Two decades ago, stop-motion animator Adam Elliot burst onto the scene with his wonderful short Harvie Krumpet. Following a man cursed with lifelong bad luck, it earned him an Oscar and introduced the world at large to Elliot’s wicked sense of humor, massive heart, and singular animation style. A little ugly, a little beautiful, wholly of itself, Elliot’s stop-motion work set itself apart from the worlds of Henry Selick and Nick Park. His clay creations––misshapen, lovingly rendered people––live lives that are equally comedic and tragic. His work always veers into the existential, mirroring his own life experiences.
Calling his work “Clayography,” Elliot likes to think of it as animation for adults. With death, disease, and calamity, the films run the gamut of human existence. While he doesn’t soften the realities of things like obesity or addiction or death itself, there’s a warmth, a hilarity to the disaster that allows for it to be taken in by all ages. In addition to the handmade, textured style he employs (nothing is made from anything but raw materials), it’s this quality that sets him well apart from animated contemporaries. Where Pixar infantilizes deep concepts like death or race or equality––rightfully so; their audiences are, in fact, children––Elliot’s work forces the audience to engage head-on.
Twenty years after that career-altering Oscar win, Elliot is back on the awards stage with the tremendous Memoir of a Snail. His second feature finds the director exploring many proclivities: death, addiction, and otherness, this time tracking the life of a would-be stop-motion filmmaker, Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook). We meet Grace at the end of a life––not her own, but her best (re: only) friend Pinky, an eccentric, elderly woman. As she lets her beloved snail Sylvia go, she sits in Pinky’s backyard and recounts her life story. Grace and her brother Gilbert enjoyed a poverty-stricken but loving life with their widowed, alcoholic father, a former Parisian street-performer, until his untimely passing. Separated by the state and placed into different foster homes, Grace’s life tumbles into a series of misfortunes. With only her pet snails to keep her company, Grace finds comfort in overeating and hoarding, her spiral rendered by Elliot with loving empathy.
As depressing as all of this sounds, Elliot’s trademark oddball humor provides a balm to engaging with these dark, innately human struggles. His “blobby,” clay creations are some of the most human characters you’ll ever see onscreen.
Ahead of the Oscars, I sat down with Adam Elliot for a deep dive into portraying disability and disfigurement in an empathetic way, coping with mental illness, persisting in a “dead-medium,” and so much more.
The Film Stage: I adore the fact that your work often circles back to this Kierkegaard quote: “Life can only be understood backwards, but you must live it forwards.” You used it in your short Uncle years ago, and then you used it again here in Memoir of a Snail. Was there a lightbulb moment where you were like, “Oh, this quote applies so perfectly to the life of a snail”?
Adam Elliot: It’s actually one of my favorite quotes, and yes: I’ve reused it because I love it so much. And when I used it in my student film––I love quotes, I collect quotes, I’m always quoting quotes, and I came across that when I was in my mid-20s and it was such a profound revelation. But in some ways it’s quite a trite quote, isn’t it? It’s quite a simplistic quote, but I still think it is profound in its simplicity, and it’s something I certainly try to adhere to with my own life. I’m a worrier; I worry. I am on the OCD spectrum. I obsess about everything and I waste so much energy and time worrying about the past. So I’m always trying to remind myself: forget yesterday. It’s about today, tomorrow. And so with this film, I did always want to put in a couple of quotes that I like, and this one kept coming back to me because it did seem to be just right for the film.
It did seem to have a real importance to Grace as a way of her breaking free of her addictions and dealing with trauma and loss, and that she needs to purge and move forward to become a whole person again. So yes: of course I wished I’d written that quote. It’s not my quote, and I always tell people it’s not my quote––it’s Søren Kierkegaard’s quote. I think I might’ve heard it when I was in high school, but then it really struck me when I was in my mid-20s. But yeah: I worried, actually, it was too simplistic for this film. I think as I’m getting older and more philosophical and existentialist, I thought, “Oh, no––it’s not profound enough.” But it turns out young people particularly are quoting it on Letterboxd and in social media. To them it’s a revelation; I think, to older audiences, well: we’ve all heard it before. [Laughs]
Your work often deals in disability or disfigurement or disease. In Harvie Krumpet, he’s living with Tourettes and addiction. Here, Grace has a cleft palate. She deals with obesity and hoarding. Animation has historically shown these sorts of things in a mocking light. But what I love about your work is that there’s such an obvious empathy for them. It’s never leering. What does it mean to you to present a sort of representation for folks who may be living with these various conditions?
Oh, sure. Great question. Look: it’s very important because these characters are my family and friends and I’m respectful of them, and there’s a lot of sincerity that goes into the writing, and I want the representations of them to be as accurate as possible. So for example: my last film, Mary and Max, was about my real pen pal in New York, and I really wanted to make sure I got his version of what it’s like to have Asperger’s as accurately as possible. So he was my guide. I spoke to psychologists and experts in Neurodivergence and the Spectrum. And again: with this film, it’s based on my real friend who was born with a cleft palate, so Grace’s childhood mimics the experiences she had. And so yeah: I’m fascinated by the human mind. I’m fascinated by mental illness. I’m fascinated by the things that we wish we didn’t have.
And I think what I’m trying to say with all my films––and it’s only in retrospect that you really start to psychoanalyze yourself––that I think I’m trying to say is that we all have flaws. We all have things we wished we didn’t have. And a lot of them aren’t flaws. They’re actually things that should be celebrated about ourselves. And it’s about embracing your flaws, but also other people’s. I mean, I certainly have my fair share of things I wished I didn’t have. It’s quite a long list, but now that I’m in my 50s I’ve learned to accept a lot of them. There’s a few. I wish I had hair. [Laughs]
To that point, something I often think about is how collecting is such a human trait. I mean, behind me you see a ton of movies, and those are only two shelves of many all over my apartment. I know that this was sort of based on discoveries you had made about your father’s hoarding after he had passed and you were going through the garage. And I’m wondering: what do you think causes the jump from collecting into full-on hoarding? Where do you think that impulse comes from?
Psychologically––well, according to psychologists––it’s when shame kicks in. For the hoarder, it’s when it becomes a problem and it becomes a dysfunction. So extreme hoarders rarely invite people around to their homes––they’re shameful of what is inside––and more often than not, extreme hoarders have suffered a high degree of trauma at some point in their lives. And often it’s the loss of a child or a sibling or a twin, and that the hoarding becomes a coping mechanism to deal with that. Not in every case, but more often than not severe hoarders have had something really traumatic happen to them, and it’s a lot to do with loss and that they can’t bear any more loss in their lives. So they collect all this stuff and that becomes sort of a comfort zone around them––a buffer and a shield.
And I know, for my father, he battled depression throughout his life. He never felt comfortable in his own skin. And I see now, in retrospect, that all this stuff he had was some way for him to go and sit in amongst it all and feel protected, almost like a womb. It became this sort of comfort zone. And I wish, in retrospect, I’d actually seen that. But it’s only through analysis and research that I’ve come to realize that. So yeah: I mean, there’s nothing wrong with collecting. I celebrate collecting. But it’s when that becomes dysfunctional and something you wish you didn’t have in your life.
We’ve been going heavy here for quite a bit, so I want to pivot to something lighter. Your characters have an unbelievable amount of personality. The people in your films look so absurd, but they also feel like people that you would pass on the street. Specifically, the one that I keep coming back to––one I think is a fan favorite for this movie––is Pinky. I feel like I’ve met so many older, fearless women in a bar who have stories to tell and they never get that opportunity. Was there a “Pinky” in your life?
Yeah, I know a couple actually. I’ve always been fascinated by older men, older women who’ve let go of a fear of embarrassment. They’re free spirits and they’re somebody that we aspire to think, “Oh, if only I could have that carefree attitude.” And a lot of people get that when they get older. A lot of people don’t, but Pinky’s based on three people. So there’s a bit of my mother in there, but also a woman I met at an animation festival many years ago at a bar. She was telling me her life story. She was very colorful, visually. She told me that she was one of the founders of the Burning Man Festival here in America. And she told me once she played ping pong with Fidel Castro. I thought, “You’re kidding.” I didn’t believe her at first, but it was true! And so I collect these anecdotes.
And also there’s a woman in my apartment building back in Melbourne whose family started the Ghirardelli Chocolate Empire in San Francisco. She fell in love with an Australian, moved to Australia, the family lost a fortune or something; I don’t know. She didn’t end up with much money, but she’s led a colorful life as well. She swears, she hits people with a walking stick, and I just love that flamboyance and eccentricity. And actually my next film I’ve just started writing––because Pinky’s been such a successful character––I really now want to tell the story of an older person. Not just for comedic value, but this character will have dimension and tragic parts of their life as well.
The people that bring your characters to life, the great casts that you have, especially in this movie––Jackie Weaver as Pinky and Sarah Snook as Grace––they’re giving such full-bodied, lived-in performances. My typical beat as a film journalist is action cinema. There’s been a lot of talk over the years about how there isn’t a Stunt Oscar. I think the same argument could be made for a Voice Acting Oscar. What are some of the challenges that come with having to direct a performance knowing it’s going to be V.O.?
Yeah, look: it is very challenging. And the wonderful thing that just happened this week was back in Australia, Sarah and Jackie both won Best Actor and Supporting Actress in their categories at our version of the Oscars, the AACTAs. And that’s the first time that’s ever happened. I’m sure there were some disgruntled nominees who were up against them, but I’m glad that happened because it proves that it is about the performance, not about costume and makeup and what you see, but what you hear is what’s important as well. And we spent hundreds of hours with all my actors individually trying to get the most authentic, believable performance that had truth to it. And I use that word “verisimilitude” a lot because that’s what I’m after, is that moment in the film where you feel it is absolute truth. And so what we did with Sarah: we brought in one of the snails, Sylvia, and put it down next to her and used that as a device for her to talk to the snail.
And that’s how we got that beautiful intimacy and quietness, self-reflection and introspection. That’s how it’s such a convincing performance, even though it’s blobs of clay. And I think that’s what confounds people a lot, too, is they walk out of the cinema feeling like they’ve seen a live-action film, but they know that they’ve just been tricked. It was all a suspension of disbelief. And I love that; I love the beauty of animation. You can really manipulate your audience and heighten an emotion. And that’s my aim with every film, to make them laugh, make them cry, humor, pathos, comedy, tragedy, light, dark. It’s that duality. I love storytelling where you can push a multitude of buttons on the person and exhaust them by the end, which is what I want. I want them to be an emotional wreck by the end of the film.
This is kind of a personal question for me and, by extension, my partner too. We saw you at the Museum of the Moving Image when you did your screenings there, and you talked a bit about how you were told years and years ago, earlier in your career, that you’re pursuing a dead medium. That’s an existential thing I have in my head all the time as a writer. Everything’s pivoting to video, then it’s pivoting to AI. No one’s reading anymore. And then my partner works in television, and those jobs are drying up. When you’re told something like that, that you’re walking towards a dead end, where does the patience and strength come from to persist?
I trust my instincts, but also I think a bit of healthy naivety helps too, because I go back to this thing my screenwriting lecturer taught me. She told us in the first week of film school 29 years ago, she said, “I don’t care what you animate, computer, clay, plastering, whatever. You can animate your own excrement for all I care as long as you tell a good story.” She said, “The audience will always forgive bad animating, bad editing, bad sound, but they’ll never forgive a bad story.” That was quite a profound revelation to me as a young person, and so I’ve always stuck to that. It’s like: as long as the story’s strong, it doesn’t matter. My budget is so low and pathetic, it doesn’t matter. We can’t afford walking or as much talking as we’d like in the film.
The audience will forgive all of that. And as long as the stories feel as polished as possible, as long as it’s universal, as long as it’s connecting, then you’ll be okay. Even with my drawings: I love drawing and I love using drawing as an experiment, so I’ll draw something that I love and I’ll show it to someone as a test and they won’t respond. I’ll say, “Okay, why aren’t they responding to that drawing?” Because it’s not resonating to them. So I’ll redraw it and do it in a way that’s more empathetic or engaging. So it’s just hoping and trusting that, as human beings, we do need storytellers. We need storytelling in our lives. I love that quote: “Storytelling is equipment for living.” I think we tell stories every day to each other. It’s a way that we cope, but also the way we give the confidence, courage, and conviction to keep going.
I mean, when we started this film, AI was not a thing. Now we’ve finished the film and AI is threatening all our lives, and already, as you say, jobs are drying up. I’ve got friends who are illustrators who are losing work to AI. So it is worrying, but I keep going back to the fact that the arts community is really reacting strongly against AI, which is great. I was lucky enough to have dinner with Guillermo del Toro a few weeks ago, and he’s so anti-AI and he’s forming groups to lobby against it. So I think there’s a strong reaction against it. And I think, unfortunately, there aren’t as many regulations at the moment, but actors, of course, had the actor strike a few years ago. They’ve got contracts now which are very rigid and explicit in that their identities can’t be stolen or reused. So yeah: the battle has begun, but I think stop-motion is okay for the moment. But similarly, writing and poets and everybody, it’s like: why does AI have to attack the arts first? Why can’t AI attack politics or something else? Used-car salesmen? [Laughs]
I keep coming back to the hope that the desire for handmade products, whatever they may be, wins out. I think that what’s so special about your work is that you can see the brush strokes, the fingerprints, you can see the work that went into it. It gives your film so much more personality than if it was just smoothed-over by a computer.
It’s the same reason that knitting is as popular as ever. Basket-weaving, bread-making, bookstores are booming. People are buying DVDs again. We are releasing the film on Blu-ray. I never thought that would happen, but there is certainly a greater appreciation, as you say, for things that are made by human beings.
Something that’s as human as anything is our relationship to death. Death is almost an invisible friend across your work, the thing that your characters are confronting. I find that fascinating because, on the surface, your films are so light and funny, but then when you get into them, they’re these heavy, lovely objects. Your earlier work could be seen as a little more bleak. This film, though, has a happy ending. How has your relationship with death changed as you’ve grown older?
I certainly have an obsession with death. I’m always thinking of my own death. I know Woody Allen had a constant obsession with death. Not that I’m comparing myself to Woody Allen [Laughs] but look: I certainly, I love collecting [stories about] eccentric deaths, funny deaths. I think there’s a fear of death, rightly so, but I’m agnostic––or an atheist, actually. I think death should not be feared and death should be talked about, and it’s often taboo. Like in superhero films: there’s a lot of death but it’s never talked about. It’s never explored what happens next. So my next film’s actually going to be about death even more. And what happens as you get older? What are your thoughts on death? And it is going to be a lot more existential. I love that other quote: “Without the dark, the light has no meaning.”
So you really need, again, that duality of comedy and tragedy. Particularly with comedy, there’s that belief that laughter is a release of tension. And if you have a very dark scene followed by a scene with a lot of levity, then the humor works better. I think because there’s that release of tension and death can be amusing; death can be enjoyable and funny. I love people’s final words, and often they’re not profound or kind or generous. They’re actually random and stupid and meaningless. So I love that irony particularly. I love irony. I love absurdity. I love all forms of comedy, really. I do set out to primarily make comedies, but they end up becoming very dark. And getting back to your question: I certainly now prefer happier endings for my films because I’m preferring happy endings when I watch films. When I was younger and full of angst, I watched all of David Lynch and all that. I despised happy endings, despised a Disney ending.
Whereas now it’s like, you know what? I think the audience life’s difficult enough; give them a happy ending. But then again, I don’t want it to be a Disney ending with every loose end tied up. I want there to be ambiguities, things that aren’t quite resolved, because that’s life. Life’s never fully resolved before you die; there’s always things that are messy and not tied up in a neat bow. So I try to reflect that in the films too. For example: I get a lot of emails from young gay men. What happened to Ben? Where’s Ben? Forget Ben. He’ll be fine; he’ll find a way. Why does everything have to be resolved?
We were talking about persistence earlier. You won your first Oscar two decades ago and you’ve just been nominated again. How surreal is that to be nominated again after all this time? What have you learned as a filmmaker in those 20 years or so?
I think I’ve learned that the Oscars are just a big TV show. There’s so much hype. The first time I went with Harvie, and look: we won, which was wonderful, but I remember walking into the Kodak Theater and realizing it was all smoke and mirrors. And yes, it can change your career and people suddenly think that you have this Midas Touch and you know what you’re doing and you’re full of confidence. But I felt like a fraud for a long time. I felt like I didn’t deserve it or wasn’t worthy, but now it’s like: you know what? I did deserve it. I worked really hard, and it’s a cross between a beauty pageant and a lottery.
We’re not going to win in three weeks. We know that Wild Robot’s going to smother everybody and good on them; good on them. They made a great film and they’ve spent millions of dollars lobbying. We have no money to lobby, really. So it’s never fair. I meet all these filmmakers who are nominated or have lost and oh, they take it all so seriously. And it’s like: you know what? It’s just to see the fact that you’re nominated as a wonderful thing that’s happened, and use that nomination to help get your next project up because that’s what it’s all about. That’s what I’m focused on at the moment: the next film. How can I use this Oscar nomination to get money for my next film? Because I’m a producer as well. So I have to think about finance. My producer and I often call the Oscar the “Golden Crowbar” because it opens doors and it certainly helps. But if your aim and ambition is to win an Oscar, then you’re never going to win one.
Memoir of a Snail is now in theaters, available digitally, and comes to Blu-ray on March 25.