Damian Popodopolous' letter to Mary Daisy Dinkle

My dearest Mary,

By the time you read this, I will be on a plane to New Zealand to begin a new life. You probably haven 't even noticed I'd packed my bags. I have fallen in love with my penfriend, Desmond, and I'm going to live on his sheep farm. It's been hard to watch you become a remnant of the person I once loved. Your research into m-m-mental illness has been admirable but your i-idealistic pursuit to remedy it has been misguided.

Mary, you have to realise y-you are not a magic beauty cream you can smooth on the world to rid it of its wrinkles. I love you, Mary, but I love Desmond more. I hope one day your heart will heal and we can be friends.

Yours compassionately,

Damian

Mary Daisy Dinkle's 6th letter to Max Jerry Horowitz

Dear Max,

I am very proud to give you the very first copy of my book about your disability and the hopes that we have to one day cure it. Even more exciting is that I am finally coming to meet and celebrate with you in one week's time. I'm also going to give you half the royalties.

Your loving friend,

Mary

PS. Please find enclosed some chocolate-coated Swiss almonds.

Mary Daisy Dinkle's 5th letter to Max Jerry Horowitz

Dear Max,

Our wedding day was everything I have ever dreamt, making up for the terrible year I've had. Although all the guests were Damian's family and friends, I felt very welcome. Damian is so perfect. He even made my wedding dress. And for our honeymoon he took me to Mykonos his favourite island in Greece. I got to ride a donkey and found the perfect gift for Len.

Poor Len, he's still struggling with his agoraphobia. Damian and I are so similar. He even has his own penfriend, who lives on a sheep farm in New Zealand.

Mary Daisy Dinkle's 4th letter to Max Jerry Horowitz

Dear Max,

I have been such an idiot. I've wasted all my money on something pointless when I should have been saving to see you. I know love upsets you so I won't go on about it. All I want to say is that love is obviously not for me. I hope you are well and enjoy the chocolate cigarettes I've enclosed.

Love Mary

Mary Daisy Dinkle's 3rd letter to Max Jerry Horowitz

Dear Max,

When I told Bernie Clifford I'll be in charge of all the chocolate in heaven and he wouldn't get any, he cried. I also hide'd some dog's poo in his bit of the sandpit. Your advice was great and I've got a job delivering pamphlets so I can save to come and see you. I am sad to hear you are fat. Mum says I am fat too and I'm growing up to be a heifer, which I think is a type of cow. Maybe you should only eat things beginning with the letter of each day. On Mondays you could only eat milkshakes, marshmallows and...mustard. Oooh! For my birthday, my Mum baked a cake and Dad gave me a camera.

I hope you like the photos I sent. The first one is of Ethel, who ate some tinsel. The next one is one of myself after I ate the Chocolate Pop Rocks with the cola, like you said. Next is Len. He's still trying hard not to be afraid of outside and conquer his homophobia. The next one is of dad in his shed, and then one of the times I covered mum while she was asleep in her stickers that help her stop smoking. Next, when I got my slinky caught in my hair. Then one of the times Sonny digged up his wife, Cher. And, finally, a photo of my other neighbour Damian Popodopolous. He's a Greek and smells like lemon dishwashing liquid and his skin is smooth, like the back of a spoon. Mum says he's a wog and has a stutter and can't even say his own surname. She says you have to hit him on the back of the head to get his words out. P-P-P-P...Popodopolous. I wish he was my boyfriend and we can be in love and do sexing like Katherine Ramsay told me behind the bike shed. She said it's when two people go "nuddy" and rub on each other to make babies. I told her she's a liar and would go to hell and burn like toast 'cos babies really come from beer glasses and eggs laid by rabbits and nuns and "prosti-tubes". She said ladies get knocked up and bake babies in their stomachs for 2 years till they spurt out their "vag-eye-ners" with blood and tinned spaghetti.

Have you got a girlfriend, Max, or some wives? Have you done sexing? Valentine's Day is soon and I want to give Damian a present so he can love me. Can you explain love and how I can be "lover'd"?

Mary Daisy Dinkle's 2nd letter to Max Jerry Horowitz

Dear Max,

I'm so excited you've wroted back. I don't think my parents like you so from now on send stuff to my neighbour Len Hislop at 26 Lamington Drive, Mt Waverley. He's old with no legs. They got chewed off in World War ll when some Japanese peoples kept him in a cage above piranhas. Piranhas are goldfish that have teeth. He's scared of outside, which is a disease called homophobia. He's started giving me 50 cents a week to get his mail. I'm saving to buy a castle in Scotland and marry a man called Earl Grey.

Do you get "The Noblets" in America? Well, my favourite Noblet is Vanity Noblet. He wants to be everyone's friend, even the boys'! In your letter, you said you had no friends. Well, neither do I. A-ha! Yesterday at school, Bernie Clifford weed on my spam sandwich and called me "poo face" 'cos of my birthmark. I wish I could peel it off like a bandaid. He also laughed 'cos I had no buttons. Ethel pecked them off and Mum couldn't thread a needle 'cos she'd been testing the sherry so she used pegs instead. When I got home, I climbed into my secret place till dinner time. The other kids also laugh at my haircut. Dad has to cut my hair because mum says real hairdressers sell your hair to Chinamen who stuff mattresses. My teacher, Mrs Pendergast, says I should smile more. I told my mum and so she drawed a big smile on me. I don't think Mrs Pendergast likes me anymore.

I better go now. My tears are smudgling my words.

Your friend in Australia,

Mary Daisy Dinkle.

PS. Have you ever been teased? Can you help me?

PSS. I've never been hang gliding before or been a "commune-ist" but would love a frisbee and your recipe for chocolate hotdogs.

PSSS. I'm sending you some Australian chocolate, a pompom I made and a cake called a lamington, which I was meant to eat for lunch. Have you ever been teased?

Mary Daisy Dinkle's 1st letter to Max Jerry Horowitz

Dear Mr M Horowitz,

My name is Mary Daisy Dinkle     and I am 8 years old, 3 months and 9 days.     My favourite colour is brown     and my favourite food is sweetened condensed milk     followed closely by chocolate.     I have a rooster called Ethel that looks like this.     He doesn't lay eggs but will one day.     My mother likes smoking, cricket and sherry     and my father likes playing in his shed with dead birds. 

 Where do babies come from in America?     Do they come from cola cans?     In Australia they are found in beer glasses.     Here is a drawing of me.     I can't draw ears proper but I'm good at teeth.     It would be great if you could write back and be my friend. 

Yours "sincerealy", 

Mary Daisy Dinkle

PS. I hope you like the chocolate bar I'm also sending.     It's called a Cherry Ripe.

Mary and Max

Synopsis:

Mary and Max is a simple tale of pen-friendship between two different people; Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horovitz, a 44-year old, severely obese, Jewish man with Asperger's Syndrome living in the chaos of New York.

Spanning twenty years and two continents, Mary and Max's friendship survives much more than the average diet of life's ups and downs. Mary and Max's story is innocent but not naive, as it takes us on a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, sexual difference, trust, copulating dogs, religious differences, agoraphobia and much much more.

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I thought that claymated films are only for children. Little did I know that it can also use to depict stories of life, especially of friendship.. I didn't take the film seriously at first but as the story goes on, as I listen to the narration of how Mary and Max became acquainted with each other, I got hooked. It even left me into tears.

I admired how two people of different continent, religion, beliefs in life, age and a lot other differences, conspired and shared each other's goals in life. I love what Max's ultimate life goal is: chocolates. These two has their own share of indifferences towards the society: afraid not to be accepted, to be bullied, to be loved even by their own family. In the end, they themselves found the solution on how they can overcome their fears: rejection, anxiety, and that is by loving themselves first. That the journey in life depends on the path you'd like to take.