An Oscar for Shaun Tan?
By Chelsey Philpot --> February 24, 2011
Shaun Tan
Photo by Inari KiuruShaun Tan may have to make room on his shelves for an Oscar. The award-winning author and illustrator best known for his wordless graphic novel, The Arrival (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Bks., 2007), has been nominated in the Best Short Film (Animated) category for The Lost Thing, where he makes his directorial debut along with co-director, Andrew Ruhemann.
Based on Tan's 2005 picture book of the same name, The Lost Thing (Simply Read) tells the story of a curious boy who discovers an odd-looking creature on the beach—and learns about cruelty and indifference while trying to help it find its place.
We caught up with Tan at home in Australia before he headed to Los Angeles to attend the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony on February 27.
What was your reaction when you found out you were nominated for an Oscar?
Obvious excitement, as well as mixed feelings of surprise, relief—as it had been shortlisted for months—and an affirmation of all the sweat and toil invested by our small team over many years. We've been fortunate to win several major awards with this film, yet an Oscar nomination is one that's broadly recognized by a mainstream audience, outside of animation, and so it's a big breakthrough. It also means that support for any future projects may be a little easier to harness
It was nearly a ten year-long process to adapt the book into a 15-minute film. What inspired you to switch mediums?
The idea of adapting this as a film came after the book won a prestigious award at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. It came to the attention of a British animation studio with an Australian producer, Sophie Bryne. She contacted me with a proposal to acquire rights, and also to involve me as a creative director. I was slightly dubious at first, but after discussing the project with Sophie and examining some of her previous projects—including animated clips for the band Gorillaz—I was convinced that The Lost Thing could work very well as an animated film. This discussion began in 2001; the film was completed in 2010—to give you some idea of the time frame involved.
What were some of the biggest challenges for you and what were some of the rewards?
Aside from hundreds of technical and design headaches, it was the sheer duration of the working period. Up until 2006, I also made several aborted attempts to storyboard the film at different lengths, all of which was quite exhausting when no actual end was in sight. The constant question being would this work on screen at all?
On the positive side, Sophie assembled a great team, so there was a kind of creative intimacy in working with only one animator (Leo Baker) and one digital artist (Tom Bryant) instead of a big group. We would often joke about the "art department" or "animation department" or "tech support"—actually referring to multi-tasking individuals. There was a laundromat downstairs, and we thought of any mice living there as our additional production crew—so always joking about our small scale. But I think limited resources were, in the end, conducive to working carefully and intelligently, and achieving results comparable to the work of big studios.
Of course, the most rewarding part is actually seeing it all come together and screened in front of an audience. As a writer and illustrator, it's rare for me to be present when someone reads my work for the first time, and to see their reaction. So that has been a novel experience for me (and a bit nerve-wracking too!).
Where did the idea for the book come from?
The Lost Thing began life, modestly enough, as a picture book initially scrawled on a kitchen table in 1998. At the time I was an unemployed illustrator and, having previously worked with other writers, I wanted to create a story of my own—and make it as outlandish as possible. But I also wanted to draw upon some personal experiences, including memories of my first cat (a stray from a local school), growing up in the remote city of Perth in Western Australia, and the problem of earning a living as an artist in a fairly pragmatic, materialistic society. The result was this story of a lost, tentacled creature, adopted by an introverted boy (who resembles myself as a teenager).
You call the story a "modern fable." What would you like audiences to take away from it?
Some sense that, in spite of it being a fable, there is no particular moral message, but rather a set of questions. That's how I see the film, a set of open-ended conjectures that are presented in the form of a nameless creature, a peculiar city, and an ambiguous narrator. Perhaps the central question concerns our ability—especially as we become adults—to remain playful, curious, and open-minded; and to care about things which cannot be easily categorized, which don't have apparent value, which are "lost." I hope that audiences continue to think about that problem, long after enjoying the film. In particular, that they grasp the "Lost Thing" as more of a metaphor than just a funny creature, one that relates directly to everyday life.
Where do you plan to put your Oscar if you win?
Ha—interesting question. I would probably give it to Sophie for her office, given that as the producer, she's the real unsung hero of the production, and the person largely responsible for getting the film made in the first place. Maybe we'd just share it among the crew, so we each have it on our mantelpieces for certain months of the year, particularly if hard-to-impress relatives are visiting.
Any plans to make more films?
There is some discussion of adapting The Arrival as a feature film, again with Sophie and another LA-based producer; in fact, visiting LA for the Oscars actually presents a handy opportunity to arrange a few meetings about that. Your readers are likely to be more familiar with The Arrival rather than The Lost Thing, as this graphic novel about immigrant experience was my first work published in the U.S., and has since attracted a lot of interest from film producers due to the fact that it's very cinematic in structure. I would also like to continue working on short films where possible, because I've always loved this form, and most of my stories tend to be little fables about modern life, as in a recent anthology Tales from Outer Suburbia.
Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing will be published in the collection Lost & Found: Three by Shaun Tan by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic, in March.
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