The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

Transcript

William Joyce:  It's all backwards. It's like, usually it’s a book and then it becomes a movie but in this case, we're like, “OK, it was a book that nobody has seen yet.” But it became a short, and now it’s nominated, and then we did an app in between there that everybody looked at. That better be good for the original idea, which was to do a book which is about books. About the power of books, the joy of books, you know, how books can change your life.

The production of books takes time. There's a big lag between when you finish a book and when it actually comes out. It’s eight months to a year. So, we're in this strange race to try to finish the book. Actually, we wanted it come out before the short and come out before the app but the thing with this new age we live in…you make a short film and you release it, you don't have to ask anybody. You just push a button and it’s on the iTunes store. And for the app, it was the same thing. Like, "We're done!" You submit it, they approve in a few days and then you press a button and it’s there. So, you know, books still have to go be printed and laid out and all this kind of stuff. They have marketing and they have a big organization that goes into the production and selling of a book. This electronic age for apps and things, it’s just you and your fellas and when you are done, you push a button and people can get it. So, we didn't mean to outdistance the book but that's just the way it worked out.

We're worried about it. My agent was like "Don't do the app first; it is going to mess everything up." And I was like, “You know, I really feel like we gotta get this app out. If we can be the first people to do a really beautiful story app, I think that will really mean something.”  It would be like the first guy to do the first color television show or something. I don't know, it just felt like story apps are so new, or books apps. Most book apps are kind of lame. They are just a scan of the book. So we decided that we wouldn't do an iBook of this, that we would do a story app, is what we call it.

The Fantastic Flying Books of [Mr.] Morris Lessmore is sort of whimsical little parable, I guess, about a fellow who loves books and he writes in his book every day. And he writes of his joys and his sorrows and everything he knew and everything that he hoped for. And then life has upsets and suddenly everything he knows and everything he counted on is lost. And basically his story is wiped clean. His book no longer has its words and he has to start over. And he wanders through this destroyed landscape, it all echoes Hurricane Katrina in the beginning, and finds a place - everything even losses color, it becomes black and white where he is - but he sees these books flying by and they are in color and they lead him to this building that is still intact and it’s in color. And he goes inside that building and the building is full of books. Each one of them is whispering an invitation to adventure, that's the way it is described in the book, and so, he begins his life among the books. And he grows old and the books take care of him, they read to him every night, read themselves to him every night. And he discovered early on that every book matters, is what he says. And he says, everybody’s story matters, so he finishes his journal, he comes to the last page of his journal, and he realizes it’s time to move on, as he says. As he flies away he turns young again and he has his book with him but he lets it go and it flies back into the building with the books and goes and lives with the books. The other books were sad to see him leave. He left his story behind with them.

At the end, it says, "And so, our story ends as it began, with the opening of a book." So, it’s just about how your life can be ruined, you think, and the idea of taking care of things and books and stories and your own life story. You'll find your way and your story matters. And that what you do will be left behind and what you do will be remembered and what you do will matter.

So in this weird way, it’s completely raised the awareness of the book. And in this time when everyone is worrying about will books die, are the tablets going to be the death of books, you know, what we've done is actually have had totally the reverse effect and I think that is the best news ever. I am so stoked that as counter intuitive as it sounds, we found a way to make books seem even more essential.