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00:00Hello everyone and welcome to Deadlines, the nominee's panel for Memoir of a Snail.
00:04I'm joined today by writer-director Adam Elliott.
00:07Welcome.
00:08Hello, Ryan, and I've brought my little friend here, Grace, who'll be joining us as well.
00:16And before we get fully started, let's see that clip.
00:21That's when I first met Pinky.
00:26I saw her returning books into a rubbish bin.
00:29She thought it was the return shoot, and had been doing it for months.
00:35Excuse me?
00:39She was mortified when I explained.
00:42Ah, poo.
00:44Don't worry.
00:45I won't turn you in.
00:46Oh, thank you, dear.
00:48Bless your cotton socks.
00:50What's your name?
00:52Grace Puddle.
00:53Oh.
00:54I'm Pinky.
00:57Just Pinky.
00:58Like Cher.
00:59Or Liberace.
01:00Or Prince.
01:01Casanova.
01:02Popeye.
01:03People call me Pinky because of this.
01:04Lost at dancing in Barcelona.
01:13I would say my favorite part of this film is just any time they show the past of Pinky.
01:32Yeah, she certainly steals the limelight quite often, yeah.
01:40But first things first, I want to talk about the inspirations for Grace Puddle.
01:45Where did some of the inspirations for that character come from?
01:48Yeah, well, Grace is sort of an amalgamation of a lot of people, and also myself.
01:54Primarily, she's based on a very good friend of mine who was born with a cleft palate,
02:01and as a little girl, had a lot of operations on her mouth, and was quite disfigured.
02:08And unfortunately, at school, was bullied and teased.
02:12So she had a very traumatic childhood.
02:15Yet now, she's a very confident, well-adjusted, in fact, she's quite an extrovert.
02:22And she's, you know, she's the life of the party.
02:25She's actually first to take all their clothes off.
02:28She's such a different person.
02:30And what fascinated me was, how did she transform?
02:34How did she get over that trauma?
02:36Or did she actually get over it at all?
02:38How did she cope?
02:39What coping mechanisms did she have?
02:42And, you know, in some ways, that was really the beginnings of it all.
02:49I mean, the hoarding came later.
02:52Pinky came later.
02:53It was really all stemming from this very traumatic experience my friend had.
03:00And was your friend also pretty obsessed with snails?
03:03Well, now she's actually, I wouldn't say she's a hoarder.
03:07I'd say she's an extreme collector.
03:10And she's filled her home with, she loves, you know, taxidermy, gilded frames.
03:20You know, her home is stunning, but it is full to the brim.
03:24And she's certainly an eccentric character.
03:28She's very lovable, very funny as well.
03:31In many ways, she's more like Pinky, actually, now I think about it.
03:35But, yeah, it's more her childhood that I was interested in.
03:39It's a very interesting exploration of kind of how someone goes from being one way to another.
03:47Especially Grace, how she does kind of change throughout the film.
03:53Because you do experience a lot of her traumatic past, but still with a very humorous outlook at it.
04:01Can you talk a little bit about kind of infusing that humor into the story as well?
04:06Yeah, well, I certainly wanted to really inflict a lot of pain on Grace.
04:12You know, as a protagonist, she really does suffer.
04:15I drag her through the mud.
04:17I'm quite cruel to her as a writer.
04:19But I felt that she needed to be so that when the moments of levity came along,
04:24the moments of comedy and humor and warmth, they were really powerful and potent.
04:29And I love that quote, without the dark, the light has no meaning.
04:33So, you know, these moments of warmth and humor are fleeting.
04:40And, of course, I don't want to give away the ending.
04:42But she is rewarded for all this pain and suffering.
04:46And the thing, too, about Grace, she is a survivor.
04:49She's not a very proactive person.
04:52But she certainly always hopes there's a, you know, as I say in the film, her glass is half full, not empty.
05:01And she's always looking for silver linings, despite the horrific things I do to her.
05:09Voice actress-wise, Sarah Snook, absolutely incredible as Grace.
05:16Obviously very different from what most people think of her when they think of Sarah Snook and they think succession.
05:23Very different character here.
05:26How did that casting come about?
05:29Yeah, well, look, Sarah, you know, she's one of a whole, you know, group of wonderful female Australian actors,
05:38you know, the likes of Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Margot Robbie, you know,
05:44and they all live here in Australia and radiate out to the rest of the world.
05:48So, you know, I was in a very luxurious position of sort of picking who would be best.
05:54But I chose Sarah because she really ticked all the boxes.
05:58She has a beautiful quietness.
06:03She's very, you know, there's no ego or, you know, giant, you know, she's a very quiet person.
06:13She's very humble.
06:15And, you know, as many of these ingredients as you can find with an actor that has a simpatico with the character,
06:22it's really helpful because it means there's less, well, not less acting,
06:26but, you know, it's not as much of a stretch for the actor to become this character.
06:31And I really didn't want Sarah to put on a voice.
06:34I just wanted her natural speaking voice.
06:38You know, there's a shyness there I really liked.
06:43So, yeah, she was always the obvious choice.
06:45And we were so relieved we could get her and the timing was right because she'd just come off Succession
06:52and she was about to do a big Broadway show.
06:55So, yeah, and she lives here in Melbourne.
06:58She lives down the road from me.
06:59So that was helpful as well.
07:01And then, I mean, brought up before, got to talk about my favorite character of Pinky.
07:06Where did some of those ideas come from?
07:09Again, just her past.
07:12We only see a little bit in that clip of why they call her Pinky.
07:17But when throughout the film, there's little glimpses of her past, of her past husbands, of certain things.
07:27What were some of the inspirations for that?
07:29That she's just my favorite person in this film.
07:33Yeah, well, look, I really, when I was writing Pinky, I really wanted her to be extreme.
07:38I wanted her to be just more than an eccentric old woman.
07:42I wanted her to really have a zest for life.
07:47Even though she herself has had quite a traumatic early childhood.
07:51I wanted her to be all the things that Grace wasn't.
07:54So I wanted her to be proactive.
07:56I wanted her to be a risk taker.
07:59I wanted her to be, you know, not afraid of being embarrassed.
08:07And so really just push the boundaries.
08:10And a lot of her anecdotes and vignettes are based on real people.
08:15So, for example, a friend of mine who I met at the Annecy Animation Festival, Nancy Phelps,
08:22is a very eccentric older woman.
08:24And she once played ping pong with Fidel Castro
08:29and was one of the founders of the Burning Man Festival.
08:33So, you know, I didn't have to look far.
08:36I'm luckily surrounded by very interesting older people.
08:40And I'm an older person myself.
08:43Now I'm aging and I've had a lot of life experience.
08:46So there's a lot of myself in Pinky, a lot of my friends.
08:50There's a lot of stuff, of course, I made up.
08:53You know, I love that adage, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
08:57So she was a lot of fun to write.
09:00But I did keep in mind the whole time that she had to be the opposite of Grace.
09:06She had to be what Grace aspired to be.
09:10So this is part of your trilogy of trilogies that you have,
09:15of the three short shorts, three longer shorts,
09:19and then three features, all of this stop motion.
09:23As you're going through all of these different films
09:27and then getting to Memoir of a Snail,
09:30what is it like bringing this one in,
09:34making this one and then having this one Oscar nominated?
09:38Yeah, look, relief is the word,
09:42because stop motion is very, it's complex.
09:47It's a very complex art form.
09:50I mean, all animation is, of course.
09:53But, you know, it's for adults.
09:56It's made here in Australia.
09:58We have limited resources, limited budgets.
10:01You know, for example, we couldn't afford to do much walking.
10:04There's virtually no walking in the film.
10:06There's very little lip sync.
10:08So we had to be very economical and we had to make big sacrifices.
10:12But, you know, that forced us to really focus on the story
10:16and really get that screenplay as polished as we could.
10:21So, you know, to win all these prizes and to be nominated is great.
10:27And I think what's also nice,
10:29and the things that have changed since my last film,
10:32is that finally animation's getting recognised
10:35that there's not a genre for children,
10:37that it is an art form and a medium in its own right,
10:41and that films primarily for adults, not family.
10:45My films are certainly not for little kids.
10:48There is a place for them.
10:50They may be boutique and, you know, have smaller demographics,
10:55but there's an audience out there that really wants this sort of content.
10:59They want challenging content.
11:01So I think it's great too that, you know, films like Flo and myself,
11:05who are, you know, at the lower end of the budget spectrum,
11:09can compete against big, wonderful films like Inside Out 2
11:13and Wild Robot and Wallace and Gromit,
11:15who have all got these massive budgets,
11:18and our budgets really are what they would spend on catering.
11:21So it's a great sort of eclectic mix this year.
11:27And I think it's a really positive sign of how animation is changing
11:32and that there's room for all types of animation,
11:37and that's really a wonderful thing for everybody.
11:41I think even just in this clip you can tell,
11:45just from the briefest bit of Pinky getting her finger cut off,
11:49that it's probably not for kids.
11:52No.
11:55No, you know, I do get emails, particularly from angry parents
12:00who are always telling me my films are not for children,
12:03and I say, of course they're not for children.
12:06Why are you bringing your children to an R-rated film?
12:09I mean, having said that, you know, the things kids watch, you know,
12:14in video games and the things they watch when they shouldn't be watching,
12:18you know, my films are very mild compared to the stuff kids watch,
12:22unfortunately.
12:24But, you know, weirdly my films end up being educational devices
12:28in secondary schools anyway, so they teach themes of acceptance
12:34and difference.
12:36So particularly my last film, Mary Max, which is, you know,
12:40used in the curriculum in schools all around the world.
12:43So I see there's sort of these ironies there as well.
12:46Well, this one, again, not wanting to spoil anything,
12:50but you can definitely tell the differences between how people
12:55can deal with a lot of trauma, as you were saying,
12:57the difference between Grace and Pinky, how they were raised.
13:02I mean, as the writer, you put them both through the wringer,
13:05as we can say.
13:08And they did turn out very differently.
13:11Yeah, look, I always say if you're not an emotional wreck
13:15by the end of one of my films, then I've failed as a writer.
13:19So I certainly want the audience to be not traumatised,
13:22but really mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end.
13:28But also, you know, again, without giving away the ending,
13:31I want them to leave the cinema with a big smile on their face.
13:34They may have shed a few tears, but ultimately I want a real –
13:39it is a real feel-good film.
13:41And I know that from all the wonderful emails we get every day
13:45from people who really enjoyed the film.
13:48But also too, getting a lot of emails from young people
13:52who've had lonely existences, who have had trauma in their lives,
13:58and they're really connecting to it on that level too.
14:01So it's a film that really is getting a diverse array of reactions,
14:07and thankfully they've all been positive, which is a big relief,
14:11as I say, a big relief.
14:15Well, that is all the time we have to talk about this film right now.
14:20But again, as I was saying, you definitely got a positive reaction out of me.
14:26The whole relationship between Grace, her brother, Pinky, everything,
14:31absolutely incredible.
14:33So I definitely want to thank Adam.
14:35And Adam, can you once again show us Grace?
14:38Oh, here she is.
14:40She's just going to pop up.
14:43So if you have not seen this film, definitely go watch it.
14:49Unless you're a child.
14:51Then hold off a little bit.
14:53So thanks once again, Adam.
14:55My pleasure. Thank you, Ryan.