Meet 'Marcel': Milton's Jenny Slate celebrated at Provincetown Film Festival

PROVINCETOWN – Milton actress-writer-comedian Jenny Slate picked up the Next Wave Award at the 24th Provincetown Film Festival alongside “SNL” star Bowen Yang.

Slate’s parents, Ron and Nancy Slate, were in the audience Thursday at the ceremony and screening of Jenny’s new film, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.”

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The movie is a feature adaptation of the stop-motion shorts she co-wrote and created with her ex-husband Dean Fleischer-Camp, who directs and stars. The story follows Marcel (Slate), an adorable 1-inch-tall shell who ekes out a colorful existence with his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) in an Airbnb house.

The movie, Slate said at a post-screening Q-and-A, took seven years to make and was based on a voice she first used among a group of friends crammed into a hotel room together to save money on lodging at a wedding. Marcel first became a viral sensation through short videos more than a decade ago.

“I certainly did not imagine when I started doing a little voice drunkenly at a wedding,” she said with a laugh, “that anybody would ever pay me money to do anything but stop.”

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The New Wave Award recognizes risk-taking artists who have "exciting and distinctive voices." Emcee/comedian Judy Gold – a veteran of summer Provincetown entertainment – introduced Slate and Yang ("Fire Island") as hope for future comedy in filmmaking.

“They’re just so f***ing talented and in a world of mediocrity and dumbness, it makes me feel … that we're passing the torch to these people who are going to really take care of the world and in the arts,” she said.

Slate’s movie hits theaters June 24 and follows Marcel as he tries to find his family and regain a sense of belonging. To Marcel, Slate said, community means “a group of individuals that will help him to self-actualize and feel safe. When he’s exposed to the internet, and finds out what it is, he understands there’s a difference between an audience and a community, and that’s just something I also confront as a person. There’s a really jarring difference.” Slate described at various points how telling Marcel’s story over the years helped her work out some of her own outlooks on life.

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Marcel introduces himself as partly a shell, “and then he goes on to say ‘I like that about myself and I like myself and I have a lot of other great qualities as well,' " Slate pointed out. After feeling like she didn’t fit in with many people growing up, “I think that I was at a point in my life where I actually would like to be clear that I don’t feel ashamed of what I’m like. … So maybe I'm not that cool, but most people actually are very interesting. One thing that's nice about Marcel is that he feels divested of that urgency of proving it.”

During the Q-and-A, Slate also said she wrestles with the responsibility aspect of her art and work.

“I think it's important for all artists to constantly be looking into their culture and understanding what they have to use and how to use it to still say, ‘Hey, this is where we're all putting up walls that shouldn’t be walls’ and ‘Hey, this is a type of language that's being co-opted by a group and they're using it just for hate. Is there any use for this language anymore? Should we just stop it?’ ”

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Slate is an ubiquitous voice actress. Besides “Marcel,” her voice work includes the part of the bouncy Pomeranian, Gidget, on “The Secret Life of Pets” movies and Harley Quinn on “The Lego Batman Movie.” She also lent her pipes to characters in the hit animated films “Zootopia,” “Despicable Me 3" and “The Lorax.”

A versatile character actress, Slate has appeared in supporting and guest roles on TV in comedies such as “Married,” “Brooklyn Nine Nine,” “Parks and Recreation,” “House of Lies,” “Bored to Death,” “Girls,” “Kroll Show” and “Hello Ladies.” She also appeared on “Saturday Night Live” during the 2009-10 season, drawing laughs for impersonations of Lady Gaga and the Olsen twins.

Her film roles include "I Want You Back," “Venom,” “Obvious Child,” “Hotel Artemis,” “Landline” and “Gifted.”  She has a supporting role in the new indie black comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once." which is still showing in Boston theaters and available for rental via Apple TV+ and Amazon.

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Oscar-nominated director Luca Guadagnino ("Call Me by Your Name") was the festival’s “Filmmaker on the Edge” honoree.  Guadagnino is in Boston filming the romantic drama  “Challengers,” with Zendaya and Mike Faist ("West Side Story").

Slate was valedictorian of her Milton Academy class in 2000 and returned to her alma mater to deliver the commencement address in 2013, urging graduates to always be hopeful and search for “a thing of beauty” every day.

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Material from the Cape Cod Times was used in this report. 

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Milton Jenny Slate talks 'Marcel the Shell' Provincetown Film Festival