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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Ogden meets pen pals
By NANCY VAN VALKENBURGMax Horovitz is an obese, 44-year-old Jewish man, an atheist who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, is addicted to chocolate hot dogs, is wholly overwhelmed by the chaos of his native New York City, and who longs for a friend who isn't invisible, a pet or a rubber figurine.
Mary Dinkle, a lonely, chubby Australian girl of 8, is Max's longtime pen pal. She has a birthmark the color of poo, loves sweetened condensed milk, and bases her life decisions on the color of her mood ring. She longs for a friend not made of seashells, twigs or chicken bones.
Adam Elliot is a balding Australian who grew up on a shrimp farm, turned 37 last Friday, suffers a slight tremor in his hands, and who created the 2009 Sundance Film Festival opening claymation film, "Mary and Max," a moving and funny film about the two quirky characters described above.
The two unlikely pen pals in his film deal with issues like autism, taxidermy, alcoholism, where babies come from, kleptomania, sexual and religious differences, agoraphobia and friendship.
"Mary and Max" opens in world premiere Thursday night in Park City, and next Friday makes a beeline for Ogden, where it launches the Weber County leg of the festival.
Beautiful flaws
Elliot has plenty of real friends.
"I base my characters on the people around me and have befriended so many people who get labeled 'different,' " Elliot said, in a playful e-mail interview from Australia. "I feel their stories need to be told. People need to learn about these people, have their lives shared and understood.
"I avoid the word 'handicapped' or 'disabled.' All my characters have 'flaws,' and I believe everyone has a flaw of some description and degree. So many of us hide our flaws. My aim is to highlight and celebrate people's imperfections and to emphasize that no one is pure or perfect."
Elliot's tremor is minor.
"Indeed, I have a flaw also," he said, of the congenital condition he shares with his mother. "I never used to really talk about it, but people often notice and ask me about it. They often think I am nervous. Sometimes it can be a real problem and I have trouble drawing or writing. I have incorporated it into my 'wonky' style of drawing and it has become my aesthetic. I believe there are many positive aspects to a supposed flaw or physical limitation."
Backstory
Elliot was born the second of four children to his father, a retired acrobatic clown, and his mother, a hairdresser. The family pets were parrots, Sunny and Cher.
"I never really wanted to be a claymator, filmmaker or even a writer," Elliot said. "It was all an accident. I wanted to be a veterinarian, but my marks at high school weren't good enough. I was, however, always good at drawing, and I enjoyed making things out of old shoe boxes, egg cartons and pipe cleaners. I stumbled across the Victorian College of the Arts film school when I was in my mid 20s and thought I'd give it a go."
His professors, assessing a simple claymation assignment he turned in, pointed out Elliot's natural gift.
"They were right, and I have never looked back and love the tactile and tangible nature of stop-motion animation," the filmmaker wrote.
Elliot's short films, about the lives of his uncle, cousin and older brother, won awards in Australia, and "Harvie Krumpet," his short about a man with very bad luck and a life-embracing attitude, won a 2004 Oscar. "Mary and Max" is Elliot's first feature-length film.
"I often say that making a feature claymation is like making love and being stabbed to death at the same time," he joked. "There were many bittersweet moments and I often look back to the days when I made shorts; they were quicker, cheaper and I often had more time to ponder my every move. I often use the expression that it was ... like being creative with a gun at your head.
"There were so many crew to engage with and so many decisions that had to be made under pressure every hour of the day over a 57-week shoot. I often worked 80- to 90-hour weeks."
Elliot was thrilled to get his first choice in actors, including Philip Seymour Hoffman as the voice of Max, Toni Collette as Mary, and Aussie comic Barry Humphries, best known for his "Dame Edna" character, as narrator.
"We were very lucky with our actors and got everyone on our wish list," Elliot said. "They all said yes after reading the script and were motivated to join our team because of my story and not the money we were offering them. Our entire budget (about $5.6 million in U.S. dollars) was what some of them usually got paid for appearing in a film."
A big payoff came in the form of a message from Sundance.
"We received an e-mail from the delightful Geoffrey Gilmore (Sundance Film Festival director) early one Saturday morning saying that we were not only in the festival but opening it; it was a double whammy," Elliot said. "We hadn't even finished the sound mix to the film and had to submit a rough version of it for consideration, and so it was a wonderful leap of faith by the selectors to go with our film even before it was complete."
Elliot hopes people who see his film will be entertained, and more.
"Overall, however, I hope they leave the cinema feeling nourished and that they have not wasted their money. I feel it is an honor as a filmmaker that a complete stranger will be prepared to give up an hour and a half of their lives to spend time with your story."
l "Mary and Max" (92 minutes, Australian, in English), screens at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 16, Peery's Egyptian Theater, 2415 Washington Blvd., Ogden
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