Henry Selick, the visionary behind cult favorites The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach brings his trademark stop motion style to the screen once again with this month’s Coraline. Selick’s diehard fans won’t be disappointed with the creepy children’s tale and — more than fifteen years after he captured imaginations with Nightmare — a new generation has a chance to experience the unique look and feel of his animation. In Coraline, a young girl fed up with her life and her inattentive parents escapes to an alternate world where everything seems better, but not everything is what it seems. North by Northwestern caught up with Selick for a sit down interview with a small round table of college journalists to talk about scary parents, stop motion animation and Selick’s decision to take Coraline into the third dimension.
What drew you to the story of Coraline to make it into a film?
I liked the sort of universal aspect — that everyone at some point wishes they had a different life. You know, a different boyfriend, a different set of parents, and so on. And then I liked the sort of combination of Alice in Wonderland meets Hansel and Gretel, this almost Grimm’s Brothers’ fairy tale, but set in our times, but without being overly modern. I think it’s a timeless story. Finally, I just think it’s the delicious details of this world and the other world that Neil [Gaiman] came up with. The strangely creepy idea of buttons on the eyes of living people, as if they’re living dolls.
At what stage did you decide that this was going to be done in 3-D?
I have a pretty long history with 3-D just through happenstance. I know the man, Lenny Lipton, who actually has developed the modern digital 3-D system that’s used in the theaters. He’s been working on this for a long, long time, so I would check in with him every couple of years just to see how far along the system was. And in doing stop motion films in the past, there was always this yearning to capture the experience people had when they visited us when we’re making the film…They can’t believe the little sets, the lights the props and stuff and the sense that that’s not really being conveyed in the movies. So there was a desire to capture the medium in a more accurate way. And then finally, the story itself, the idea of a “better world,” I felt the 3-D could help draw us into the other world as Coraline is drawn into it….I’d been thinking about it a very long time and probably four years ago it was decided yes, let’s shoot this as stop motion in 3-D and then my biggest battle has been to control the 3-D and not have it cranked up all the time.
With Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, and now Coraline, you tend to tell stories that would appeal to children but also have very dark elements. What do you think it is that appeals to you about making films like that?
I think that kids love to be scared, and traditional stories for children that had life lessons, usually they have dark elements. You know, the classic Grimm’s Fairy Tales are brutal. Even the first Disney films, people always forget, they think Disney and sugar, but in Pinocchio and Snow White, there’s incredibly frightening moments in those films. The queen tells the huntsman to bring her the heart of [Snow White] in this box. It’s strong stuff, and I think it’s part of who we are as humans — we want to know. If a little kid comes across a dead animal, like a mouse or something, they want to poke it with a stick; they want to understand. So, I think actually making a film like this that has scares, it’s more in the classic tradition of what sorts of stories have been told to children for thousands of years. This idea of keeping them safe in feature films and protected is just some weird aberration.
What would you say makes Coraline the most different from your other films? It is very visually similar, you have a very distinct style, so what would you say sets this apart from your past projects?
What’s different about this [film is that] the humans are more expressive. The animation is more expressive. There’s a greater range of emotions that Coraline can do. It’s a little less cartoony. [With] both James and the Giant Peach and Nightmare Before Christmas, there’s more cartoonish, broader characters there. This world here is sort of somewhere between cartoony animation and live action, and it was a sort of a difficult place to stay on track because a lot of animators, they want to do stuff that’s broader and more cartoony. That’s what their natural tendencies are.
What, to you, are the qualities unique to the stop motion medium apart from other film mediums? And, when working with mixed media such as The Life Aquatic and Monkeybone, what can stop motion add?
Stop motion was…effects. It was monsters and creatures that were meant to be as realistic as possible. When Jurassic Park came along, that changed the rules because CG could clearly do photo-real effects and creatures better than stop motion. What stop motion has is an inherent, tangible sense of reality that still surpasses CG. It’s not going to be as slick or as mind boggling as CG, and CG ultimately can do anything, but there’s this sense that you know that the thing exists somewhere….It’s an actual performance. It’ll never be perfect. It’s sort of this combination of actual performance and imperfections that I think gives it a warmth and a charm that the other approaches don’t have.
How do you think parents should go about explaining the film to their kids? Some kids might not quite understand how to take the film, and they might want to see their parents’ reaction. What do you think parents can do to clarify some things?
Well, first off, it’s a PG film, not a G film. The parent knows best, but we don’t think most kids under eight should see this film. One of my producers will hate me for saying that, but we’ve always said, this is not for really young children; it’s too scary for them. Another thing we say is, well it’s for brave children of all ages. Leave the scaredy cats at home. What I have found, and Neil found with his book, it’s the children who are much more accepting of the story and see it as an adventure, and it’s the parents who are more frightened. They’re more frightened for their children than the children actually are. I think if you’re leaving the really little ones at home, then it’s going to be the kids explaining to the parents how it’s okay.
What would you say is the biggest challenge you faced making Coraline?
There’s no one biggest challenge. There were several “biggest challenges” along the way. The first one was just to get a screenplay that felt like a movie and not just a bad version of the book. It took me a long time to get a screenplay that worked well. It took a long time to find a studio that believed in the project to fund the movie and do it as a stop motion film when everybody else was doing CG. And then just the scale, it’s a pretty big movie for stop motion in terms of number of sets and details. It’s longer than the other films so it’s more work. So just handling the scope and scale of the film. Those are all the biggest challenges.
You compared your film some to classic fairy tales. What would you say is most important to you to convey to the audience through the finished project?
Number one: you want to entertain, not bore people. You want to touch them, so that there’s something in the film that reaches them that they can compare to. But if there’s a message, it’s about the truth of families and the love of families. You know, mom’s gonna be a bitch sometimes. Dad doesn’t have time for you. I think it’s about accepting and understanding the true love found in families instead of the make believe kind.