Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
WARNING: If you haven’t already checked out Marcel’s antics, do so now here and then come back to i-D Online to find out more!
At the Sundance Headquarters, bubbling with joy and chowing down on room service, the creators of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On are almost as adorable as the little shell that brought them there.
Director Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate, the voice and creator of the small shell, seem surprised that Marcel has been so popular, originally making the short as a favour to run on a friend’s comedy show. Marcel is the product of Slate’s creative whimsy, recently spending a year on Saturday Night Live and playing Jason Schwartzman’s spacey girlfriend on HBO’s Bored to Death. “It was during a time in my life when I was feeling very small. I felt really depleted. I would walk around the house talking like Marcel,” she explains, perfectly breaking into the high-pitched voice of the tiny shell.
The short unexpectedly won Best Animated Film at the 2010 AFI Film Festival and Sundance presented the duo with a scaled-down credentials pass for Marcel, handwritten of course. The festival has been a great supporter of animation with Isabella Rossellini’s laugh-a-minute Green Porno series achieving success there in the past. “Neither of us are very internet-y”, explains Fleischer-Camp, who initially didn’t have any intention of putting the stop-motion short on the Internet, “but someone recommended that I put it online, and then another friend suggested sending it to festivals.” Awards galore and five and a half million hits on Youtube later, it’s fair to say Marcel is quite the success story. Slate and Fleischer-Camp are now in the midst of developing Marcel into a television show as well as a children’s book. And of course you can expect Marcel’s autobiography in all good bookstores soon! Prospective titles include, ‘Coming Out Of My Shell’.
