In his latest animation, Memoir of a Snail, Academy-Award winning writer and film-maker, Adam Elliot (OH 1989), continues to champion the misunderstood and life’s misfits. 

Adam Elliott sat in the theatre at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival earlier this year and nervously waited for the audience reaction to his latest film, Memoir of a Snail. It was the film’s world premiere and as the credits began to roll, the audience rose to their feet to applaud Adam’s story of Grace – a hoarder with a passion for snails. 

“The standing ovation was a real shock because we had no idea how the film was going to be received and animation fans can be very critical and analytical,” says Adam. 

“The film that premiered the night before got a standing ovation, deservedly so, and I thought ‘Gee, I’ve never had one of those. That would be nice!’ For everyone to stand in a thousand-seater audience was quite incredible. I didn’t know where to look! A lot of my crew were there and it was very emotional, rewarding and a huge relief.” 

Adam joined Haileybury’s Keysborough campus in Grade 6 and says his time at the school was ‘formative’. 

“I wouldn’t be doing this interview had I gone to another school. Haileybury gave me so many opportunities – from drama performances to doing the cartoons for the school magazine and I had wonderful art and drama teachers like Stewart Bell, Graham Bennett and Janet Strachan,” he recalls. 

“I knew from an early age that I wanted to do something creative with my life and I did Art and Drama to Year 12. I was terrible at sport and I was forced to play football and cricket, which I loathe! But so many facets of Haileybury gave me confidence and I felt supported and encouraged the whole time.” 

After graduating, Adam studied animation at the Victorian College of the Arts and discovered stop-motion – where handmade figures and props are meticulously moved and photographed one frame at a time to eventually create a seamless story on screen. 

Adam toiled away at his craft but became a household name in 2004 when he won the Oscar for best animated short film with Harvie Krumpet.  

“Until then, I’d made three short films all under 10-minutes long and they won prizes, but when Harvie won the Oscar, suddenly I lost my anonymity. I never thought it was possible for someone like myself to win an award like that and it completely changed my life,” he recalls. 

“It allowed me to make my first feature film but it was a hard act to follow. It made me feel a bit of a fraud and insecure and terrified that I wouldn’t be able to do it all again. So I tried not to think about awards and focused on writing the best script I could which resulted in Mary and Max. I work one film at a time and remember my Dad’s advice which was ‘make them laugh, make them cry.’ That’s my simple ambition with each film.” 

Adam’s latest film, Memoir of a Snail, follows that same ambition. It charts the challenges and tribulations of Grace Pudel, a lonely hoarder who collects ornamental snails and books. Separated from her twin, Gilbert, at a young age, Grace is then beset by anxiety and hardships. But life takes a welcome twist when she begins a lasting friendship with an elderly eccentric called Pinky whose lust for life is infectious. 

Sarah Snook, Jacki Weaver, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, Eric Bana, Magda Szubanski, Tony Armstrong and Nick Cave all lend their voices to the stop-animation’s quirky characters. 

“The film is an amalgamation of a few people in my life – my mother is a mild hoarder and when my Dad passed away, he had three sheds full of stuff, so he was a bit of a collector, too. I’m fascinated by people who collect things they don’t need but attach sentimental value to them,” says Adam. 

“At the same time, I rediscovered some old notes from my journals about a friend of mine who was born with a cleft palate and I was going to make a short film about her because, as an adult, she became a very confident and extroverted person. However, as a child she was extremely shy and bullied and teased and I was interested in how she transformed herself. About 16 drafts later, these things merged together.” 

Adam writes from his home in the CBD and aims to write a page a day, which translates to about a minute of screentime. He is naturally drawn to creating characters like Harvie and Grace who aren’t natural heroes. 

“I’m more interested in people’s imperfections and in underdogs who are perceived as weird or eccentric but who learn to embrace their imperfections. I want the audience to put themselves in my characters’ shoes and to have empathy and to start to understand what it might be like to be born with a cleft palate or autism.  

“We all have a flaw we wished we didn’t have that we have to learn with. In Mary and Max I wrote the line ‘you’ve got to love your warts and all’ and I still believe that. There’s no point wasting time in feeling sorry for yourself and trying to fit in. We all have to embrace our weirdness.”