Summary
The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic Press)
The design and composition of this five hundred page picture book took Brian Selznick many years' work. Here, we talk about the influence of movies, especially French movies, especially the work of pioneer Georges Méliès. The talk about Méliès leads us to the spiritual mentors that haunt Selznick's vivid imagination.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. |
| 0:07.3 | You are a human animal. |
| 0:11.5 | You are a very special breed. |
| 0:15.2 | Or you are the only animal. |
| 0:18.6 | Who can think, who can reason, who can read. |
| 0:22.8 | From KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. |
| 0:27.5 | Today is a rather special day because we're talking about what some people would call a young adult novel. |
| 0:35.3 | It shouldn't really be called. |
| 0:36.7 | It's a huge book, which is a picture book and a silent movie and a novel. |
| 0:43.4 | It's over 500 pages long, but many of those pages, I would say, almost two-thirds, are pictures. |
| 0:50.5 | And it's called the invention of Hugo Cabray. |
| 0:53.4 | It's by my guest, Brian Selznick, and it's published by Scholastic Press. |
| 0:58.7 | Now, it's about a boy, Hugo Cabre, who lives hidden in a train station. |
| 1:04.8 | His father was the clockmaster there, and he now, after his father's death and his uncle's disappearance, |
| 1:14.4 | is keeping track of the clocks, filching things from the shops in the station to stay alive, |
| 1:21.7 | and trying to repair an automaton, a robot-like thing that his father rescued from a museum that will eventually |
| 1:30.9 | have a message for him and which will lead him into the entire world of French filmmaking |
| 1:39.1 | in the form of the magnificent trip to the moon by an early French filmmaker George Meliez. |
| 1:47.6 | Meliez. |
| 1:49.2 | Now, tell me, how did this start? |
| 1:51.7 | This is a bit complicated. |
| 1:53.6 | Yeah, it all started with a trip to the moon with the Melias film. |
... |
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