zum Tourette Syndrom siehe: "Harvie Krumpet", 2003 (Oscar Preis)
zur Epilepsie siehe seinen tragik-komischen Kurzfilm "Cousin", 1998

Aus einem Interview von Tim Milful mit Adam Elliot (2005):

Let’s talk about the idea that most of your creative practice seems to be about taking what other people perceive as extraordinary or odd, and making those things normal.

AE: Sure, well… I’m glad you said that because when I sit down to write a script, I never really know what’s going to come out. I don’t read scriptwriting books, and I don’t have a plot in my mind—I just sit down and stuff pours out. I often start with the detail, and hopefully by the third or fourth draft, I’ve got some sort of a plot or three-act structure, or whatever you want to call it.

I’m very intuitive and it’s only been in the last six months that I’ve really begun to analyse in terms of this film what is it that I’m trying to say. A lot of people say, “Why are you making films about disability?” But I don’t use that word—they’re not really about disability. I mean, Mary & Max really is about friendship. As you said, it’s about acceptance of difference. The way I see it, everyone has a disability—I prefer to say that everybody has a flaw. Some people choose to hide their flaw through cosmetic surgery and all those sorts of things. What I’m trying to do is get people to embrace their own flaws, and also other people’s flaws.

What I’m really trying to do is not only get people to empathise with other people, but really put themselves in my characters’ shoes, and that’s why I shot a lot of the scenes where you’re looking out of Max’s eyes—you are almost actually in his body. By doing that, I’m trying to get them to understand what it’s like to be someone who’s strange or weird or whatever; to make them realise that there’s not much difference between them and someone else. We’re all a bit odd and peculiar, and we all have bits of ourselves that we don’t like in terms of self-acceptance. But if you’d asked me that while I was writing the script, I would have had no idea why I was writing the script, or what it was about.

Now that I have a little bit of distance, I can do a little bit of self-therapy and work out just what I was trying to say. I think it all goes back to my childhood, where I seemed to befriend the kids who were picked on or bullied, or racially ridiculed, or whatever, and they were my friends. I think I befriended them because of the injustice that was being done to them—I think I’m an angry writer. I’ve come to conclude that I write from anger—I write because I want people to understand what it’s like to be teased or bullied or be seen as strange. I’ve never had therapy, but if I did, I’m sure that’s what I’d say.

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