Five minutes with Brian Selznick, robot creator

If you haven’t heard of Brian Selznick by now, we bet that’ll soon change. The author-illustrator, acclaimed for his stunningly detailed drawings, just released a new book, Wonderstruck, while the Chicago Children’s Theatre will stage a play based on his best-seller The Houdini Box in late January. We talked to him about another adaptation: Hugo, the big-screen version of his 2007 Caldecott Medal winner about a Parisian orphan and a robot. Directed by none other than Martin Scorsese, it opens Thanksgiving week.

The movie Hugo evolved in a really amazing way. Can you tell us about it?
It was very unexpected. I wrote and illustrated The Invention of Hugo Cabret in 2007, and before it was even published, I got a phone call that Martin Scorsese wanted to direct the movie version. He had gotten an advance readers’ copy, and—yeah—it was just amazing.

That must have blown you away.
It was thrilling to know that he had read my book. I got to visit the studio in England while they were filming. I thought an intern was just going to show me everything quickly, but Dante Ferretti—the Oscar-winning set designer who did the sets for Hugo and has done every movie of Scorsese’s since The Age Of Innocence—took me on a personal tour. It was really incredible ’cause everything looked just like my book, except bigger and more beautiful than I ever could have imagined myself.

That’s saying something, coming from someone who illustrated his own book. Was that something you were worried about?
Well, it was Scorsese, so I can’t say I was worried one way or another. But it was a thrill to see that they followed my book very, very closely. Everywhere I looked, there were details that I saw taken directly from my drawings.

Like what?
In my book there’s a metal grate in the wall that Hugo climbs to go through the walls, and that’s something that doesn’t exist in real life; I made that up. I saw it in real life, in the set of the train station, made of real metal. I said, ‘Dante, that looks just like the metal grate I drew in my book!’ He said, ‘It is the metal grate in your book. I made it exactly!’ ”

You said so many of your illustrations were brought to life, but what about the writing?
The plot of the movie is exactly the same as the plot of the book. The screenplay is filled with my original dialogue. In the book I wanted to try and tell a story that felt magical without there being any real magic. Scorsese was after the same thing. In the movie, the colors are little bit more intimate, the sets are a little bit larger, everything is just a little stronger than they would be in real life.

Sounds like this is going to be a tough experience to follow.
[Laughs] Well, I definitely started at the top, I’m aware of that.

Hugo opens in cinemas on November 23.