Adam Elliot & Sarah Snook Talk About Bringing Heart to their Mollusk-motion Flick Memoir of a Snail to Life

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12/28/24 • 48 min

On this episode, Andrew catches up with Academy Award winning master of stop motion animation, Adam Elliot, and Emmy award and AACTA award winning screen legend, Sarah Snook, to talk about their mollusk-motion flick, Memoir of a Snail.

Memoir of a Snail is driven by the delightfully dark sense of comedy and a relatable pathos, both of which bring the off-kilter world of Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) and her equally orphaned twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to life. It's a film that's resonated immensely with audiences around the world, with each person able to find a little bit of themselves in this tender tale of Grace and her obsession with snails.

As always, Elliot is able to bring forth a welcome sense of groundedness to his characters, and while they may physically appear eccentric, there's something about each and every one of them that makes us feel seen. As with his previous film, Mary & Max, Elliot actively removes stigmas associated with those who live with mental illnesses, while also shining a light on those who try to vilify, condemn, or in the case of Gilbert, cruelly convert them away from their true self.

The authenticity that sits at the core of Memoir of a Snail is not just driven by the characters we see on screen, but also from the empathetic and grounded voice work from Snook, Smit-McPhee, and other Aussie screen icons like Jackie Weaver, Magda Szubanski, Tony Armstrong, Eric Bana, while French icon Dominique Pinon also makes an appearance.

In the following conversations with Adam, then with Sarah, I talk about how they both built that relatability on screen, what it means to show Australian stories in this way, and curiously, the importance of dress up boxes in the homes of Australian kids. There's really something for everyone here.

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Previous Episode

Kate Winslet on Bringing the True Story of Lee Miller to Life on Screen

Our second discussion is with Academy Award winning actress Kate Winslet who was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for her turn as photographer Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller in Ellen Kuras' Lee. We first meet Lee in the months before WW2 commences, where Lee worked as a fashion model before forging a path for women journalists in wartime as she became a war correspondent for Vogue magazine.

Lee's photography from that era is some of the finest work you will see focused on WW2, yet after the war, she sought to hide much of the work she did, with her son eventually finding many of her photos after she had passed away. Kuras and Winslet choose to frame Lee's story with an impossible conversation that sees Josh O'Connor's Antony Penrose sitting down with Lee Miller to talk through her life and her work in a haze of cigarette smoke. There's an emotional truth here that resonates strongly throughout the film that is keenly felt by the original writing by Penrose himself, otherwise known as the son of Sir Roland Penrose and Lee Miller.

In the following conversation, Kate talks about the journey of bringing Lee's story to life, including the importance of engaging in era-specific photography, as well as the need to be able to tell these kinds of stories in todays day and age. This conversation is pulled from two separate discussions, one from a panel discussion, and the second as a one on one interview with Kate. In the first discussion, I was briefly interrupted, which is what you will hear in the following chat.

Lee is now available to view on demand in Australia. It is as good as any wartime biopic that you'll see, with Winslet giving a powerful and impactful performance which is deftly supported by a rare dramatic turn from Andy Samberg, who equally deserves recognition and accolades for his work. They're both supported by a cast that includes Oscar nominee Andrea Riseborough, Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, and Alexander Skarsgard.

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Next Episode

We Live in Time Director John Crowley Talks About Working with Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh in This Interview

For this chat, Andrew catches up with Irish director John Crowley to discuss his latest drama, We Live in Time.

We Live in Time is an utterly brilliant drama the follows the lives of Andrew Garfield's Tobias and Florence Pugh's Almut in an out of sequence format. We flit from the past, to the present, to the future, with each moment acting as a new memory laid upon the next. This burgeoning relationship emerges into a family which emerges into a drama that will have you reaching for the tissues like no other, all the while it's underpinned by the gentle direction from John Crowley, which supports and gives space for his lead actors to deliver grounded performances.

It's that journey towards tenderness and empathy that underpins the following conversation with John Crowley, with Andrew asking about how the relationship of time has impacted John's work. This discussion encourages a reflection of John's previous collaboration with Andrew Garfield on his feature film debut Boy A in 2007, while also asking John to consider what he will take from this film going forward. Andrew also asks how aware John was of Florence's innate cooking skills and how that played into her brilliant turn as Almut.

We Live in Time is, like John's Best Picture nominated film Brooklyn, a drama that slowly creeps up on you, and before you know it, you're wiping away tears from your eyes as the lights come up. It's a style of film that we've almost taken for granted now, but there is a genuine skill to bringing this level of weepie to life. See it with someone you love when it opens in Australian cinemas on 16 January 2025.

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