Monmouth County childhood inspires Henry Selick to create 'Wendell and Wild' on Netflix

Henry Selick has spent decades bringing darkly wondrous visions to vivid stop-motion life.

The Glen Ridge-born, Rumson-raised Academy Award-nominated director has found generations of devoted fans by adapting ideas from the likes of Tim Burton (1993’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas”), Roald Dahl (1996’s “James and the Giant Peach”) and Neil Gaiman (2009’s “Coraline”).

But with “Wendell & Wild," Selick’s new Netflix film and his first feature in nearly 15 years, things are personal.

In the work of wickedly funny PG-13 fantasy, 13-year-old orphan Kat (voiced by Lyric Ross) is called upon by the titular pair of demon brothers (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) as they try to enter the living world.

With a story and screenplay co-written by Selick, “Wendell & Wild” notably takes place in a once-hip river borough with a craft beer-centric economy that’s fallen on hard times, its working class residents living in the shadow of predatory capitalism and the Catholic Church.

The town’s called Rust Bank, and Kat is sent to live and study at Rust Bank Catholic, colloquially referred to as RBC.

“There were more obvious things (that inspired elements of the film), certainly RBC and the town,” Selick said. “Although the town in our film isn’t so much inspired by the look of it — but (there’s) Red Bank, and my town is Rust Bank, and Red Bank Catholic became Rust Bank Catholic girls’ private school.”

Inspiration was found a few miles south for the Scream Fair, the underworld carnival presided over by Wendell and Wild’s domineering father, Buffalo Belzer (Ving Rhames), thanks to the Asbury Park Boardwalk and amusements of Selick’s youth, the director explained.

“You’re looking to grab things that make sense to you, so you look to your own life,” Selick, now 69, said.

Key and Peele meet Henry

Selick’s personal connections to “Wendell and Wild” are more than geographic. About 20 years ago, when his sons Harry and George were around the ages of 7 and 2, respectively, they behaved, Selick said, like “little demons.”

“They’re going to do bad stuff, and you love them,” Selick said. “But when they were little kids … I just did a sketch of them as demon brothers, with horns and tails, and then I wrote a little story — not so much about them and what they’d done but more fictional. Just a seven-page story, but most of the main characters in the film were described in that initial story.”

A still-unpublished demon brothers novel from Selick and author Clay McLeod Chapman followed. Around 2012, after the success of “Coraline,” Selick’s in-development Disney/Pixar film “The Shadow King” was shuttered by the studio following creative differences and an escalating budget.

“I didn’t know if I’d ever make another film again ...,” Selick said. “You know, it’s just how life is. You look for your inspirations or they come to you — and what came to me was the ‘Key and Peele’ show on Comedy Central with Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele.”

Key and Peele’s sketch comedy work — “maybe the best comedy sketch duo in history,” Selick said — inspired him to dust off his demon brothers story and present it to the pair.

Peele turned out to be a fan of Selick’s work. He signed on with his Monkeypaw Productions, co-wrote the “Wendell & Wild” screenplay, and showed Selick the screenplay for his own not-yet-produced film "Get Out," the Oscar-winning horror blockbuster.

“I realized ... this guy can do it all,” Selick said.

It wasn’t only the demons that Selick drew from his own life. He revealed that the creepy RBC authority figure Father Bests (James Hong), was directly inspired by someone who made a big impact on his childhood: Rev. Charles H. Best, who served as the rector for Trinity Episcopal Church in Red Bank from 1953 to 1979.

“He was scary,” recalled Selick. “because when I was 5 years old I decided to walk home from Sunday school on my own. I just thought, ‘I don’t need to be picked up,’ and I was so traumatized because I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t speak that well. And I stopped going to Sunday school for a while and Father Best came ... to my house and I was ... kind of terrified.”

Selick soon switched churches, choosing St. George’s By the River Episcopal Church in Rumson.

“It was a friendlier place,” Selick said.

“Wendell & Wild,” 106 minutes, rated PG-13, now streaming on Netflix; netflix.com/wendellandwild.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Monmouth County childhood inspires Henry Selick's 'Wendell and Wild'