Scenes of Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson's Anomalisa is a stop-motion animated film about a man crippled by the mundanity of his life. Michael (voiced by David Thewlis), a motivational speaker, hears everyone having, quite literally, the same voice and having the same face. From the passengers on the airplane to the employees at the hotel to his ex girlfriend, each of the characters (all voiced by Tom Noonan) have the same voices and faces. Until he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a mousy woman with poor self-image who sounds and looks completely different than everyone else in the world. Michael and Lisa's instant attraction and affair quickly turns from exciting to boring, though, when she, too, begins to look and sound like everyone else. As Lisa's uniqueness fades, Michael becomes disenchanted, and returns home to his family and friends, all of whom look and sound alike.



A meditation on life, love, wants, needs, and perceptions of self and others, Anomalisa upholds the cinematic tradition of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation., Being John Malkovich, and the filmmaker's other films.



The book contains screen grabs from the film, an abridged screenplay, as well as behind-the-scenes images, including shots of the puppets being built, construction of the miniature sets, and the crew painstakingly positioning, and re-positioning the puppets and cameras for each frame of film. The book also contains a foreword written in the style of Studs Terkel's 1975 book, Working, in which a hotel bellman tells his story. Undeniably Kafumanesque in its tone and manner, readers will see this book as a physical embodiment of Kaufman & Johnson's vision.



This high-end giftable book adapts the feeling and nuance of Kaufman & Johnson's film into a package that will appeal to not only their fans, but cinefiles, and animation fans as well.