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" Kids love to be scared - there's way to do it right, and ways to do it wrong. "
Henry Selick
Right
Wrong
Way
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" I think that one of the things that I can do is I seem to have the ability to zoom in super tight for very small details, but then jump back for sort of that big picture perspective. And I think that ultimately, that's one of my strengths, because you have - every detail matters. "
Henry Selick
You
Small
Think
" I have more faith in doing something creative for a cable station or something like Yahoo or Google or Amazon. What Netflix did with 'House of Cards' and David Fincher was brilliant. That is inspiring to me. I think there is more chance for creativity in animation, it just hasn't happened there yet. "
Henry Selick
Me
Creative
Creativity
" 'Coraline' is Neil Gaiman's book, it sold a lot, it has a big fan base. It was originally conceived to be live action, but I never really wanted it to be. I always thought that it would work better as an animated film. "
Henry Selick
Film
Action
Book
" What stop-motion does best is present real objects magically brought to life in a very imperfect situation; the hand of the artist is there, the electricity of someone touching, massaging and torturing themselves to get life out of an inanimate object. "
Henry Selick
Life
Situation
Present
" I'm looking at some comedic horror films because I have often been accused of being too dark. I'm not dark, not compared with 'Saw' or anything like that. So I'm looking at live-action horror films, but not slasher ones - ones that have humor and maybe some social satire. "
Henry Selick
Horror
Humor
Looking
" Cyclops, that's like this primal fear. I had dreams for years that the Cyclops was a small creature living in our huge fish tank at home, and at night, it was going to grow to full size and come after me. "
Henry Selick
Small
Fish
Dreams
" There's the animation ghetto of feature films in this country. There's this flavor at DreamWorks, and Pixar does their own thing, and generally they're safe. But if you look at Walt Disney's original films, at the time and in the context, they weren't safe. They were really dark and troubling. "
Henry Selick
Ghetto
Time
Look
" I think stop-motion has always been semi-obsolete. And stop-motion animators - people like myself - love it so much that we're always going to be looking for new ways to make our films. "
Henry Selick
Love
Think
People
" Underneath this tired, middle-aged exterior, I'm an 11 year old kid. "
Henry Selick
Year
Kid
Tired
" People are always telling me that boys won't go to girls' movies and vice versa. It's not true. "
Henry Selick
Always
True
People
" I think it's important that kids see another kid - Coraline - who doesn't have guns, she doesn't have super-powers, she's not a super-genius. To see a pretty normal kid - I mean, she's probably a little more curious, a little more stubborn, but she's a real kid - go up against something that's truly dark and evil and powerful. And she does win. "
Henry Selick
She
Think
Win
" CG can do anything, but it can't do everything well. What it naturally can do is special effects. But using stop-motion comes from our desire to do handmade stuff. There are always going to be kids who get out whatever it might be - clay, bits of wire, Barbie dolls, Legos. They want to tell little stories. "
Henry Selick
Desire
Barbie
Want
" There's this long tradition of... even 'Where The Wild Things Are,' which many people consider the best kids' picture book of all time. It was considered revolutionary, and some libraries wouldn't carry it. But it's a classic because it taps into empowerment for kids, kids facing dangers and winning. "
Henry Selick
Winning
People
Long
" There's very few people who want to just make beautiful films that make money, when they can make films that make huge money. "
Henry Selick
Just
Beautiful
Want
" Having to make a blockbuster every time puts unhealthy pressure on creatives. The pressure on the filmmakers is so intense, I think it stifles the creativity. "
Henry Selick
Think
Creativity
Make
" Stop-motion is sort of twitchy; you can feel the life in it. If we were to remove that completely, there'd be no point in it. "
Henry Selick
No Point
You
Remove
" I learned my lesson that in the live-action world, you have to earn the support of people over a very, very long time. And in animation, I already have the support. "
Henry Selick
Long
People
Support
" There's always kids who become stop motion animators. I get stuff all the time. They put it on YouTube. It's exciting to see. "
Henry Selick
Motion
YouTube
Time
" We can still do a stop motion feature for about one-third of what it costs Pixar or DreamWorks or Blue Sky to make a feature. But nobody is interested in a film that cost $50 to 60 million with the potential to do $120 million. They want to risk big money to make huge money. "
Henry Selick
Stop
Money
Potential
" Any type of animation, it could be really super crude or very sophisticated, it doesn't mean anything if we don't make this point in this shot, this one here and this one here. There's the saying, 'One shot, one thought.' It's pretty much a true way to go. "
Henry Selick
Saying
Mean
Go
" Kids love to be scared; we all do. But there's a difference between leaving them hanging out there, with their fears, and then bringing them safely home. Kids love it when someone like them stands up against real evil, something really horrendous and frightening, and win. "
Henry Selick
Someone
Leaving
Home
" As a director, I'm not the one animating every frame, every shot. I'm moving around like a surgeon on rounds, or a farmer checking in on all the plants being grown, pruning and adjusting. For me, it's a very exciting job. "
Henry Selick
Plants
Moving
Me
" What I personally gravitate toward tends to be fantasy, medium dark - not too dark - fairy tales and sci fi. Stop-motion takes something on the page that's really dark and adds a little sweetness to it, a living toys realm. "
Henry Selick
Page
Toys
Fairy
" I'm meant to be an animation director. That world, and the culture of stop-motion, is where I want to live. It's more my problem than Hollywood's. I'm not attuned to Hollywood. "
Henry Selick
Live
Problem
Want
" Nobody does animation better than Disney; it's just that some of us wanted out of the box. Burton was one. I was another. We were the mutual complaint society. "
Henry Selick
Nobody
Society
Box
" Puppets seem like vampires sometimes. They live, and you're depleted. "
Henry Selick
You
Like
Live
" Every kid has a toy that they believe is their best friend, that they believe communicates with them, and they imagine it being alive, their toy horse or car or whatever it is. Stop-motion is the only medium where we literally can make a toy come to life, an actual object. "
Henry Selick
Best
Best Friend
Car
" I was influenced by Ray Harryhausen and Lotte Reiniger, with her twitchy, cutout animation, which I happened to see at a very young age, but also by the Warner Bros. cartoons, 'Tom and Jerry,' and of course Disney. And also by Fellini's 'Giulietta of the Spirits' and Kurosawa's 'Ran.' And by other American illustrators and painters. "
Henry Selick
Age
Young
Spirits
" People are very harsh critics of animated humans. "
Henry Selick
Critics
Very
People
" I was at Disney for about four years, so I made good friends there. It was a time of not a lot of creativity. It was the end of the first great era, with a few of the original animators. They called them the Nine Old Men. I learned a lot from them, but it wasn't going to be a future home for me. "
Henry Selick
Time
Future
Good