Several years back, Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp traveled with friends to attend an out of town wedding. Opting to scrimp on lodging costs, the duo shared a crowded hotel room with four other friends. Slate just happened to be the only girl in the group, which led to her adopting a “teeny-tiny” voice to communicate her comparative petiteness to the other men in the room. The voice, a running joke for the rest of the weekend, became the eventual creative spark that would launch a web series, children’s books and feature-length film released by A24.   Soon thereafter, the first […]

The panels have been announced for the 2022 Gotham Week Conference, the first time the event will occur in person since 2019. The panelists include Jenny Slate and other team members behind Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, director of Bodies Bodies Bodies Halina Reijn and co-directors of The Janes Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes. Slate, who voiced the title character and co-wrote the script, will be joined by Marcel director Dean Fleischer Camp and animation director Kirsten Lepore. Other panelists at the 2022 Gotham Week Conference include Adamma and Adanne Ebo, the respective director and producer of Honk For Jesus. […]

When I interviewed Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate about their short film, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, for Filmmaker‘s 2010 25 New Faces series, both remember the project resulting from a period where they were a little down. Then a couple, Fleischer-Camp described being “unfilled” at work, while Slate said, ‘I was depressed… a little bit. We were at a time in our lives when whatever we made would have a layer of gravity. And the real magic of [the movie] to me is that it has this layer of gravity, but it’s still about an adorable little shell.” […]

When, in 2013, I spoke to Dean Fleischer Camp about his exquisitely deadpan web series, Catherine, created with Jenny Slate, I immediately wanted to know about its production design. How did he come up with its uncannily bland, generically discomforting visual spaces? The director told me that his inspirations included the ’90s TV show Kids in the Hall as well as Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom, but that part of the show’s visual aesthetic came from the porn-movie sets he was renting as a location. Now, Camp writes with word of a new project that furthers the aesthetic he’s been […]

Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate — the 2011 25 New Faces who created the delightful Marcel the Shell with Shoes On — have a new web series, a 12-part “comedy of sincerity” called Catherine. Camp wrote in an email: It’s a comedy, but it’s also sincere and menacing and hopefully kind of evocative. In some ways it’s a response to the “awkward” comedy that dominates TV & movies right now. My secret hope is that it kicks off a new movement away from that kind of boring cynicism toward something with a live, beating heart. A single-entendre sense of […]

Congrats to 25 New Face filmmakers Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate for busting onto Brian Williams’ NBC show, accompanied, of course, by their wonderful creation, Marcel the Shell. Here’s the spot. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the totally winning animated short that placed writer/director Dean Fleischer Camp and writer/actress Jenny Slate on Filmmaker‘s 2011 25 New Faces list. (Read their profile here.) Now, the couple — and Marcel, the Montaigne of animated seashells — returns in a new short. He seems slightly cheerier than last time, and the production values are a smidgen better while not betraying the short’s lo-fi origins. There is no better way to start your morning.