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For me, drawing is definitely a way of saying, "Look at this,
"what do you think of this?
"How does that make you feel?"
"Look at where that tree sits on that hill."
Or, "look at the way that creature fits into the landscape."
"Look at how it all works together, all these lines."
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse... Has been on the best
seller's list for a frankly ridiculous number of weeks.
It's just stunningly beautiful.
I found it really emotional, I burst into tears
when I was reading the book.
This thing sold more than a million copies and readers are feeling
a real special connection.
The way I did the book was in a dip pen, so I'd dip it in ink.
And it's a thin nib, the harder you press, the thicker it becomes.
I like the fact that it often it's really imperfect
and it's permanent.
I like the risk, I think, and the strength of it, the darkness
of it, just feels free and expressive.
This is the story of a book that's touched readers around the world.
One of my new favourite books, it's called The Boy, The Mole,
The Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy.
How did a first time author create a publishing phenomenon?
And how do you turn a book without a story, as such, into a film?
"What do you think success is?" asked the boy.
"To love," said the mole.
Charlie's book started out
as a series of sketches in 2018.
It was a couple of years before the pandemic arrived.
I was doing loads of drawings and putting them on Instagram
and people would emotionally respond.
And I got very stuck on the boy and the mole and then obviously
the horse came along and the fox.
I looked forward to posting daily and it was like measuring the pulse
of where people were, and, you know, because sometimes on your own
it's quite hard.
It was all reciprocal because people said they got so much from them
and I got so much from their comments.
So it was a really lovely thing.
And you could feel their energy.
I could feel their desire for it to become something.
You know, social media can be a really wonderful thing
sometimes, a great community.
The things that people were sharing are potentially things
that they weren't necessarily sharing in their own lives,
but he had created this safe space through the works
that he was posting.
The mission was to start positive conversations
around mental health, around how we were feeling
and I had a real sense of urgency that it was an important thing
that needed to happen.
Charlie's growing social media following played an important part
in the success of the book.
There was a critical point for me with social media because now it's,
you know, like, 1.5 million people is a lot of people.
And, in a way, when it was like, you know, not so many, you recognise
people and I could chat and say, "I've posted a drawing."
And so everyone felt like they were contributing
and were part of the journey towards the book.
I was always worried that I was over-posting or posting
too many of one thing.
I will always be really grateful to everyone
on it because they helped me so much...
..in the development and processing of everything that's in the book.
Everything.
I think the reason why Charlie's work is relatable is because
it contains these universal truths.
Each pairing of words and picture that he creates in the book,
they speak to us quite deeply and they reveal these fundamental
ideas that we have about ourselves.
I think people really related to the book during the pandemic
because we were all looking for something to comfort us.
It was an unprecedented time to live through and the kind of words
and the sentiments in Charlie's book obviously struck a chord with people
and enabled them perhaps to feel better about what was going on.
"The boy is full of questions and the mole is greedy for cake.
"The fox is mainly silent and wary because he's been hurt by life.
"The horse is the biggest thing they've ever encountered
"and also the gentlest."
One of Charlie's friends and collaborators is film-maker
Richard Curtis, who encouraged him to write the book.
How old are you?
59. Nice.
Why is that nice?
You're just a bit younger than me.
Not much.
That is the strange thing about friendship, is it needs
circumstances, doesn't it?
And the characters in your book are thrown by a journey...
Yeah. ..together by chance.
And, as it were, we knew each other for years
and then we ended up in the same village.
And that's, as it were, our journey.
And now we're together forever because we're on that
particular road.
Remind me of the name of the book?
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse.
It's just so hard to remember the order.
It is, but if you think of terms of chronology,
it's the first the boy and then the mole appears.
Then the fox and the horse. Everyone gets it wrong, I don't really mind.
Doesn't matter, as long as they're all mentioned.
I don't think they mind. They don't exist.
What do you mean, they mind?
They're all just you.
That's true, that's true.
I do think they exist, though, that's the problem.
But your obsessive iteration of those things must have meant
that you were incredibly interested
in those particular relationships?
That that idea of someone who offers you advice or someone who offers
you protection or someone who stays distant?
I mean, why do you think you landed on those four?
Because there were lots of other characters, there's a penguin
and a polar bear, there are other creatures on the edges.
But I always just came back to those four because I think
they're very particular and they're all very
different from each other.
In a funny way, they are both who you are and what you need.
Very innocent, like the boy, but you'd also love life
to be simpler and less painful. Yes.
And the mole is like a really good friend that you need.
But then he's also, in some ways, like you, he's full of wisdom
and he's funny and he pops up all the time.
I mean, I think they both are you and are what you need.
Yeah, I think you're right, I think they are what I need...
Definitely.
I remember talking to a friend about what courage was,
and he was all for climbing mountains.
And I think that's a type of courage.
But I remember thinking, well, the bravest thing I ever did
was when I was really struggling, and I said, "I'm really struggling."
Charlie has been a best friend and a brother since I was a teenager.
We met on a summer camp originally and instantly found a kindred spirit
in Charlie, somebody who I think, bit more of a misfit together.
I think the last few years has been incredibly
tough on everybody.
There's no-one who hasn't been affected by it, and I think
it's been a time of great loneliness and a lot of anxiety
more than ever before and his book has been a book of its time.
Seeing your best friend succeed is a very beautiful thing, you know?
And truth is, it's a, as I say, 25-year overnight success.
You know, he's been inspiring and helping
and being that inspiration to people for decades.
It actually makes me quite emotional to think about it.
People just think he's, you know, he's a writer or they're cartoons.
But actually his... You look at some of
his beautiful, beautiful paintings
over many years and his sculptures, they are stunning and they make
people cry when they see them because they're always rooted
in love and redemption and holding each other and connection.
I do really remember after my dad died, when I was in my mid-20s,
and just really struggling at that time.
And I remember saying to him, I said, "The weird thing is,
"is that people always sort of think I'm strong.
"And the truth is I'm not and I'm really struggling at the moment."
And he would often then, a day or so later, send me little drawings
he would do, just encouraging stuff.
And I remember him doing one along those lines,
saying you need help is brave.
One of the things that struck me about Charlie's work on Instagram
is the instant emotional connection it had with people.
It certainly, for me, I found it a very moving experience.
Looking at his work on Instagram and thinking,
"My gosh, there could be something here, there could be something
"that we could collect these images into these artworks, into a book
"and introduce him to even more people."
The process of making the book began with us, considering how the book
should look and feel in someone's hand.
And it was really important to Charlie that the book reflected
how the original artworks looked.
I don't think any of us at the beginning knew
what it would really entail.
I got a call from Laura from Penguin and she said,
"There's a guy called Charlie, he's produced all of this work.
"He's just had an exhibition, can you go and meet him?"
I popped over one morning.
It's freezing cold, a February morning,
and we sat out in the garden and we had this really
wonderful morning together.
I had meetings for the rest of the day all lined up and ended
up cancelling all of them and just ended up spending time
just talking about everything.
And then Charlie said, "Oh, I'll just go and get
"what I've got for the book."
So he went into the house and he wheeled out this wheelbarrow,
which is full of these drawings, and I thought, "Maybe it's not
"going to be a week's work."
He started talking about the book and his relationship
with his community online and what it was all about.
At that point, Charlie already had a fairly significant
following on social media, so his work was almost being
demanded by that community.
We sat in the garden.
Colm, we kind of agreed we'd try and make a treasure
that was not about selling anything, but was going to help people, right?
Yeah. Colm just said, "Oh, we'll put it together in a day or so."
And then, so began this journey where we just slowly, over time,
arranged the book.
It was a long journey, and because, you know, essentially,
there was hundreds and probably thousands of drawings.
It was a process of elimination more than it was construction.
It was like pulling things out, saying, that's not relevant,
that's not relevant, until eventually we were left with
the bare essentials.
Yeah, we spoke about, like, creating like an object, something
that has this energy to it, no matter how much it's reproduced.
And I think all of that energy comes from, like, putting
all of this work into it, like, you know, it was kind of like
lots and lots of time and patience.
See, all these, these are all, like, all these pads
are full of mistakes.
That's the thing, you're looking at basically a sea of error.
And out of which, if you keep going, you'll find something that's worth
keeping, but it's mainly error.
So what I started with deeply was, out of all these drawings trying
to find, choose them that feel they have meaning,
that they take you on a journey.
"What is that over there?" asked the boy.
"It's the wild," said the mole.
"Don't fear it."
I was brought up in Northumberland and lived in the landscape.
As a boy, I used to stand on a hill and look at the horizon a quarter,
or half a mile away and say, if I get to that wood,
I wouldn't be able to see myself from here, I'd be part of it.
So I'd pick a spot in the distance and then walk to it and then sit
down and think, "I'm now invisible to where I was before."
I love the idea that you can be immersed in something so much
bigger than yourself.
For the book, part of why I've loved doing drawings of landscape
is just to share the love of it, really.
And animals and nature generally.
Because I think, you know, there's part of us deeply trusts it.
Animals are such a great medium, really, for storytelling.
Children can relate to them.
You know, I think children are natural animal lovers.
There's a special relationship between children and animals.
They have this very direct connection, very responsive
connection to animals and the natural world.
I think all books that contain words and pictures are relatable
to a wide audience.
Even very young children can look at pictures
and understand them.
I really like the expressiveness of Charlie's drawing.
It makes us sort of feel that it's effortless,
and actually, there's a whole lifetime of draughtsmanship
has gone into the way those drawings unfold and the many times
that he's drawn those characters and, you know, this sort
of fluidity to them.
Books like Charlie's are really rare because he has the ability
to cross over genres.
He has the ability to speak to adults and children,
people of all ages.
The book might bring to mind AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh
or Raymond Briggs' Snowman.
Winnie-the-Pooh came at a very similar time
in that it was post-war and it was a very hard
time for everybody.
And Winnie-the-Pooh brought the similar kind of comfort and joy.
Our home is full of so many little drawings of Charlie's
from over the years.
You know, we struggle with anxiety or stress or frustration or anger
or whatever it is, I think Charlie's drawings hit straight
to the heart of actually saying, "It's OK, that's OK."
You know, "Just... Just be honest, it's OK."
And as soon as you kind of let that guard down, of course,
you create connections with people, whether it's around
you or your readers or whatever, and where there's connections,
there's always strength.
"Always remember, you matter.
"You're important and you're loved, and you bring to this world,
"things no-one else can."
The wisdom in Charlie's book has its roots
in his own life experiences.
My parents were both so lovely and really wanted me to get
the best education.
I think at boarding school it was tougher.
You competed far harder and it was an all boys school, a monoculture.
And more Darwinian, you tended to bury your thoughts in yourself.
When you're away from home, it's harder to process stuff
and you get used to internalising things.
At some point I thought I'd really love to just be at home and go
to the state school.
When I was at the state school, there was some lads
who were just openly vulnerable and didn't need to compete so much.
Marie, who was in biology next to me,
I remember her loving the vulnerability of Mark.
I was like, "He's not showing off", and she was like,
"Oh, that's lovely, isn't it? He's so honest.
"He's lovely, isn't he?"
I thought...
..wow.
She liked the fact that he said that he struggled.
I think, for me, I just discovered a whole world of honesty
and communicating emotion.
You know, there's one drawing that's not in the book, where the boy
says, you know, "I haven't really achieved anything, have I?
"What have I actually done?"
The horse says, "Well, you've been a friend,
"and that's a spectacular thing."
Jamie, I met at school, he was hilarious.
And we sort of got each other.
You know, we're kind of semi-feral, rural types.
We just used to muck about on the farm and just eat a lot
of toast and get covered in mud.
Talk about girls and...
..fail at having girlfriends and we just understood each other
and we made each other laugh and he thought I was ridiculous.
And you know how boys are, you know, friends are, you just share
the same connections.
We were just really good friends, you know?
I always remember he had this wreck of a car and I didn't drive
and he was always giving me lifts and we used to listen
to Tom Petty loudly.
Yeah, and just go to the local pub and it was a really good
rural farming community there.
And Jamie and I were sort of part of it, really.
We didn't have big dreams.
We just enjoyed existing.
So, one day, I just got a call from a mutual friend saying...
I was away at the time, actually, I was up north seeing my family.
And he just said, "I just got some news."
I said, "Oh, yeah?"
"Jamie was killed today."
Yeah, came off the road and the car burst into flames.
The funeral was this tiny little church on a hill with loads
of people standing outside.
And I remember one of the guys saying, "Big boys don't cry."
And still hadn't connected with my emotion.
There was a man that Jamie and I had worked with.
He was a big, strong...
..man.
And he came up to me.
He saw me, he walked straight over to me.
He had tears hanging in the bottom of the eyelids.
He looked straight in my eyes and pressed his head against...
He leant and he goes...
"What a bloody waste, Charlie."
"What a bloody waste."
And it was like someone...
..had...
..pulled the ripcord or something in my inner being.
It was an extraordinary experience to suddenly feel...
..everything.
Like, they are red lines in life, but nothing's ever the same again
and that was one of my red lines, Jamie dying,
and wondering why and how and...
I remember it was like a tumble dryer spinning, spinning, spinning.
I went mad for months.
One day you feel nothing and feel bad for not feeling anything.
Oh, he's died.
And the next day, you feel angry or very, very low.
I think the whole idea of grief is unexplored
or under-explored, generally.
That loss, even though it's agony, can awaken in you
something beautiful.
It was a big thing for me, both deep grief and loss
and also this kind of liberation from a certain way of thinking.
His death definitely catalysed me into daring to make
a living from drawing.
Because what have you got to lose, you know?
Really?
I began drawing when I was about 19.
I went to London because my sister had a flat there and she said,
"Oh, just come and sleep on the floor."
So I did.
London in the '80s was very different to how it is now.
It was lighter and sillier and more playful
and I was fascinated by it.
I liked the energy - you could see in Technicolor.
The colours were turned up or it was intense and you could feel so much.
And I liked the massive variation in cultures
and, coming from Northumberland, I'd never seen that before.
I was quite drawn to that.
London for me was so much opportunity.
I did loads of jobs - I was a waiter,
I worked on building sites, I was a hospital porter.
I did anything.
I remember the day I started drawing, I got The Standard
newspaper and I'd been looking in the back pages because there
were jobs there and I couldn't really see anything.
And there was a messy table.
And on that table was a pen.
It was russety red, like a maroon colour.
And I looked at it and I remember just being a bit intrigued by it.
So I picked it up and unscrewed the lid and there's a very thin nib.
And I remember doing a few dots of ink on an envelope with it,
thinking, "Wow, this is a very fine nib, bet you could get some
"detail with this."
And it was a kind of miracle to me the ink could even get down
such a thin nib.
So I took the pen and the paper and wandered across the road and went
into the park and sat under a tree.
I started drawing.
The freedom I felt when I started making the marks
was like a tiny spark to a flame.
There was something here that was intriguing and intoxicating.
I remember drawing some houses with trees in front and loving
the shapes of the trees with the architecture.
I could think when I did it.
Like the process of making art helps you feel and think
and get things in order.
We have these moments in our lives, don't we?
We have these little things
that they come and they grow like mustard seed,
like tiny and then grow.
And that just happened to be it.
It was an amazing journey, but I couldn't... I couldn't seem...
..to stop drawing.
And, you know, I remember someone coming up to me saying,
you know, "Is that for sale?"
And I was like, "Are you...?"
I didn't think they were sellable at the time.
I started selling them, started sitting on streets.
And for four years, I sat on the streets of London, drawing it
and selling straight to strangers.
Even in February, I remember freezing,
I kept doing the drawings and that's how I made a living.
Then, of course, a gallery guy walks past eventually,
stops and he looked at the drawings and said,
"Do you want to come and talk to us?"
I was amazed that a gallery would be interested in me.
I said, "OK". Before I knew it, I was with a gallery.
The gallery took me to New York.
When I was there I went to New Orleans and stayed there
and ended up drawing so much in those clubs.
I liked their energy and they felt very free.
How long did you spend there?
A few months.
It's so hot.
Just sit there and just drip sweat onto the paper, you know,
sit at the back of these clubs.
This Preservation Hall, I remember, in New Orleans was amazing.
The line is a bit of a blur, but just generally splodging
along, renting studios, doing shows with galleries.
I've always loved making people laugh, so that was always...
..like part of me was...
You know, for my mum, my family, my mother's room is just
wall-to-wall ridiculous cartoons.
When I was little, I remember someone saying, "Oh, I can't get
"over your new house, Jane," or whatever.
And I'm thinking, "Are you trying to climb it?
"What do you mean, you can't get over it?"
And so I had this kind of literal, literal brain where people said
to me, and actually, you know,
"Jeffrey's watching the cricket," and I see Jeffrey on his hands
and he's looking at this little insect in the grass.
And so the cartoons have always been in the back of my head,
and largely just to make people smile.
Never done anything with them, really.
"How do they look so together and perfect?" asked the boy.
"There's a lot of frantic paddling going on beneath,"
said the horse.
People see the book or the finished drawings, but they don't see
the thousands, actually tens of thousands of drawings
that didn't work.
Basically, all we're trying to do is create something that makes,
that completely makes visual sense and the words
work with the image.
This one here, "The great illusion," said the mole,
"is that life should be perfect."
I had that, I drew that and I put it... It was behind me.
The ink takes, like, 25 minutes to dry.
And so you can't just put a drawing on top of a drawing
because it just smudges.
So I would arrange more around here.
And then I heard Barney and he just walked right
across it and taken the ink straight across, right across those words.
Those are his paw marks there.
Erm, "The great illusion is that life should be perfect."
And Barney was making the point really that this drawing therefore
should not be perfect.
Most of the time, it was like taking lots of different versions
of this drawing and putting it together.
So we'd say, "Oh, the mole looks big in this,
"or the mole looks better in this drawing."
So we might take three or four different drawings... Yeah.
..and put them together.
That's trying to kind of get a balance of how do you perfect
a messy drawing, essentially? Yeah, exactly.
The reason why I think the ink was important
is because it's very simple.
So we made complex things both visually simple,
and the words as bare as possible, as naked as possible.
I think we're like sponges, you know, and I think we absorb
everything around us and everything is telling us stuff.
And, in the end, you know, you then produce something
in response to all of that information.
All the empathy and anger and frustration and loss and grief
all went into making a cake...
..that we cooked... Yeah.
Erm, which is wholly inadequate and only scratches
the flipping surface of everything.
But it was enough of a little scratch, I think, to help
some people somewhere.
I think if art can repeat something to someone over and over again
by being in a permanent place where it can permanently speak
to you over and over again, say, "You are loved, you are held,
"you are known," I think as symbols, they can feed your...
..your existence.
One of our greatest freedoms is how we react to things.
I think we all liberate each other.
The more vulnerable we can be, the more we set each other free.
And the characters, each one sets the other free, really,
by being fragile.
On one level, nothing's really changed because
I'm in the same place as I've been for a long time
and see, you know, four old ladies, I mean, I see my family every
day, my lovely mum, my brilliant family who look
after her and they know me really well.
And whether you're doing well or not, it doesn't
really make any difference, you know?
They just sort of love you wherever you are.
And I think that's probably more successful.
That's success to me.
Charlie created the book using a dip pen and ink.
Adapting his work into an animated short film presents new challenges.
If someone, when I was 19, said to me, "You're going to do a book
"about a boy, a mole a fox and a horse,"
I'd have found that bizarre.
If the same person had said, "Yeah, you going to make a film of it",
I would have been a little bit sceptical.
Obviously, I'm not a film-maker, so I learned on the hoof.
I just did a book, you know, we were all clueless to begin with,
how are we going to do this?
Making a film out of some drawings I made.
So I think, when you started to put it together, I think I helped
a little bit just moving some sections around in terms
of beginning, middle and end.
You'd created a book and now it had to have an even stronger narrative.
Is that what you felt at the start with working on the film?
Yeah, I mean, doing all the storyboards,
I remember having big boards and you came in and saw them all
and it was a sea of things.
And I, as usual, was quite defensive about things.
About making changes.
Yeah, because, with the book, a lot of people have said, "It needs
"more of a story." I said, "No, it doesn't, the story
"is in the conversation, it doesn't need to have this
"over developed narrative."
I just want them to be chatting and honest.
And you said, "Yeah, but the film is different.
"You can't just have them wandering around chatting.
"They need... They need purpose and..."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, you've made films, haven't you?"
I seem to remember my major contribution was by suggesting
that the first sentence of the film, did I say,
"So what's the motivation?"
No, you said, "What's the boy's issue?
Like, "What, what's the problem here?"
And the problem was, the main problem was that he was lost.
Yeah, so I think we put that in right at the top. Yeah.
And then, of course, if he's lost, then their journey
is more directional. Yeah, exactly.
Because they've got to head for home.
And then, the end is more decisive in this now, isn't it?
They get somewhere and then...
They all have their own arcs in the film, you know,
and they all arrive... They move from one place to another internally
and as creatures, as personalities.
And then, I think you worked quite hard on the end, didn't you?
I think the end is basically they were all realising that...
That the home they're looking for is them,
that they are home.
I think that's fairly simple.
It's a classic structure, the idea that you're changed by the journey.
The journey, yeah. You know, that you set off thinking
you're aiming for one thing and then you get to the end. Yeah.
We began in October 2020.
So that's when the production really kicked off and no-one
could meet or, you know,
actually do anything normal.
And we were in the throes
of our second lockdown.
It was clear right from the start
that to do justice to Charlie's
work, we needed to find the finest
artists we could find
all around the world.
Everyone was working from home,
but through the course of making the film over the last two years
we've had over 130 artists working on it from over 15 different
countries, all working on different time zones.
We spent a lot of time talking about the personalities of each
character, how they would react in certain situations,
how they would react to each other and what kind of mannerisms
they might have, depending on their personality.
For example, the boy, you know, never just sits still,
because little boys rarely do sit still.
It's uncharted territory.
But that's incredibly, you know, that's incredibly exciting.
One of the producers of Charlie's film is JJ Abrams, the film-maker
behind Super 8, Star Wars and Mission Impossible III.
It's amazing reading the script.
It immediately translates,
even in an animated script form,
to that feeling you have
when you read the book.
And it just, it was so alive, so quickly.
One of the things that I thought was wonderful and it was the idea
that the boy declares up front, "I'm lost."
Right, right. I just think it is a brilliant brushstroke.
I just think that, by doing that, that little thing of, "I'm lost,"
it gives you purchase as a viewer to say, "I know why I'm here."
But my biggest fear, and I know we'll avoid this, but I just want
to say it so I know I will have said it,
is to have something that is a beautiful object
to look at and to experience
and yet, somehow, not allow the audience
to be inside of it and to be a character.
The difference in the film and the book is that the book
can be taken at a pace the reader wants it to be taken at.
And the film is for us to decide the pace.
And I think that's a really big thing, is working out,
you know, how it's paced and where we allow space just to... Yes.
..absorb or allow things to land emotionally before we move on.
Yeah, exactly right.
Those are big decisions.
The book is the characters meandering through the landscape...
..and they're just chatting.
People say, "There's no story."
Well, the story is their conversation.
So I've never felt anything dramatic should happen,
or if they even needed a real purpose except for to communicate.
And I think that's the central issue of the human being,
is we have to find ways of communicating
who we are and how we feel.
You're basically the mole, aren't you, Barney?
You are the mole.
Did it make you very happy when you would think
of another bit of wisdom?
It's just like me thinking of a joke, did you think,
"Oh, yes, that's a bit of wisdom?"
I don't think I ever really saw it as wisdom.
I think I... What I really loved was if I felt something
was working, posted it on Instagram, you know,
you will get people writing to you, telling you a lot of stories,
some of which are really hard to read. Yeah.
And I've, I have read a lot now and I've kept a lot of the emails
that were the most moving.
But some of them are very hard to read about loss and death.
And out of the blue, I just suddenly started...
..crying and then really weeping.
I think, "Why am... Why am I...? Where is this coming from?"
And I sort of realised later that it was probably stored
up emotion of reading so many people's lives.
You are offering consolation.
The book has an enormous, is, in a way, kind.
You know, it has a consolation in there and you would expect people
to take that consolation at its word.
The book is popular with people of all ages and children
in particular feel a special connection to the four friends.
Sometimes a school has sent me drawings and pictures and a play
they'd written or whatever it is, or they send videos of plays
they've made or... And that just breaks my heart.
The character of the book, I just...
Because obviously they see things in the four that I don't.
They've taken the characters, and, you know, put their own
emotions into them.
And what more can you ask for than that?
You've started, you've licensed other people to feel or say or speak
or have a voice or draw or make something together or alone.
To have had the privilege of being that kind of catalyst...
..to people saying how they really feel.
If at first you don't succeed, have some cake.
LAUGHTER
I see... Watch this, watch this.
I see.
"Does it work?" the boy asked.
"Every time."
This book is just filled with such whimsy and magic and wonder.
"Sometimes," said the horse.
"Sometimes what?" asked the boy.
"Sometimes just getting up and carrying on
"is brave and magnificent."
Oh, the emails I get from people saying "Thank you, but can we
"have this or can you do that?
"Can you write to my son who's dying?" or all those things,
an incredible privilege, but they, you know,
the reservoir empties a little bit.
And I was very bad initially at knowing how to manage
that, really bad, and got worn out very fast and then got grumpy...
..and overwhelmed.
I mean, you know, I'm completely and utterly out of my depth with it.
For me, it's not just a drawing, it's what the drawing can do.
Don't stop making your messy drawings.
Just keep your mind alive to, you know, everything that you...
I... Anyway.
And, you know, I've struggled a little in my life with things,
like, I get anxious a lot, I get low quite a lot.
Well, I think we're worshipful creatures, I think we like idols.
When we do it to a person and put them on a plinth,
I think, particularly in this country, we were very good
at putting someone on the plinth and then, and then once
they're on the plinth, we kind of shoot them down.
The year we were making it, it was a very difficult time.
Making the book was extremely hard.
I used to have terrible panic attacks.
There have been times when, you know, I've been interviewed
and I remember hiding in the loo.
My heart was racing, I was very panicked.
It makes my head blur and I think, "What am I going to say
"and why am I here?
"What happens if I say something terrible or don't say
"the right thing, or don't do what they want me to do, or...?"
I find that difficult, I find being exposed difficult.
My brain just spins with the idea of sitting in front of a camera.
And I'm doing it because I think it, you know, it's important
to try to say things that you think are important, whoever you are,
however scary it is.
I think people have been brave with me, you know.
They've been really courageous in what they've told me
of their lives, like heart...
I can....
Being human and being able to put yourself in someone else's
shoes, whether it's for five minutes or an hour or whatever it is,
is an incredible thing.
And if someone communicates a story to you in a way
that helps you do that, it's gold dust.
I think stories are crucial.
"We have a long way to go," sighed the boy.
"Yes, but look how far we've come," said the horse.
I think about, often, the last two years of what we've all
been through and the emails I've got from people and just how much
weaker they've felt, how much they've struggled.
And I thought, "I really want to make a film that...
"..that identifies with that, that meets people in that somehow."
So much beauty we need to look after.
Yes, so much.
Ooh!
My little book is quite suggestive.
It's not complete in its study of the faces.
You suggest what the boy looks like.
And, similarly, with the fox and the horse and the mole.
And I was really scared of changing them or making them, adapting them
in a way that wasn't true to them.
The journey of the film really has been discovering
more about them and how they move.
Because how you move shows a bit more of your character.
We studied foxes and the horse, we had a live reference
and studied him.
And the boy, we often used references of children
of the people I work with.
The animated film is slowly coming to life.
Morning. Hi, Charlie.
Good morning. Morning, Charlie.
Hello.
How are you doing?
All right, how are you?
What's happening, what have you got today?
Kick off.
I think you believe in me more than I do.
You'll catch up.
The horse's eye there, Charlie.
That's floored me, that has floored me.
The timing of the hymn of the robin is just too much for me.
It's just...
Hang on, guys.
There's a robin wrapped up over there.
It died when I hit it in the car.
I got out of the car and put it on my lap that night talking
to some friends, one of whom is writing music for the film.
And I started humming this tune.
It was just all my emotion came out.
I know it sounds ridiculous, really, but I just, I can't
bear killing songbirds.
And, erm...
..the music you just heard there is the...
We wrote the... We based the soundtrack really on...
..the hymn for the robin, which is the tune we came up with
and the phone call straight after.
Can we play that one more time, the hymn for the robin there?
Yeah... Oops.
I think you believe in me
more than I do.
You'll catch up.
Life is difficult.
But you are loved.
The mole was always a tricky one because the mole
is a derivation of a mole, I think, it's my own mole.
So we haven't got any... There was no, like,
"Oh, that's how they move."
Because a real mole doesn't look like the mole so much.
If he's standing up and he's got these big, round Oreo
biscuit-like hands, you know...
Does he...? Does he use his feet? Does he...?
How's it going to happen?
I watched a lot of David Attenborough stuff and I was
watching really late one night and there was this penguin
just shuffling and it was moving like it...
..45 degree turns so the body sways and I was like...
"..Oh, that's the mole."
What are you doing here?
I'm lost.
Oh, dear, well, that's no good.
So, how...?
How did you get here?
Well, hello.
Hello, who?
Hello, cake.
Tom Holland is the mole.
He's so hilarious, he's such a brilliant actor.
He's a legend, really, and he's the perfect mole.
"What do you think is the biggest
"waste of time?"
"Comparing yourself to others," said the mole.
That leapt out at me as an idea when I read it, because...
..I personally have found it to be a chronic problem
in my life.
People have tried to persuade me to stop doing that myself.
Because it's the source of a lot of pointless unhappiness.
Anyway, so we must stop.
And that was on, yes, page ten or something,
so I was immediately sucked in.
I always, in my head, wanted the boy to have a soft Scottish accent.
You know, I'm lost, that long lost.
Ah, man.
And when I heard his voice in the audition...
His voice...
I knew instantly that it should be him.
How fast can you run?
Well, I wouldn't say I was a natural athlete.
I think my favourite character is the mole, I think,
because he's quite playful and he kind of brings
the whole group to life.
The fox is quite an outsider, but he's been welcomed into the group
and he feels at home there.
The horse is very, erm...
He's very wise, but he also has some insecurities
that the group help him kind
of express his real feelings.
And I think the boy's quite adventurous, but he still needs
the rest of the group to help him with his confidence
to finish his journey that he's been on.
It just seemed like one of those very special opportunities
to do, to be part of some magical little film that might
be eternally on at Christmas-time.
And then Idris Elba, well, I mean, you know, legend, really.
He did the fox so well and the fox's arc, you know,
being dangerous, then coming through to having the killer lines.
You are loved.
And important.
And you bring to this world things that no-one else can.
So hold on.
We went through a few different people
who were going to do the horse and I'd always loved Gabriel Byrne.
And I wrote him a letter and we had a phone conversation.
He said, "Charlie, I am the horse."
"I have the book."
I was like, "What?!"
Yeah, so that was them, you know, we had our four.
It took us just under two years to complete the film,
from the day that we started developing the script
to the day we were able to send it off.
Without a doubt, this has been the most challenging production
that I think any of us have worked on.
And most of that was driven by the fact that our collective
ambitions for the film were so incredibly high.
One of the challenges was just getting used to the idea of seeing
the characters up close and seeing some different angles
or having camera moves.
We did lots of kind of storyboarding and shifting around and changing
angles and just getting something that feels right.
In key moments, key lines from the book, we actually do mirror
the same viewpoint.
The mole asks the boy, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
And the boy kind of thinks about it and answers, "Kind."
And then you kind of move through them.
And that was shot just from the same view behind the characters,
sat on that branch so that anyone who feels connected to the book
also connects to those moments in the film.
Thank you.
"I've discovered something better than cake," said the mole.
"No, you haven't," said the boy.
"I have."
"What is it?"
"A hug... It lasts longer."
Where do the hugs come from?
I've always loved the idea of redemption.
I've loved the idea of forgiveness, I've loved the idea of coming home.
I love the feeling of being held.
I think humans, I think everybody really wants to feel
like they're loved and known and held and understood and accepted.
So I was very drawn to making images that make people
feel that viscerally.
Like, I think, "Oh, it can heal you."
You can feel something and see something and it can have
a physical effect on you.
And to make images that help people feel hope or understood,
or not alone or held or loved or... I don't know.
It's just this whole thing that we thirst for,
but can't put our fingers on.
"Just take this step."
"The horizon will look after itself."
The film's coming to an end, which is quite strange.
We're just finishing the music.
The BBC Orchestra are recording it and...
I just feel it's quite surreal.
All this sound and beauty that's being recorded has come
from tiny places.
Tiny conversations, events.
I will die...
..relieved we've done it, and pleased.
But I still know that I'm scruffy Charlie, who wanders round
and doesn't wash his clothes properly, and when I get the chance
to feel and really think about what's gone on with it,
I just feel this deep sense of gratitude and pleasure.
This is Charlie Mackesy, who's the author and illustrator.
Thank you so much.
That's lovely.
That's... What do you think?
No, no, that's wrong.
A normal three, and...
Whoa-ho-ho!
I think when the boy says, "I'm lost," in the film,
I think that's definitely how I felt, a bit.
I think I've always felt slightly lost.
I think maybe all of us do, I think, you know,
we're all looking for home in some way
and the journey, you know,
so the whole idea of the film is, that is their journey.
Charlie is a master communicator and his success was never
just going to be quite good.
It was always going to be off the scale and out of this world.
And, you know, his book now has been three years in the top ten.
It's broken all the records.
It's just amazing seeing it now, seeing millions and millions
of people around the world kind of get it and be able to share
a little bit of that.
I remember saying to them, "I don't care if this is a good
"or a bad film, I don't give a damn.
"I just want it, to someone, to feel something that makes them feel...
"..hopeful or better or..."
So, ultimately, if someone sees it and is moved and it changes
how they see themselves for good or their existence,
to me, that's a good film.
APPLAUSE
I love the idea of the natural landscape being
a metaphor for something.
Pain being a glacier
moving through you, carving out deep valleys.
If the characters have an arc...
..I have an arc and I think it takes a lifetime to work out
what you really want to say, at least it has for me.
I think tiny things can lead to big things.
The tiniest act of kindness can save a life.
It was never in my sights that we were awarded an Oscar for the film.
It's very surreal.
At the actual ceremony I hid in the loo a couple of times!
Sometimes I get overwhelmed by things
and it is easier to recoup and regroup
and collect myself just in a little bit of space in the loo
just for a minute.
I actually remember going in and just writing
"We just won an Oscar" and posted it.
I didn't prepare a speech because I was so sure we wouldn't win
and after I'd made the speech I regretted not mentioning
so many people -
Peter and Cara and all the team and 120 animators, my family,
friends, people on Instagram, everybody who contributed
to the thinking and the direction of the characters in the film.
I'm just so elated for everyone
and the Oscar is for all of us, so thank you.
Thanks for being part of it.