If you're not already familiar with Oscar-nominated animator, cartoonist, director, writer, and producer Bill Plympton, chances are you've seen his work and just don't know it.
Heralded as the ‘King of Indie Animation’ with an ethos very different to his colourful counterparts at Pixar and Disney, Plympton’s dogma for successful independent animated movies is to keep them short, cheap and funny, a canon he followed himself with indelible success with over 40 animated shorts and seven feature films to his name.
The American animator won the 1991 Prix de Jury Award at Cannes for his self-financed short ‘Push Comes to Shove’, as well as garnering two Oscar nominations for his animated shorts ‘Your Face’ and ‘Guard Dog’. He is also the first person to hand draw an entire animated feature film with 1992’s ‘The Tune’ (again self-financed) and – despite his indie inclinations – worked with stars such as David Carradine, Dermot Mulroney and Tom Waits, as well as animating the couch gag in the opening credits of the hit show ‘The Simpsons’ an impressive three times.
Fresh off giving a masterclass at this year’s Dublin Animation Film Festival, Plympton catches up with IFTN expressing admiration for the Irish animation programme he witnessed at DAFF as well as shedding light on his own industrious career.
IFTN: I don’t think there has ever been a better time for Irish animation, as DAFF 2014 proves, as does Oscar nominated ‘The Secret of Kells’ and ‘Song of the Sea’ getting substantial global notice. What are your thoughts on the animation industry here in Ireland?
Bill Plympton:Well I haven’t seen a lot of it. Of course I have seen ‘The Secret of Kells’ which was great. I haven’t seen ‘Song of the Sea’ yet but the little clips I have seen were fantastic. But the most impressive thing for me was the competition at the festival. They had two programmes of Irish animation and I was bowled over by the professionalism with a lot of the student films. They were really excellent. IADT had a couple of great short films there and they were as good as any short films that I have seen around the world. Very impressed!
Tell us about your new film ‘Cheatin’ which screened at DAFF at the weekend as well as the masterclass that you gave.
’Cheatin’ is a feature film that has no dialogue in it. It has great music and sound effects though. It’s all pencil and paper which I then scanned on a computer. Following this, my studio digitally coloured it to look like watercolours and it gave it a very handmade kind of look. ‘Cheatin’ screened to a packed house and sustained applause at DAFF so I was very happy about that! And at my masterclass I talked about how to make a career of animation because I feel there are a lot of kids out there who don’t feel there is an opportunity for them in animation and I disagree because I have been doing it for over 30 years and I have been working as an independent. I don’t take money from a studio, I don’t take government grants or Hollywood money. I work with my own money that I make on my films and I think that was a real eye opener for a lot of the students that it is possible to be an independent animated filmmaker.
Before we even get down to drawing, can you let me in on your writing process? You tell such original and fantastically odd tales. Do the ideas come from doodling on sheets, long walks or writing for hours? Or all of the above?
I keep a notebook wherever I go and if I see something that inspires me, I write it down. And if it really excites me, I may start writing storyboards for the idea. For example, this didn’t happen in Ireland but I was riding in some wasteland area, a real lonely area, and there was a stoplight there and I remember thinking ‘wow, that poor stoplight, it doesn’t really have an exciting life, it’s ignored by all these drivers because nobody comes this way’ so I thought up an idea for a film called ‘The Loneliest Stoplight’ about how he finds excitement in his life. And I am going to get work on that very soon! So, ideas just come from strange parts of daily existence. I’ll see someone interesting and wonder where they come from. A lot of it is just from having an imagination and being curious about the world and that is where a lot of my ideas are born.
All of your animated films engender a unique, Plymptonesque style. For any prospective Irish animators reading, is it difficult for an animator to stamp their own style into their work?
Well, actually the work that I saw in the Irish animation programme was full of style! Very distinctive. They looked like they weren’t trying to copy anybody, a lot of the styles were quite unique. They seemed like they had their own identity which was quite graphic and quite particular and I think that is the secret to success to make a style that is identifiable and is yours.
I heard it took a Kickstarter campaign to help raise the funds for ‘Cheatin’ and you have self-financed big projects before. Despite your success, you still lie outside the mainstream but I have a feeling you’re happy there…
There’s good and bad to it. Certainly the freedom is the best aspect of being an independent animator. But I’m never going to get really rich. I’m not like Pixar who are going to make millions and millions of dollars. I also don’t get the distribution they get to show their films all over the globe. That’s the decision that every artist needs to make. Do you want to work for a big studio? That work is fine, its great and very rewarding if you work for a studio that does really interesting work. Or do you want to be an independent? These are the decisions that a young filmmaker must make and either one is fine in my eyes.
Any more weird and wonderful stories we can expect from you in the future?
Yeah, I am working on two projects right now and then I will of course get round to ‘The Loneliest Stoplight’. One is called ‘Hitler’s Follies’ and it’s a mockumentary about how Adolf Hitler loved animation and wanted to be the Walt Disney of Europe. He wanted to set up a Disneyland like adventure-land in Europe and call it Nazi-land! And that contains a lot of documentary footage that we drew up to make it seem like its real. The second one is called ‘Revengeance’. I am making that in conjunction with Jim Lujan. That portrays the underbelly of LA’s society, so you know the crooks, the bikers, the corrupt politicians, the bounty hunters and the strippers! So, it’s definitely right up my alley! I am actually having difficulty getting distribution for that in America. In France, it was very easy. We played over 100 cinemas and got great reviews but the problem in the US is that we are so dependent on Disney for our cartoons and people think of cartoons as a kid’s medium. That’s really sad and tragic and I use the word tragic because animation is such a wonderful art form. Why can’t they make films for adults? I hope ‘Revengeance’ will change that perception and prove that animation is not strictly a kid’s medium. I hope it will also prove that it doesn’t have to be done by computer animation. This film is hand-drawn and I hope that this film will open America’s eyes that animation is more than just Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney.
The Dublin Animation Film Festival this week announced the winners of the 2014 festival, details of which can be seen here.
