The characters in $9.99 look for the meaning of life in the new stop-motion feature by Tatiana Rosenthal. All images © Regent Releasing.

Etgar Keret may be the hardest-working man in the literary biz. When he's not writing short stories or plays, he's whipping up TV comedy sketches, children's books and directing the occasional award-winning movie. His short story Kneller's Happy Campers was adapted into the graphic novel Pizzeria Kamikaze and from there into the live-action feature Wristcutters: A Love Story, starring Tom Waits and Will Arnett.

It's unlikely you've heard of him unless you're a literature buff and a fan of up-and-coming writers; Keret hails from Israel and writes in Hebrew. He's earned himself a stack of honors over there, including the Prime Minister's award for literature. Here in the U.S. his reputation is on the upswing thanks to recent translations of his work and the Wristcutters movie, but it's about to get another boost now that $9.99, a stop-motion animated feature based on his work is in theaters.

$9.99 weaves an assortment of Keret's stories together by making their protagonists neighbors in a big-city apartment building, some of whom discover the meaning of life via a mail-order book selling for the titular price. The stop-motion animation creates a tactile, lived-in ambience that would be very difficult for CG or 2D to duplicate. The technique establishes a world with its own peculiar rules, a perfect setting for the "magic realism" of Keret's stories: tales in which a stoner shares his apartment with three very tiny and equally stoned roommates, people turn themselves into furniture and a homeless, panhandling and suicidal bum just might be an angel in disguise -- or maybe not…

$9.99 took a circuitous route to the screen, an itinerary linking Israel, the U.S. and Australia together in the film's creation. It began in the early 1990s with Tatia Rosenthal, a young Israeli artist on her way to New York to begin her freshman year as an NYU film student, opening a book of Keret's stories given her by a friend to read on the flight. She read the book cover to cover before the jet was even halfway across the Atlantic. "I was already a fan of his work," she recalls. "I'd read an article he wrote about his sister becoming ultra-religious that was moving and original, but understated at the same time. When I finished the book I knew I had to work with him."

Rosenthal was taken by the "sparse and exacting tone" of Keret's work. "[His stories] keep a certain distance from their subjects. Almost underhandedly they bring up such emotion and identification with his characters. I like stories that are smart and surprise you about how much you know by the end."

$9.99 uses stop-motion animation to create a tactile, lived-in ambience: a "magic realism," which is perfect for Etgar Keret's stories.

Once at NYU, Rosenthal focused on the animation program within the university's famed Tisch School of the Arts. While she watched TV broadcasts of the Disney features in her younger days, it was a very different piece of animation that helped her decide to pursue a career in the medium. "I was 11, at home by myself watching The World According to Garp. I don't know how that happened: Garp really isn't a kid's film. When the kid was on the carpet drawing pictures of himself and his dad and his pictures began moving I realized you could do special things with animation. That was the moment I wanted to do it myself."

Rosenthal first made contact with Keret when she wrote asking permission to film his story Breaking the Pig as an NYU project. He gave his okay and the two began a correspondence. Then just after graduating she filmed Crazy Glue, another Keret story; the effort impressed the author so much he approached her about working on a longer project together, discussions that resulted in their collaboration on $9.99's screenplay.

Rosenthal spent five years laboring as an animator on Nick Jr.'s Blue's Clues before moving on to the channel's Wonder Pets series. In between she created A Buck's Worth, a stop-motion short based on a Keret story that would ultimately be re-voiced and re-animated as $9.99's opening vignette. The short was a calling card and a demo for the longer film she and Keret hoped to make. (Rosenthal credits successful stop-motion films from the Aardman studio, Tim Burton and Henry Selick for "opening the door for anyone trying to finance films like this.") As it turned out, $9.99 would be the first film to take advantage of an untapped, 15-year old co-production agreement between Israel and Australia.

An Aussie film producer by the name of Emile Sherman entered the picture. "Emile is very interested in Israel," Rosenthal explains. "He's Jewish and knows a lot of exciting new cultural voices in the country -- and he was looking for the right material."

Like Rosenthal, Sherman was a fan of Keret's work and tracked him down during a Tel Aviv vacation. The author showed the producer $9.99's screenplay and Sherman was immediately interested. Amir Harel, an Israeli producer working on Jellyfish, a film written and co-directed by Keret (and ultimately a winner of two Cannes Film Festival awards in 2007) signed on as well.