Martin Scorsese's film "Hugo" is adapted from The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. In an exclusive interview, in the Guardian, the American artist talks about working with Marty, his love of cross-hatching – and why he always keeps a mirror on his desk.
From the story...
And being also the descendant of generations of French clockmakers, I have to ask Selznick about this adoration of the mysteries of clocks and mechanics that is the bedrock of Hugo Cabret. "It comes from my interest in magic," replies the artist – one of his early books is about Houdini – "from witnessing something you cannot explain unless you are the person doing it or designing it. What interests me about clocks is that everything is hand-made, and yet to the person looking at the clock, something magical is happening that cannot be explained unless you are the clockmaker. Just as a magician does something, a trick, that only he knows the secret of. It goes back to Ancient Greece and to the Golem: if machines can imitate life, then what is life? Then I read a book by Gaby Wood, Edison's Eve, about automata, and there's a chapter on Méliès's collection, and I began to think about the connections between clock-making, automata and magic – and the magic of film that was also hand-made, the costumes, the sets, the colouring. There is a sense in all these things that they are done by hand, and there's a sense of purpose. Hugo talks about the sadness of broken machines, and how fixing them gives a sense of purpose."
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