Seth Rogen Backs Animated 'Tangles' for Its Specificity — SkimNews
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- Seth Rogen explained at the Middleburg Film Festival that he deliberately did not question director Leah Nelson's choice to make "Tangles" a hand-drawn, black-and-white animated film about a woman caring for her Alzheimer's-stricken mother, saying he trains himself to "go on the journey with people's creative instincts."
- Rogen framed "specificity" as the core artistic principle, citing Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock as examples of artists whose work is instantly recognizable because it couldn't be anyone else's, and applying that logic to the film's animation style.
- "Tangles" originated from Rogen and his wife Lauren Miller Rogen's Alzheimer's advocacy work; the couple met Nelson and co-screenwriter Sarah Leavitt — who wrote the source graphic novel "Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother and Me" — at a charity event and developed the adaptation over time.
- "Tangles" features voice performances by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Abbi Jacobson, Bryan Cranston, Beanie Feldstein, and Rogen himself.
- "Tangles" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and was acquired by IFC in August, positioning it for a Best Animated Feature Oscar campaign.
Why it matters: A hand-drawn, black-and-white animated drama about Alzheimer's secured an IFC acquisition in August and a Best Animated Feature Oscar campaign despite — or because of — stylistic choices a producer might conventionally push back on. Rogen's framing of "specificity" as a creative North Star offers indie animation producers a notable counterweight to the pressure toward commercial visual sameness.
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