before watching Jenny Slatethe last movie of Marcel the shod shell, prepare to be deep in your feelings for the days ahead.
The actress voices a tiny one-inch shell in stop motion with a larger-than-life personality, who lives a quiet but meaningful existence alongside her grandmother Connie after being separated from the rest of their family and community. flourishing shells. The A24 The film is currently playing in select theaters and is the feature-length adaptation of a popular YouTube series of the same name, which Slate and her ex-husband Dean Fleischer-Camp created and launched in 2010. video they posted currently contains more than 32 million views and thousands of comments praising Fleischer-Camp and Slate for writing and creating such a fun, lively, and lively character that shows a range of vivid emotions.
The animated YouTube clips showed the one-eyed shell’s daily life and its nuggets of wisdom like, “Guess why I smile a lot? Because it’s worth it. But the film brings us closer to Marcel and his story when a documentary filmmaker, Dean, discovers him and his grandmother living in an Airbnb. Marcel tells Dean how he separated from his shell family and the filmmaker posts the short online, and Marcel becomes an online sensation, attracting the attention of fans and the media who promise to bring him closer to the search for his long-lost family.
Marcel is sincere, optimistic and straightforward in the way he communicates and moves through his world without letting the realities of his life get to his heart. But it’s not perfect either. He also gets frustrated, angry, scared, and defensive, just like the rest of us, and that doesn’t make him any less lovable. Slate and her ex-husband created this character shortly after the comedian’s quick stint on saturday night live ended after just one season in 2010 (it infamously dropped an f-bomb in a live sketch during its first episode). From there, the actress starred in films like Obvious child and I want you to come back and TV shows like Parks and recreationpublished a children’s book based on Marcel’s YouTube videos and wrote an essay book Little Weirds. Slate voiced Marcel for so long – they dropped out three short films altogether — and during an interview with Complex, she says she’s always aiming to be more like him in her personal life.
“As a person, I can be reluctant to show that I can get angry and have both personal and bigger doubts,” Slate told Complex. “I sometimes feel hesitant and I’m scared and so I think for me to play this character and show that in this beloved character he can also be in a very bad mood. It helped me integrate those things and to make them more accessible in my own behavior and to understand that there is no feeling that is not allowed.
She added: “It’s just a process of regulating your behavior when you interact and Marcel tries to do that as well.”
The film also stars Isabella Rossellini, Rosa Salazar, Thomas Mann and 60 minutesLesley Stahl. Check out our interview with Jenny Slate about the inspiration behind her character Marcel, allowing us to feel all of our emotions and the dangers of forced positivity.
What was the whole thought process behind creating this character and his story?
Jenny Slate: It’s just instincts and the compulsion to perform. I think even though Dean put a lot of time into the stop motion animation that went into making the shorts, the performance itself and the character we created really came from the two of us just playing and I think that’s why there’s this thing in there. It’s like a life force that we stimulated by playing a fun game with each other.
But I also think that behind every character that I create or a bit of stand-up that I play or an essay that I write, there’s always a good set of emotions that need to be expressed. For me at the time I felt kind of small but I also felt like I loved myself and it was annoying to me that for some reason I felt like those two things didn’t couldn’t sit side by side and be in the same area together. A lot of times I think I have the instinct to prove I exist and I think I’m worth it and I think that’s in the beginning.
Marcel is such a small being but he has such a big heart and such a big personality, and your performance really captivated his wide range of emotions. What was it like voicing this character and bringing this character to life that we’ve never really seen before?
JS: Marcel is really nice and he is really direct. But the other thing is he’s scared, and he’s got doubts and he can be hesitant and closed off and I think even though it’s very easy for me to play Marcel’s roles that are kind and funny and all the things that I want to be that people in my life see as qualities that I have.
As a person, I can be reluctant to show that I can get angry and have both personal and bigger doubts. I sometimes feel hesitant and I’m scared and so I think for me to play this character and show that in this beloved character he can also be in a very bad mood. It helped me to integrate these things and make them more accessible in my own behavior and to understand that there is no feeling that is not allowed.
It’s just a process of regulating your behavior when you interact and Marcel tries to do that as well. It’s really nice to spend so much time playing the character, because it actually helps lead by example. It was an aspiration for me. This is actually what I think a cool person looks like. I think Marcel is a cool person, how can I follow his tiny steps?
I think the movie has a really good message, “Hey, you can feel all these emotions, you can feel these things and not be afraid of them and not be ashamed of them.” Do you think it’s important for people to see?
JS: I think there’s an oversimplification of this kind of forced positivity: “Just be positive! Stay positive!” Of course, it’s very important to be positive, but it’s also important to make room for all the other things you’re going to be feeling. It can be quite confusing because right now in the culture , especially with social media, there’s a lot of talk about how we all feel our feelings now, we’re not suppressed, we’re not the generations before, we just let it all out there. But I think in fact there is a deeper conditioning that still tells us that some things don’t belong. There are actually very few people who put pictures on Instagram that we don’t think of. Virtually nothing looks like a impulsive behavior and this is the area that we all constantly engage in. It can make you forget like yes you might be living by this belief system where you really value authenticity and positivity but how does that I does it imitate and push you into a caricature of yourself where you only let yourself be authentic or you only let yourself be positive? It’s actually kind of a neutralization of those qualities anyway.
I like this example of Marcel on how to be because he just doesn’t think about it and it works for him, but the way Marcel’s story ends up ending isn’t just du like, “Well, I persevered and I got there. “It was more, I took those risks and in those risks I suffered deep losses. I got what I asked for. It was a different fit than I thought it would be and now my new process deals with the ultimate thing, which is what it feels like to be a cohesive person going through a series of changes.
What do you hope people take away from the film?
JS: I hope they feel taken care of. I hope people feel supported by the film and I hope they feel entertained. I hope they remember a sense of hope and are invigorated by the kind of endurance that they can’t quite define, but seems like a valid way to be.
Marcel the seashell with shoes On is now in theaters.
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