Brian Selznick Answers Your Questions!

At the last session of our Hugo Cabret program, some questions for the author Brian Selznick were submitted. These questions were emailed to Mr. Selznick, and here are his answers:

Was it hard to think up the characters?

Yes, because in the beginning I didn't really know what the story would be, so as I developed the plot I also developed the characters because both things are connected. Melies was maybe the easiest character to make up because he was based on a real person so I knew things about his life (like he lost all his money and worked in a toybooth seven days a week) so it was easy to imagine he was unhappy, and that unhappiness makes him mean.


Where did you get the inspiration for the idea of the story?

I first saw the movie A Trip to the Moon and then thought it would be interesting to make a story about the man who made it. Later I found out that Melies owned a collection of Automata that were destroyed and thrown away. I imagined a boy climbing through the garbage to save one of the broken machines, and that boy became Hugo.

How long did it take to perfect the drawings?

I sketched them for about a year and a half and then did the final art in about nine months, after doing lots of research and photographing models.


Was this a lifelong idea, or something you just came up with?

I'd had the idea about doing a book about Melies for over twenty years
probably, and then worked on it for about two and a half years.

Is this the best novel you've ever written?

I guess that is up to the reader, but I do love it alot.

When did you first start writing books?

My first book was The Houdini Box, about a kid who wanted to be a
magician, and it came out in 1991.

Why did you pick those certain films to be put in the books?

These were movies that inspired me and that I watched while researching
the book. Plus, the Harold Lloyd film where he's hanging from the
clock is famous and since clocks are so important I knew I wanted that
in the book.

Why did you include automatons?

When I found out that Melies actually owned real automata I knew I
wanted them to be in the book.

Was Hugo Cabret fun to write?

It was fun, but also very very hard. I'd never made anything like this
before so alot of the time I didn't know what I was doing! But I kept
working on it and I had lots of help from friends and from my editor at
Scholastic.