How Lesley Stahl ended up interviewing her smallest subject in Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Marcel isn’t the only famous face of A24’s stop-motion darling Marcel the shod shell (out Friday) — acclaimed journalist and 60 minutes Faithful Lesley Stahl also has fun playing the role of the film’s unexpected hero.

In the film, based on the popular shorts by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate, we meet the tiny titular mollusk by Fleischer-Camp, who plays a version of himself (also named Dean), a documentary filmmaker renting an Airbnb after his divorce. Soon, he discovers that a small family already lives in the house: Marcel (voiced by Slate); her grandmother, Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini); and his pet, Alan. Inspired by the big wit, ingenuity and whimsical personality of the little shell, Dean begins filming the life and adventures of Marcel, which culminates each evening with a viewing party for 60 minuteshis favorite show and that of Nana Connie.

When Marcel becomes an overnight sensation thanks to Dean uploading his videos to YouTube, their favorite news program calls them to report on the seashell’s incredible story – and to help find his missing family. As he eventually explains to Dean, the rest of Marcel’s shell clan, including his parents and brother, were lost when the previous owners moved out, and he hopes his big 60 minutes interview will help him reconnect with them.

Fleischer-Camp and fellow screenwriters Slate and Nick Paley first imagined Marcel and Nana Connie 60 minutes obsession as a joke. “It really comes from us telling and joking that there shouldn’t be a TV in Marcel’s house, and the only access they have to pop culture should be the TV across the way that the neighbors have near the window,” he said. EW. “And as a result, they’re limited to only watching what this middle-aged couple next door is watching. And I forget why, but we just started to cringe at the idea that they had never seen 60 minutes and maybe another movie.”

Marcell the Shell With Shoes On cr: Gabrielle Russomango

Gabrielle Russomango/A24 Marcel the Shell and his Nana Connie

When they realized they were going to take the gag one step further by casting a reporter in marcel, Fleischer-Camp says Stahl was the “first choice, immediately,” because she reflected the fearlessness and resilience of the Nana Connie character. “It makes perfect sense that [the character] would be obsessed with Lesley Stahl because Lesley Stahl is, as much as she is an icon and on TV and a celebrity now, she too, for most of that career, was just a hard-nosed investigative reporter, even before she was on TV, and so it only made sense that Nana Connie would really respect her and then admire her,” he explains.

Fortunately, the filmmakers had an in. Enter producer Elisabeth Holm, who had a personal connection with 60 minutes producer Shari Finkelstein, whom she first called to record the phone call in the film where a producer asks to do an interview with Marcel. And so began what Holm calls a “multi-year, multi-layered, many-step process and journey.”

First, the filmmakers had to get 60 minutes endorse Finkelstein playing a real 60 minutes producer (or, you know, herself). Once that happened, about a year later, she recorded her audio parts, which went through a process of editing, re-recording, and re-editing. As they got deeper into the script and the making of the film, Holm says she went back to Finkelstein to see if Stahl and the show would be willing to take on a bigger role. She says the initial pitch was for the series to “actually be the heroes of our film, and help to be what reunites Marcel with his long-lost community, and kind of be the counterpoint to the anonymity of viral fame. vacuum and internet content, and really being that kind of magnificent gold standard of journalism and integrity and authentic storytelling and all the things that I think Dean and Jenny and Marcel really appreciate.”

It sounds simple enough, but Holm says it again sparked a long series of emails and discussions. It was at this time that Fleischer-Camp and Slate also wrote “a lovely letter” to Stahl – who was not initially familiar with the character of Marcel, although his grandchildren were – while Holm “worked behind the scenes with Shari and with CBS News to find a truly brand-friendly deal for the two 60 minutes and CBS.”

Marcel the shell with shoes

Marcel the shell with shoes

A24 Lesley Stahl in “Marcel the shell with shoes”

That process — which involved jumping through legal hoops and convincing CBS of their pure intentions — took about another year, Holm says. Everything fell into place in the summer of 2019 during the film’s live shoot, when Stahl and his team came to film their fictional interview with Marcel. From there, the struggle was to make sure everything felt authentic. They prepared Stahl with a real maintenance file, like what she would receive before doing a real 60 minutes story. The iconic clock that has long symbolized the news program has been fully approved for use in the film. And they brought in the cinematographers, the gaffers, the sound guys from the real show, and the real cameras used to shoot the show were also used for his segment in the movie. “So if you notice in the movie, the 60 minutes the footage is different from the rest of the movie because we wanted it to look like a 60 Minutes piece,” says Holm.

Rather than having the marcel the team tries to recreate Stahl’s studio intro, the 60 minutes the team fired itself. “The graphics processing behind Lesley that you see [as in the still above] was made by their amazing graphic designer, Bruce Jensen, who’s been doing this forever. And they shot that intro in their studio for us with our script – but of course Lesley and Shari tweaked that script to be what Lesley would really say and really feel like a 60 minutes intro,” says Holm. “It was the 100 little pink shoe steps to get there, but they were really every step of the way pretty collaborative and supportive.”

The end result was special for everyone involved, including Stahl. “I know she really loves the movie and was so honored to watch the last thing,” Fleischer-Camp said. “I know she is really enjoying the experience because it has made it very cool in the eyes of her grandchildren.”

Holm, whose hard work and determination made it all possible, says she’s still amazed to this day that it worked. “Like we say in the movie, Lesley is fearless, and I really get that from her. I see that from her. I think that’s true. I think it was such a unique experience for her to d to have to ask a two inch tall seashell puppet questions and improvise with Jenny sitting under the stool, and just engage and kind of be the straight man, but also have a sense of humor and playfulness towards itself,” says Holm. “I mean, she’s an incredible veteran journalist. And, at this point in her career, to show us another side of her, I think, is a testament to her fearlessness. We’re still in awe of her and I don’t Can’t believe she joined us, but I think that says a lot about Lesley.”

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