember the endless games they played outside: Bukball, Cracktop, Ringolevio, Old Mother Witch, Slapball and something called Skelsies. And of course hot peas and butter.

“Alfie drew every frame himself,” Costantini tells Deadline about the footage. He was also responsible for character design, set design and art direction, with Alex Booth directing animation and Jason Kirchner doing additional animation. Costantini wrote the film. The film is produced by XTR, Muck Media, Two Beans, Test Pattern Media and Shy Kids.

The original is full of humor – one of the boys remarks about their group: “We basically look the same, but in different forms.” Barrel Matteo Alioto jokes: “I have the fat gene.” Beneath the surface, for viewers who want to get there, it is also a sociological exploration of a time and a way of life that has disappeared. Matty Square came out of prison to find the old neighborhood “drastically changed.” Well, say the Originals guys, Carroll Gardens is populated by yuppies who don’t recognize each other on the street.

“I don’t know who lives on my street,” says Matty, “except my neighbors. But other than that, I don’t know these people.”

There is a certain nostalgia behind their musings, but the men also admit that many neighborhood kids used to lead lives of crime, especially those who used to hang out on the streets instead of studying at home.

“The neighborhood was good — it was good in some ways, but looking back, I’d say it was bad in other ways,” says Matty Square. “There were many murders, many murders… But that’s how it was in those days.” Organized crime attracted many children, many of whom ended up behind bars.

The Originals’ wish was that the neighborhood could somehow go back to what it was (the good parts at least), where everyone knew each other and hung out in that communal way. The boys’ presence influenced Boston-raised Koetter and Milwaukee-born Costantini and their perspective on social relationships.

“I wasn’t raised to be neighborly,” Koetter admitted, describing Boston as “a hotbed of belief in witchcraft and that your neighbors are up to no good… Saying hello scared me at first, but by.” Matty, I realized how important it is not only to say hello to your neighbor, but to build a community and understand that a community is not only made up of people who have always been there, but people who are willing to participate and get involved.”

Her husband embarked on a new path, says Costantini, after seeing the example of Matty and the Originals.

“Alfie has changed quite a bit since I first met him,” she said. “Now he’s walking around — I don’t think he’s running for mayor for anything in particular — and he’s greeting everybody.”