Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

It all start­ed when film­mak­er Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are) met hand­bag design­er Olympia Le-Tan and asked her to cre­ate a Catch­er in the Rye embroi­dery for his wall. She asked him to col­lab­o­rate on a film in return. And so Jonze and Le-Tan, togeth­er with French direc­tor Simon Cahn, spent six months writ­ing a script, then ani­mat­ing 3,000 pieces of felt cut by Le-Tan her­self. The result is Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side), a short stop motion film set inside the famous Parisian book­store, Shake­speare and Com­pa­ny, and it fea­tures a skele­ton, his lover, and some famous book cov­ers that spring to life.

For more back­sto­ry, don’t miss this short “Mak­ing of” film, a short inter­view with Olivia Le-Tan, and an inter­view with Spike Jonze. Here, you can also watch Mourir Auprès de Toi (now added to our Free Movie col­lec­tion) in a larg­er for­mat.

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