PROVINCETOWN — Milton actress, screenwriter and comedian Jenny Slate won the Next Wave award at the 24th Provincetown Film Festival alongside “SNL” star Bowen Yang.
Slate’s parents, Ron and Nancy Slate, were in the audience Thursday for the ceremony and screening of Jenny’s new movie, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.”
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The film is a feature adaptation of the stop motion short she co-wrote and created with her ex-husband Dean Fleischer-Camp, who directs and stars. The story follows Marcel (Slate), an adorable 1-inch-tall seashell who leads a colorful existence with his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) in an Airbnb home.
The film, Slate said in a Q&A after the screening, took seven years to make and was based on a voice she first used among a group of friends crammed into a bedroom. hotel together to save money on accommodation at a wedding. Marcel first became a viral sensation through short videos over a decade ago.
“I certainly didn’t imagine when I started doing a drunken little voice at a wedding,” she laughed, “that someone would ever pay me money to do anything else. than stop me.”
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The New Wave Award recognizes artists who take risks and have “exciting and distinctive voices”. Host/comedian Judy Gold – a veteran of Provincetown’s summer entertainment – pitched Slate and Yang (“Fire Island”) as the hope for future comedy in cinema.
“They’re so talented and in a world of mediocrity and stupidity, it makes me feel like … we’re passing the torch to these people who are really going to take care of the world and the arts,” she said.
Slate’s film hits theaters on June 24 and follows Marcel as he tries to reunite with his family and regain a sense of belonging. For Marcel, says Slate, community means “a group of individuals who will help him feel fulfilled and safe. When he gets exposed to the internet and finds out what it is, he understands that there’s a difference between an audience and a community, and that’s just something that I’m dealing with as a person as well. There is a truly shocking difference. Slate has described at various times how telling Marcel’s story over the years has helped her form some of her own outlooks on life.
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Marcel comes off partly as a shell, “and then he goes on to say, ‘I like that about me and I like myself and I have a lot of other great qualities as well,'” Slate pointed out. felt like she did. I think I was at a time in my life where I would like it to be clear that I’m not ashamed of who I am. … So maybe I am not it’s cool, but most people are actually very interesting.One thing that’s good about Marcel is that he feels stripped of that urgency to prove it.
During the Q&A, Slate also shared that she struggles with the responsibility aspect of her art and work.
“I think it’s important for all artists to constantly examine their culture and understand what they need to use and how to use it to keep saying, ‘Hey, this is where we all put up walls. that shouldn’t be walls.’ and ‘Hey, it’s a type of language that’s co-opted by a group and they just use it for hate. Is that language still useful? Should we just stop?”
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Slate is an ubiquitous voice actress. Besides “Marcel”, his voice work includes the role of the bouncy Pomeranian, Gidget, in the films “The Secret Life of Pets” and Harley Quinn in “The Lego Batman Movie”. She’s also lent her tips to characters in the hit animated movies “Zootopia,” “Despicable Me 3” and “The Lorax.”
A versatile actress, Slate has appeared in supporting and guest roles on television in comedies such as “Married”, “Brooklyn Nine Nine”, “Parks and Recreation”, “House of Lies”, “Bored to Death”, ” Girls,” “Kroll Show” and “Hello Ladies.” She also appeared on “Saturday Night Live” during the 2009-10 season, bringing laughs for impersonations of Lady Gaga and the Olsen twins.
His film roles include “I Want You Back”, “Venom”, “Obvious Child”, “Hotel Artemis”, “Landline”, and “Gifted”. She has a supporting role in the new indie dark comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which is still playing in Boston theaters and available to rent through Apple TV+ and Amazon.
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Oscar-nominated director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) was the winner of the “Filmmaker on the Edge” festival. Guadagnino is in Boston filming the romantic drama “Challengers,” starring Zendaya and Mike Faist (“West Side Story”).
Slate gave her class’ valedictory speech at Milton Academy in 2000 and returned to her alma mater to give the commencement speech in 2013, urging graduates to always have hope and seek “a thing of beauty” every day.
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Information from the Cape Cod Times was used in this report.
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