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" Making 'Coraline' was one of the great filmmaking experiences of my life. "
Henry Selick
Great
Filmmaking
Life
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" Kids love to be scared - there's way to do it right, and ways to do it wrong. "
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" Morals always sound like cliches, but usually cliches are based on things that are ultimate truths. Be grateful for what you have; appreciate what's right there in front of you. "
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" 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. "
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" Very few people have made the transition from animation to live-action; I'm certainly not one. "
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" 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. "
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" 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
" 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. "
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Ghetto
Time
Look
" People are very harsh critics of animated humans. "
Henry Selick
Critics
Very
People
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
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Horror
Humor
Looking
" I feel I'm just meant to do stop-motion. Live-action is much more glamorous to some, but it's basically a whole army of people focused on one thing. "
Henry Selick
Feel
More
People
" 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
" In all animation, if it's done quickly, you'll know it. And if you're very slow and careful with it, it's going to look a little more beautiful. It's just compressing time into seconds. "
Henry Selick
Time
You
Know
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" While I was making 'Coraline' I barely got to see any films at all, so I've got a lot of catching up to do. "
Henry Selick
See
Barely
Got
" 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
" 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
" 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
" People are always telling me that boys won't go to girls' movies and vice versa. It's not true. "
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Always
True
People
" 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
" No one's ever going to make a PG-13 animated film unless David Fincher executive produces it and puts it out on Netflix, and then if it's a success everyone will change. "
Henry Selick
Netflix
Change
Everyone
" 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
" 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
" My mother is a huge fan of my work. I told her about 'Coraline' long before the film was made, and she got the book and read it. She reminded me that when I was about five years old, I used to sit in the kitchen for hours and talk about my 'other' family in Africa, my other mother and father. I had totally forgotten that. "
Henry Selick
Work
Father
Me
" 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