A Halloween Chat With Henry Selick, Director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline

With one masterful movie in which imaginary, holiday-manufacturing villages collide, The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick single-handedly ignited the stop-motion renaissance. His most recent film, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2002 children's book Coraline, was no less ghoulish a tale, centering on a little girl with neglectful parents who discovers a mirror world of button-eyed doppelgangers living through a secret passageway. Movieline spoke with Selick today about Jack Skellington's favorite day, the direction stop-motion is taking, and the grunt work of making an enduring animated classic.

Happy Halloween!

Almost...

Is this a special time of year for you?

It's pretty much always been one of my top two holidays of the year. It's the most fun by far.

What are you childhood memories of it? Did they inform what The Nightmare Before Christmas would become?

Me and my brothers and sisters would make our own costumes. I always liked to be something kinda scary. Even though I was a boy, I often played a witch. And a mummy. I loved being a ghoul. It was great to act braindead and drag around.

How early on were you crafting puppets?

I was one of those kids who was drawing all the time, making stuff out of papier maché and wire. But it didn't really lead to animation until college. I was a sculptor, but my sculptures had joints and were poseable. It wasn't until I saw a student film that was stop-action that everything I loved came together, and I just started going.

There was some minor controversy recently regarding the way Wes Anderson went about directing the upcoming Fantastic Mr. Fox remotely. As the pre-eminent stop-action motion picture director, I'm curious: How often are you physically there, manipulating your puppets?

It's the only way I can work, is to be there in the trenches. Wes is a brilliant director, and whatever works works, but for me I have to be there. We actually have puppets right there in editorial, so I can pose it to show what I want. For me, that's my favorite time making the film, when we're in full production, and I'm interacting with all these great artists.

It's well known that stop-motion is one of the most painstaking and arduous of animation techniques, if not the most. How do you keep sane through the process?

It's what I love to do. It's no more arduous than building a bridge or any other big campaign. It's kind of like war, but nobody has to die. It's a battle mentality, and there's skirmishes here and there, but I love to solve problems. You have to be open to new ideas. That's what I love for. I love the results, but it's that world that I love most. The making of.

How has 3-D helped or hindered stop-motion?

I have mixed feelings. I'm very happy with how I used it in Coraline. Because stop-motion uses real stuff, 3-D just helps the audience see that these things are real. But it really has to be justified by story. I felt in Coraline there was a great story reason, because it was about creating another version of her life that appeared to be better and more fun. In the other world, we built the spaces deep, the sets larger, so that you got suckered into believing that world was better, the way Coraline was.

What did you think of the retrofitted 3-D they did on Nightmare Before Christmas?

Going into that, both myself and Tim Burton separately thought it was the worst idea we'd ever heard. But I ended up being impressed. It's not the ideal way to create a 3-D movie -- it's expensive and slow. But they showed restraint. They also respected the film, left in its flaws. It's like remixing music. A nice layer.

Does Nightmare's core group of superfans have a name?

If they do I'm not sure what it is.

Do you come into contact with them a lot?

Here and there. One of my favorite things about Halloween, I'm usually at home. When kids come around, who don't necessarily know me, dressed up as a character from Nightmare, I love that. Sometimes, I point around the corner, and I have Jack Skellington dressed up as Sandy Claws on his sled with all the original skeleton reindeer and Zero, and they freak out.

I never get tired of it. It's just one of those holiday classics. Thanks for making it.

Thanks for liking it. It's nice to be part of something that keeps going. Because most movies don't. I'm hoping something similar happens to Coraline.