{"id":30068,"date":"2024-11-05T16:02:43","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T21:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=30068"},"modified":"2024-11-27T07:19:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T12:19:00","slug":"master-animator-bill-plympton-keeps-the-tradition-of-2d-art-alive-through-provocative-animated-features-such-as-slide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=30068","title":{"rendered":"Master Animator Bill Plympton Keeps The Tradition of 2D Art Alive Through Provocative Animated Features Such as \u201cSlide\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo: Brad Balfour<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exclusive Q&A by Brad Balfour<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who: Bill Plympton
What: Big Apple Comic Con
When: November 23rd, 2024
Where: New Yorker Hotel
Address: 481 8th Ave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all the years I\u2019ve known Bill Plympton, I still don\u2019t quite comprehend how many drawings he\u2019s made in his life. And he does them so they can work wonderfully well in sequence. There\u2019s a certain crazy genius about him and the work he does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From stories which include Hitler and a half-naked Trump, Plympton has never shied away from controversial stories and characters. And yet the Bill I know rarely has a harsh word for anyone and is never lacking in joy. He\u2019ll be appearing at this year\u2019s Big Apple Comic Con at the New Yorker Hotel, November 23rd, and has recently released \u201cSlide,\u201d his latest animated feature that\u2019s also a something of a musical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born April 30, 1946 in Portland, Oregon, the 78-year-old was raised on a farm in nearby Oregon City with five siblings providing the roots of an odd life. Then, from \u201964 to \u201968, he studied Graphic Design at Portland State University, where he was a film society member. In \u201968, he transferred to New York City\u2019s School of Visual Arts, where he majored in cartooning and graduated in 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we first met, he was a cartoonist with a political strip. \u201cPlympton,\u201d running in the \u201cSoHo Weekly News\u201d which began in 1975. Eventually it was syndicated in over 20 newspapers. Plympton\u2019s illustrations and cartoons have been published in \u201cThe New York Times\u201d and the weekly newspaper. \u201cThe Village Voice,\u201d as well as in the magazines \u201cVogue,\u201d \u201cRolling Stone,\u201d \u201cVanity Fair,\u201d \u201dPenthouse,\u201d and \u201cNational Lampoon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1988, his animated short \u201cYour Face\u201d was Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Short Film. He did other animated shorts, too, including \u201c25 Ways to Quit Smoking\u201d [1989] and \u201cEnemies\u201d [1991,] the latter of which was part of the \u201cAnimania\u201d series on MTV, where many of his shorts were shown.
In \u201991, Plympton won the Prix Sp\u00e9cial du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival for \u201cPush Comes to Shove\u201d which was featured on MTV\u2019s animated series, “Liquid Television.” The next year, his self-financed first full-length animated feature, \u201cThe Tune,\u201d  debuted at Sundance Film Festival. His work also appeared on the 1992\/\u201993 Fox comedy series, “The Edge.” In ’93, he also made his first live action film, “J. Lyle” and later in 2016, the mockumentary, “Hitler\u2019s Folly.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Distant relative, actress Martha Plimpton, served as associate producer on his animated feature, \u201cHair High\u201d [2004], doing much of the casting which included her father Keith Carradine and uncle David. \u201cGuard Dog\u201d [2004] was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plympton\u2019s 2008 80-minute feature, \u201cIdiots and Angels\u201d\u2013 entirely without dialogue \u2014 premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival — and was presented by legendary animator Terry Gilliam. In 2011, director Alexia Anastasio released a doc on Plympton \u2013\u2013 \u201cAdventures in Plymptoons!\u201d \u2014 direct-to-DVD and through video-on-demand. Then, Plympton collaborated with film critic, Perry Chen, on \u201cIngrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest,\u201d a 2011 short animated film about the noted actress and Holocaust survivor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that served to get Plympton the opportunity to animate the opening couch gag for the Simpsons episodes \u201cBeware My Cheating Bart\u201d in 2012, \u201cBlack Eyed, Please\u201d in 2013, \u201cMarried to the Blob\u201d in 2014, \u201cLisa the Veterinarian\u201d in 2016, \u201c22 for 30\u201d in 2017, \u201c3 Scenes Plus a Tag from a Marriage\u201d in 2018, \u201cManger Things\u201d in 2021 and \u201cOne Angry Lisa\u201d in 2022. He also did as well as the menus and packaging for the Season 19 DVD. Thanks to his old friend and fellow Portland, Oregon, native Matt Groening, he reached his largest audiences ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other productions included contributing animation and graphics to a computer game collection, \u201cTake Your Best Shot,\u201d in 1995. He also published a comic book in 2003, \u201cThe Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton.\u201d In 2005, Plympton animated a music video for Kanye West\u2019s \u201cHeard \u2018Em Say.\u201d The following year, he created the music video for \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Download This Song.\u201d Plympton contributed animation to the 2006 History Channel series, \u201c10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America,\u201d to illustrate the Shays\u2019 Rebellion. Together with other independent New York City animators, he has released two DVDs of animated shorts, both titled \u201cAvoid Eye Contact.\u201d He also directed the segment \u201cOn Eating and Drinking\u201d in the 2014 animated film ,\u201cThe Prophet,\u201d adapted from Kahlil Gibran\u2019s book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, Plympton created a series of videos for The New York Times called \u201cTrump Bites.\u201d One of the series, \u201cTrump and Putin: A Love Story,\u201d depicts Trump and Putin kissing half-naked. Controversial as ever, some critics said the video implied that gay relationships were inherently comic and immoral.
Bill then turned to Kickstarter to speed up production on \u201cSlide,\u201d his new animated feature in the works. Bill drew his inspiration for \u201cSlide\u201d from his life, growing up in Oregon, playing the slide guitar. He loves country music, especially the music of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. It took more than two years to complete \u201cSlide,\u201d but a successful Kickstarter campaign was going to bring Bill\u2019s newest film out in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the pandemic hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: It seems your Wikipedia page has not been updated, because it talked about a movie coming out in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Well, because of Covid, I had to drop the movie and make money. Usually, I do a lot of lectures and film festivals at movie theaters. But because of Covid, I ran out of money. [So I did] music videos and things like that. Then I picked it up again in about 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll tell you a little bit about the new film called \u201cSlide\u201d \u2014 which is now out. It\u2019s about a slide guitar player \u2014 it\u2019s a cowboy film, a Western \u2014 who comes into this corrupt lumberjack town and cleans up all the corruption in town with his music. He doesn\u2019t use guns or whips or knives or anything like that. He uses his music to create a better town. It\u2019s as if Mel Brooks was an animator. This is what he would do. It\u2019s not for kids. There\u2019s prostitutes in there, a lot of bloody violence. It\u2019s really something very different, very unique, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m really excited about the film. It\u2019s also a musical.\\<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has six new songs from Maureen McElheron. I\u2019ve been working with her since I first moved to New York. You probably met her in my early days. We had a band. We played a bunch of clubs, and I played slide guitar \u2014 she sang the songs. She did the song for \u201cYour Face.\u201d She did the music for \u201cThe Tune\u201d [1992] and the music for \u201cI Married a Strange Person!\u201d [1997]. She did a lot of my music for a lot of my films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Somewhere online, you were selling some of your cels and art and stuff. Hopefully, you didn\u2019t have to sell a lot of it. I\u2019d rather you see it be donated or get paid by one archive, because there must be a million people who want to study what you\u2019ve been doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Yeah, that\u2019s a very good point. The selling of the originals actually is a really good deal, and that is very popular \u2014 more popular than I expected. If you\u2019ve been to my studio, I have a whole wall of boxes of art that I\u2019m willing to sell, like $200 each, $300 each. So it\u2019s a good way to raise funds and keep my studio somewhat orderly [laughs] without all these boxes of artwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: It\u2019s a good thing that at events like these Comic Cons, you can be signing and doing pictures \u2014 you are quite in demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: I like the Big Apple [Comic Con] because there\u2019s a lot of fans of mine who live in New York. Truthfully, the biggest sellers are \u201cYour Face\u201d [1987] artwork and \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d \u2014 people love \u201cThe Simpsons.\u201d There\u2019s a lot of fans in New York City for \u201cSimpsons\u201d art and I have a lot of original \u201cSimpsons\u201d artwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the interesting thing is that the animation that\u2019s on \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d is all digital. In other words, they created it on their laptop or computer. I\u2019m the last guy who actually makes drawings on paper, so I\u2019m the only guy who has \u201cSimpsons\u201d artwork that is legit \u2014 real artwork that is in the film. That gives it a very high resale potential; it makes the artwork very valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What\u2019s the secret to how you are able to make so much art \u2014 your hand can be drawing while you\u2019re sleeping!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Yeah, that\u2019s not a bad idea. That would be good. Sometimes I even draw left-handed \u2014 I\u2019m basically right-handed \u2014 but if my hand gets tired, I\u2019ll draw left-handed and it actually helps speed up the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: It sounds like whatever your assistants do, you still do the majority of the real creation there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Let me tell you exactly what I do, because there\u2019s some confusion. A lot of people think I have inbetweeners and people who do the artwork. I do the story, of course. I do the storyboards, all the character design, all the background design and the layout. I do all the animation \u2014 100% of everything there is mine. I did all the drawings, and I colored the drawings, too. I do all the coloring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s two reasons [why] I do that. One is, it\u2019s cheaper that way. I don\u2019t pay a lot of money to hire other artists. The other reason \u2014 it\u2019s more fun. I love drawing all day long. That\u2019s my passion in life: drawing all day long. So it works out pretty well for me. As an independent, I don\u2019t have a lot of money and I have to finance everything myself. As an independent, I have to keep the budget low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: It must be tough to resist the urge to train a computer to be you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: I\u2019m really bad with computers [laughs.] In fact, I don\u2019t even know how to answer my emails, so I have someone to do it. I\u2019m so busy drawing, I\u2019ve never really learned how to use a computer. So it\u2019s a bad situation; I\u2019m not proud of that. But it\u2019s just the reality of my artistic life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: You are married and have had a son. How old is he?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: He\u2019s 12 years old, and he loves drawing. He wants to be a game designer. He wants to design games and is actually doing one right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: So that could become your next source of income. He could game-ify a lot of your stories and works.
Bill Plympton: That\u2019s a great idea. I\u2019ll tell him you said that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Yeah. By the time he\u2019s 14, you could be sitting back and smoking your cigar while games are generating income [laughs.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Right, that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: It\u2019s mystifying how you come up with some of these wacky ideas. And then, forget about coming up with them, following the path of your narratives is a whole other thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Well, just so you know, I live in New York City, and New York City is basically a cartoon city. There\u2019s so many ideas on every block, and I carry around a sketch pad with me to write down the ideas and the weird things I see. So that\u2019s where a lot of ideas come from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: You\u2019ve done so many films. It\u2019s hard to say which one people think was the weirdest and which one people think is the best for kids. Which one do you think could be adapted to live action?

Bill Plympton: Okay, let me start. My favorite film is probably \u201cYour Face\u201d because that really put me on the map. That really opened me up to the whole animation industry. My favorite feature film is \u201cCheatin’\u201d [2013], which I did about 10 years ago. It\u2019s a really beautiful film, I love it. The weirdest film is \u201cI Married a Strange Person!\u201d, which actually was the biggest hit. It was my biggest success. Can I tell you a story about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Absolutely.

Bill Plympton: Okay, well, \u201cI Married a Strange Person!\u201d came out in [1998] and got invited to the Sundance Film Festival. Which is really special, because generally they don\u2019t like animated films. So we showed it, the audience went crazy for it, standing ovations, they loved it. I thought, \u201cI\u2019m going to make some money on this film.\u201d But no distributors bought it, and I thought, \u201cOh, this is terrible.\u201d You\u2019ve been to Sundance, right? You know the buses that go around the city?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Anyway, I was on the bus and I saw the head of Lion\u2019s Gate Films; I knew him from somewhere. I walked up to him and I said, \u201cHey! How\u2019re you doing? I\u2019m Bill Plympton, remember me? I did a film, \u2018I Married a Strange Person!.\u2019 Have you had a chance to see it yet?\u201d He said \u201cNo, I\u2019ve been busy. There\u2019s been so many films to see. I don\u2019t have time to see \u201cI Married a Strange Person.\u201d So I was pretty depressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then this snowboard dude jumps on the bus, with snow dripping down his face, beard, and just wet from head to toe. He says \u201cHey, you\u2019re Bill Plympton! Duuude, I loved \u2018I Married a Strange Person!\u2019 That\u2019s the best film I\u2019ve seen all year!\u201d He then jumps off the bus and goes down the hill. That\u2019s the last time I saw that guy, but the guy from Lion\u2019s Gate said, \u201cOkay, I guess I\u2019d better watch your film.\u201d He loved it, bought it, and it made a lot of money. It was one of my most successful films. All thanks to that snowboard dude. I don\u2019t know what his name was, but he saved my ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Of all the films you made, are there any you\u2019d like to see made in live-action?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Not really. I really love animation. Animation, to me, is the best format for telling stories. However, I am working on a book now, a \u201cFear and Loathing in Las Vegas\u201d kind of book, that I think would make a great live-action feature, or animated film. It\u2019s called \u201cSky High\u201d \u2014 I don\u2019t know when it\u2019s going to be coming out, but it\u2019ll be coming out probably in the fall sometime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Would you want to have one of your ideas made into a digitally-created animated film, just to see how it looks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Oh, yeah. No, I like Pixar films. I like Disney films. I have no problem with computer animation. In fact, I think computer animation really saved the animation industry. Because of Pixar and Dreamworks, animated films now are huge, huge box office. In fact, something like \u201cAvatar,\u201d which is really a computer film, they [made] like two billion dollars or something. I think they\u2019re the most successful art form in a long time. So I\u2019m perfectly happy to see computer animation used for films.

Q: Did you ever think you would be considered that far ahead of your time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Well, I wasn\u2019t ahead of my time, I was behind. I\u2019m a dinosaur in the business. I think people will start appreciating hand-drawn animation a little bit more. Someone like [Hayao] Miyazaki [co-founder of Studio Ghibli], his films are incredibly popular. And, of course, \u201cThe Simpsons\u201d is very popular. They\u2019re all hand-drawn. So I think there\u2019s still a market for those kinds of films. But certainly, the computer itself is so, so massively popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Have you seen the films of Irish born Tomm Moore? [\u201cThe Secret of Kells\u201d [2009], \u201cSong of the Sea\u201d [2014] and “Wolfwalkers” [2020], were all nominated for Oscars] They\u2019re a mix of hand-drawn and digital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Yes, that\u2019s Cartoon Saloon [co-founded with Nora Twomey and Paul Young]. I visited his studio, actually; he\u2019s a really nice guy. I really celebrate his [work], it\u2019s very different. He was like me: he started out as an illustrator, doing illustrations for magazines. Then he got into animation, and it became really popular, very successful, and I\u2019m really happy for his success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Your Hitler film, \u201cHitler\u2019s Folly [2016] must have been your most controversial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: It was, yeah. Actually, my most controversial film was \u201cTrump Bites\u201d [2018-2019]. I did a series of short films for \u201cThe New York Times\u201d about Trump and the things he said. I would take his dialogue \u2014 which is crazy, as you know \u2014 and then I would do animation to accent the surrealism of what he was saying. I got so much hate mail \u2014 oh my God, tons of it. [Conservative pundit] Sean Hannity showed the film on Fox and man, I was inundated with this hate mail, death threats, and stuff like that. It was pretty ugly. It\u2019s still really ugly stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was my most controversial film, I\u2019d say. I only did one season of it, but it was the highest-rated show on the \u201cNew York Times\u201d online programming. In a way, that\u2019s good; but in a way, it\u2019s because I was so controversial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But anyway, the Hitler film I thought was a great idea. Again, Mel Brooks made a film about Hitler, [1967\u2019s \u201cThe Producers;\u201d \u201cMel Brooks: To Be or Not to Be\u201d, music video (1983)] and so did Charlie Chaplin [\u201cThe Great Dictator\u201d (1940.)] Disney made a Hitler film [\u201cJojo Rabbit\u201d, dir. Taika Waititi (2019.)] What I was doing is not that controversial. There have been a lot of Hitler comedies before, so I didn\u2019t get too much feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Whether it\u2019s a sad thing, or a good thing, \u201cHitler\u201d is such a crazy concept that it can be made into so many movies and books. Nobody, still to this day, believes he could have really been a real thing. Except that he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Yes, you\u2019re right. If his art career had taken off, if he had gotten into animation, he never would have been a dictator. He would have been a dictator-animator, but I don\u2019t think he would have been a political dictator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Sci-fi author Norman Spinrad wrote a book, \u201cThe Iron Dream,\u201d which envisions Hitler as a science fiction writer. You should look that up. You\u2019d appreciate that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Yeah, I think I would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: So what is your opinion on \u201cRick and Morty\u201d? What do you think about that, all the controversy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: That\u2019s really well-written. I don\u2019t think the artwork is so good, but I love the writing and the imagination. Another one I like a lot is \u201cSpongeBob.\u201d  I think \u201cSpongeBob\u201d is definitely a takeoff on Bugs Bunny and Warner Brothers cartoons. The humor, the visual craziness. And it\u2019s all visual humor, whereas most [cartoons] are word humor. I like visual humor the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did think one answer to your question of what films of mine would be great for kids? For the Cartoon Network, I did a Christmas special, \u201c12 Tiny Christmas Tales\u201d [2001.] It\u2019s a half-hour, and the reviews were off the wall. They were like, \u201cOh, this is brilliant! This is the best thing ever! The best Christmas special ever!\u201d Then the Cartoon Network put it in their vaults and they never showed it again.

Q: I was going to say, \u201cWhy aren\u2019t you a perennial like Charles Schultz?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Exactly. It really was a unique Christmas special. We\u2019ve been trying to get them to show it again, but it\u2019s hard. But at least it shows in other countries. In Argentina, it\u2019s a big success. They show it every Christmas, and people say, \u201cYou did \u201812 Tiny Christmas Tales\u2019! All right, dude!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Do you ever think about doing your own Christmas [project] and distributing it on your own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Maureen McElheron wants me to do that. She has a story that she thought would be a great Christmas special. But it\u2019s hard to sell something like that, unless I had connections with Netflix or Hulu or Apple, or something like that. I don\u2019t have those connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: You don\u2019t have a vast array of agents and managers. [Laughs.] And you can be controversial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: No, I\u2019m independent. And I do adult animation. They think there\u2019s no market for that. So, it\u2019s a very difficult business to be in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: So, what do you think about what happened to wildly successful cartoonist Scott Adams who made some questionable comments about African Americans which caused his \u201cDilbert\u201d strip to be dropped by his syndicate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: And he\u2019s one of the cartoonists I liked the most. I love his cartoons. They\u2019re not only funny; they\u2019re of a dry, deadpan kind of humor, and I like that. But why would he say that? I guess he felt he was so popular that he can say anything and not get blowback on it. But yeah, that\u2019s a stupid thing to do. One thing that disappointed me was the troubles that John Lasseter had with Disney. You probably read about it, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Yeah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Plympton: Without him, animation would be a much deader business. Pixar is the great studio of the last two or three decades, and they single handedly raised animation to the art form that it is now. That\u2019s all due to John Lasseter [who was chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering]. He is the genius of geniuses, and I think he deserves a better fate than that. He joined this other studio, Skydance [Animation] and did a film called \u201cLuck.\u201d It wasn\u2019t very good. I don\u2019t know what happened; it was really a bad film. But I will always be indebted to him for making animation such a powerful, powerful art form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 For more info go to: https:\/\/plymptoons.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To see Bill at Big Apple Comic Con go to: bigapplecc.com<\/p>\n

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