“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On,” the micro-budgeted, partially animated indie starring Jenny Slate as the voice of an andromorphic shell (with shoes on), is a mega-watt charmer that has also become one of the summer’s sleeper hits. Now in over 800 theaters, it feels like a balm for these troubled times – it is gloriously cute but not totally sanded down. (This movie is A24 for families, and has all the requisites.
As much as the movie has a plot, it concerns Marcel (Slate), and his attempts to reunite his family. He was quickly whisked away from hiding in a socks drawer after hiding. (When the couple that lives in the house splits up, it causes chaos for the creatures who inhabited it. Marcel forms a connection with a documentary filmmaker who is renting the house (played, off-screen, by the director Dean Fleischer Camp) and that’s … pretty much it. From this simple premise, one of the year’s most beautiful (and most unexpectedly moving) features emerges.
talked to Camp about the movie’s seven-year journey to the big screen, resisting the urge to make Marcel edgy and how his next feature, a big budget retelling of Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch,”This is how it happened.
Original “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”Premiered in 2010 Do you have 10 years of experience in filmmaking?
No, we weren’t continuously working on it for 10 years. It was our seven-year-long work on it.
Yeah, let’s start when we first started pounding the pavement trying to get independent financing for it. If you include all those steps, any movie might take that long, I don’t know. It took us a long time to make this movie, partly because we were able to finance it ourselves and partly because it is unique. I’m not so sure that a movie has ever been made this way before. There’s a sense that we had to finish and lock a certain phase of production before moving on to the next one. Whereas a movie that was made with a more traditional route, you’d probably be doing all these things simultaneously.
We wrote and recorded the screenplay, for example. We were satisfied with the radio play we created. And we’d play it for producers, and they’d be like, “Oh, this drags or whatever.”That was for two-and-a half years. Then, towards the end, we moved to storyboarding with Kirsten Lepore, our animation supervisor. It took us literally one year to storyboard the entire movie and then test it with our audiences.
Once the boards are in place, you can then show it to other people and verify that it works. Once we were satisfied with the boards, we moved on to live-action production. The live-action was completed and we moved onto animation. There wasn’t a lot of rolling into the next production phase.
You were able to modify the sections as you go along.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Animation is a lengthy process. This is why animated films like Pixar and Disney have such high success rates. It allows you to constantly vet different pieces of it and change it if it’s not working. It’s essential to making something good that has such a technical process involved because something might really work in the audio, a joke might really land. And this is the most heartbreaking part of this process… And then when you film it, for some reason it doesn’t work anymore. Maybe it worked the first time it was storyboarded. And then it doesn’t work necessarily the same way when you get it into the right final.
Talk about your time working with the Chiodo Brothers. They are legends in stop motion/creature designing. “Killer Klowns from Outer Space”Or “Critters”Or something else.
They were so generous with their knowledge, experience and creative instincts that they helped to create the stop motion for the film. When they tweeted at me, I found my people. “Oh, my God, The Chiodo brothers were involved.”
The reason we first became friends with them was because Kirsten Lepore studied stop motion at CalArts. Stephen Chiodo was her teacher. As we were looking for someone to work with, we toured around various animation studios. She loved him. And I knew it. Eddie is more of an animator and Stephen more of a producer. Stephen, however, has such a speed to his curiosity and how much he loves stop motion. He’ll explore any weird lark with you because he’s just a lifelong student. And he’s curious. He knows how they’ve done things in the past but he also knows that this is a different type of movie and so he was really, really helpful. Sometimes, people with a high-profile status in their fields are reluctant to try something new or different. But they were always there.
This movie does have a very specific look – it’s got this lovely soft-focus feeling, it’s got a boxy aspect ratio, very naturalistic. How did you arrive at this visual aesthetic?
Bianca Cline, our cinematographer, was involved in a lot of the work. And I think it was a lot of exchanging references and watching movies, specifically the 1:55 aspect ratio decision came because I just felt like when you’re shooting Marcel, he kind of it like, if you just outlined him, he is a little square. It felt like this was becoming more difficult as we scouted the house. It was almost as if we were taking photos or scouting out new areas. Wow, there’s all this wasted space on the left and right, that wasn’t really helping the story. Because it was horizontal, it was more difficult to understand how small he really was. However, I found that compositions where you could see space above the head worked better. It seemed to contextualize him better.
Jenny talked about wrestling control. Jenny said that it was more like trying to maintain some control. What were some of the things you talked about and insisted upon that couldn’t be compromised when bringing the story to life on the big screen?
The idea for the project was born out of a short film that Jenny and me made together. We also wrote the character, which we did ourselves. When you have a viral video, you get all the meetings at the studios, but at these big studios, they’re not really interested in working with a 24-year-old kid who made a viral video. They’re not gonna put him in the director’s seat of a large franchise. Even though they were willing to put me in the position of director, they were more interested in Marcel and how they could make it a bigger tentpole franchise.
And that forced me to start thinking about well, what, it was clear that that wasn’t the right move. I was horrified at the way that this character was being developed. And I knew that it wasn’t right, because it was emphasizing the wrong things about Marcel in a way, like, he’s small and cute. I’ve always felt like those are secondary. Those are things that are appealing about him, but it’s secondary to who he is and the complexity and the heartbreak that is inherent in his life.
And I knew that those weren’t things that a studio who wants to partner him with John Cena, is really going to be interested in pursuing or exploring. So, I was able to see the studios and really get to know the character and what made me want to tell his tale.
How did you get Lesley Stahl?
We were extremely fortunate to meet Liz Holmes, a fantastic producer. “60 Minutes” – Sheri, who plays herself in the film, she’s a real “60 Minutes” producer. Lesley Stahl was able to receive an early cut of the animatic. And I think she related to the grandmother/grandchild relationship in it. She’s a grandmother herself ad wanted to do it. We were like This isn’t going to happen to anyone. It happened.
This movie is loved by many. What are you feeling? What’s it like seeing people have this response?
It’s been amazing. I don’t know if you’ve ever worked on something that was just sitting on a hard drive for seven years or for a very long time. But letting it finally opening to, sure, criticism or whatever, but also the expression of it in a wide way and to get to hear laughter at a theater and hear other people’s reactions to it has been totally moving and life-changing in the corniest way possible. It’s really, really special to me. And it’s been wonderful to release a movie that I feel good about, like so many people have said, you know, it’s like the perfect movie for this moment. It was seven years ago that we began making it. It’s not like we intended to do that. I don’t know that any movie is the perfect movie for the moment. However, I have been thinking a lot about. Wow, I’m really glad I’m not releasing “Human Centipede”This moment.
It’s a movie completely free of cynicism or “edginess.”It was hard not to try to make it? “cooler?”
I think we’re probably close to the same age and we grew up with cynicism and sarcasm as the dominant artistic comedic form. The “Daria”Years or whatever number of years. These things are my favorite. Although I believe that I did feel sarcastic and cynical growing up, it is possible. My brothers and I constantly harp on one another. And I believe that I truly matured as an adult when I felt it. This is actually a crutch. This is a self defense mechanism to protect yourself from becoming vulnerableIrony is something that is often overlooked. And it’s why it feels so good to do it when you’re in high school and you’re at your most vulnerable and awkward.
I feel like we made this movie knowing that hat Marcel wasn’t really a part of his world because he’s confident and self-possessed. And he doesn’t shy away from saying how he actually feels. It’s not like he’s totally Pollyanna or cheesy. He’s actually just blunt. And when he gets pissed off about stuff like when he’s like talking about not liking the commenters on the internet. He has that sarcastic tool, it’s not his first instinct and he definitely doesn’t use it to hide his real feelings.
Congratulations! “Lilo & Stitch.”How did this happen?
Honestly, it’s so early, I think I’m not allowed to talk about it at this juncture. It got leaked, I don’t think that wasn’t an intentional announcement. But you know, I’m a huge fan of the original and it means enough to me that I will work so hard to make it to get it right and to do it justice. It is still very early. Like I don’t even know how to answer a lot of those questions.
Stitch will likely not be in stop-motion. Do you want to work with computer animation?
Yeah, totally. Yes, absolutely. “Marcel” – the bugs are actually CG, which blows my mind every time I see it. The spiders, we went more stylized, but like the ladybug, for example, it’s so incredibly convincing and lifelike. I’m a friend of all different formats, but they’re all a tool. I wasn’t a strictly stop-motion person before Marcel. And I don’t intend to be after. They’re all tools in storytelling. And that’s the basis by which you have to make those decisions, I think.
Do you plan to consult with Chris Sanders on this?
Yes, it is. He must have been involved. I don’t know him personally, but obviously, it’s his creation.
“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”It is now in theatres
