“The audience will forgive bad animating but they’ll never forgive a bad story”: Adam Elliot on Memoir of a Snail

Sadness is Adam Elliot’s happy place. In his stop-motion animated films, his oddball characters face all manner of misfortunes – a life-threatening lightning strike and testicular cancer for Harvey Krumpet (2003), bully-inflicted hearing loss for Ernie Biscuit (2015), despairing loneliness for Mary and Max (2009). His most recent ‘clayography’ Memoir of a Snail – his second feature-length animation – is not so much a series of unfortunate events as a shitstorm of misery that rains down Grace Prudence Pudel, an isolated hoarder who finds comfort in snails. 

Snails, we’re told, can only move forward – but the film begins in reverse, with Grace at the deathbed of her only friend, the elderly Pinky. As she grieves, Grace looks back on her life, narrating the death of her parents and her early separation from her twin, Gilbert, who was sent away to a family of Christian fundamentalist apple farmers on the other side of Australia. Shot in 1970s beiges and browns, Elliot balances the bleakness with a rough ‘chunky wonky’ animation style that still has a painstaking attention to detail, putting tiny cigarettes and Chiko rolls in the hands of his deflated creations. There’s also comic relief from Pinky, a Harold and Maude-style free spirit.

Snails are born without a backbone, but Grace will find hers, eventually, once she’s weathered every calamity Elliot can throw at her. Over Zoom, I spoke to the director about introverts, his fascination with hoarders, and why he always puts human stories before ‘perfect’ animation. 

What drew you to the idea of a character who hoards?

About eight years ago, my father passed away, and he left behind a lot of stuff. I don’t know whether to call him a hoarder or just an extreme collector. I was very annoyed with him, my siblings and I had to trawl through everything. But that annoyance slowly led to a fascination with not just why he collected, but why does anybody collect? And when does it become extreme hoarding?… There’s many reasons, but what I found was that extreme hoarders have usually had the loss of a child or a sibling or a twin, and the hoarding becomes a coping mechanism. They attach significant emotional sentiment to every object they collect, and that’s why they can’t throw it away. So there’s that. But at the same time, I was looking for other ideas for a feature film, and I went through all my notebooks and journals, and I came across some notes I’d written about a friend of mine who was born with a cleft palate, and as a child, had a lot of operations on her mouth and and was bullied a bit at school, and yet she grew up to be a very confident, flamboyant extrovert. I was kind of curious, how did she find that confidence? And so these sort of two ideas merged together. Sixteen drafts of the script later, we ended up with this.

Originally there was a focus on ladybirds in the script. What made you switch to snails? 

That film Lady Bird [Greta Gerwig, 2017] came out, and that sort of ruined things a little bit [laughs]. But also it was getting a bit cutesy and twee and a bit saccharine. I thought, oh, there must be a different animal out there…. When you touch snails’ antennas, they withdraw into their shell. In a way, a snail is an introvert, and that’s what Grace is. The shell is sort of a shield from the outside world. I think snails are quite elegant and graceful. Other people think they’re just slimy and horrible, but I think they’re also quite alien and eccentric. And that’s what I wanted Grace to be. She’s a loner, she’s melancholic, but she’s also quite peculiar as well.

The film keeps everything in camera and does not use CGI techniques. Why was that important to you? 

We’re drowning in CGI animation, but also now with the arrival of AI, so much of what we look at is synthetic and artificial. And when the audience sees the fingerprints on the clay… it’s the celebration of the tangible, tactile nature of the puppets. I was told it was going to be a dying art form when I left Film School in 1996 yet Guillermo del Toro and Wes Anderson, they’re dabbling in stop-motion… For me, it’s always the story first, animation second. The audience will always forgive bad lighting, bad animating, bad acting, but they’ll never forgive a bad story. The puppets are very lumpy and asymmetrical and we want to celebrate the imperfectness of them.

Memoir of a Snail features a great intergenerational friendship between Grace and Pinky. Friendships between old and young is something we’ve seen in your films before. Have you found a lot of inspiration from older characters in your own life?

I have a couple of older friends who’ve lived very colourful lives and free spirits, but also, I’ve also loved films that explore very diverse friendships. A good example is Harold and Maude [1972] and Pinky certainly has a bit of Maude in there. But even Mary and Max [2009], that’s between an older man and a young girl. I like extremes. I love people who form friendships, who may never meet, or who are very, very different. And I love that quote, which I put in Mary and Max, ‘you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your relatives’. And as you get older, well, in my case, friends become more like family than actual family. 

There’s a great scene showcasing all of Pinky’s adventures, which include playing ping pong with Fidel Castro and sleeping with John Denver in a helicopter. I hear Fidel Castro really did love ping pong…

This woman, Nancy Phelps is an animation icon, who is originally from San Francisco, she told me at the Annecy Animation Festival many years ago about how once she played ping pong with Fidel Castro. I’m so glad I wrote that down in my notebook. She didn’t have sex with John Denver though, that never happened.

You mentioned in a previous interview that a career in stop motion animation attracts a particular type of person. What kind of person?

In the old days when I was animating my shorts, and I was by myself most of the time, I found it quite meditative, sort of like yoga. Today they call it mindfulness, where you get into that zone, time stands still. You’re just in your happy place. It’s different directing a feature film. There’s a lot of stresses. You’re the conductor of the orchestra. But I think for our animators, it is quite meditative. And a lot of them are on the spectrum to some degree, and they quite like the attention to detail, the incredible focus you need and the obsession. I could never be a computer animator. I’d much rather be using my hands. 

What would you say is the hardest thing to create with stop motion animation?

After I write my scripts, I always kick myself: Oh god, I’ve got to do fire. I’ve got to do water, crying, and smoke. All my characters have all got cigarettes in their mouths. It’s challenging. We are purists. Fire could have easily done digitally and overlaid that on top of the animation, but I think the audience really appreciates that handmade look. You can pretty much animate anything. You just have to know the tricks. I often say we are more like magicians than we are filmmakers, and it’s all about smoke and mirrors. 

Documentaries are an important part of your research. Do you have favourites that you return to?

When I first started making films I loved the work of Errol Morris. But recently, I saw this great documentary about a school camp in America for kids who stutter [My Beautiful Stutter, 2021]. So all these kids from all over America, come to this school, just to be with like minded people. And it was incredibly moving. I find real life much more inspiring than fiction. To be honest, I don’t watch a lot of animation, because I find a lot of American animation a bit safe and family-friendly and for kids. I much prefer documentaries. 

In Memoir of a Snail, Grace’s brother Gilbert is forced by his religious foster family to endure gay conversion therapy. You grew up in a fairly religious school environment in Australia. Did that background influence his storyline in any way?

I’ve always had not an unusual relationship with religion. I went to Sunday school, and I went to a private boys school where we sang hymns every day. And what really struck me, particularly as I got older was, you know, on a Tuesday morning, we’d study religious studies as a class, and then straight after, we would have science. And in religious studies, we were taught creationism, and then straight into the Darwinism and evolution. All these contradictions. There was a few dodgy ministers in our church. Churches around the world, there’s been so much brutality, child abuse, cruelty and of course, more specifically, gay conversion therapy, which is still legal in many countries; it’s mostly banned in Australia, it is getting banned in the EU, but it still gets practiced. It’s ridiculous, of course, it’s like trying to change the colour of somebody’s eyes. It’s barbaric, and more often than not, it’s inflicted by the parents. With this film, I’m being specific about that, but it’s more of a comment on organised religion. It’s not a comment on religion. People can believe whatever they like, but as long as they don’t hurt anybody else. Unfortunately, a lot of organised religions and cults are out to exploit their own congregation. I have upset a few people, but they’re certainly in the minority. It’s always a risk, and you’ve got to be a little bit brave when you tackle subject matter like that. I think that the job of a filmmaker is to explore challenging subjects, and otherwise, the art form becomes boring, and it eventually dies. 

What are you working on next?

I’ve been telling people I want to do a road film. I think I’m sick of making films about people stuck in their bedrooms in suburbia, and I think the audience might be sick of it too. I like the idea of a character going on, not just a geographical journey, but a philosophical journey. As I’m getting older, my films are getting more and more existential. 

► Memoir of a Snail is available on BFI Player now.