WEBVTT

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Old you is, folks, it's
show tied. People say good money to

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see this movie. When they go
out to a theater, they want cold

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sodas, hot popcorn, and no
monsters. In the protection booth, everyone

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for tend. Podcasting isn't boring.
Let it off. Love for you is

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equal to a born out shoe,
nago for you. It's like a cow

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boy hanging around for you. It's
like a velvet dry and positively the worst

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piece of trash I have ever heard
in my entire career. You lived before

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the open road where you went?
I didn't know, But now you said

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your back. Isn't it good again? Isn't it Ridega? When you're going

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account the day, thank you,
mayor where you're prom must be, you'll

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know. Isn't it good again?
Isn't it ride? Why am I watching

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this? Lost? No? I
just don't know where I am. The

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true path is not to be found
outside but with Hey, folks, welcome

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to a special episode of the Projection
Booth. I'm your host Mike White.

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On this episode, I am talking
with Bill Plimpton. He is the director

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of many things, which we definitely
discuss during this interview, but we concentrate

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on this nineteen ninety two film The
Tune, which is available now on Blu

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Ray and DVD from Deaf Crocodile.
As I mentioned, mister Plumpton, I've

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been seeing his stuff since the late
eighties early nineties, so it was a

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real pleasure talking with him. Thank
you so much for listening, and I

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hope you enjoyed this interview. Yeah, I've been a fan of yours for

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years. It's so nice to talk
with you. Wonderful. I love that.

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Did you have stuff in Spike and
Mike's a lot of them in Spike

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and Mike and The Tornad of Animation
also, and then of course I was

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big and tim DV when I was
younger as well, and seeing all the

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bumpers and stuff that you did,
I did a lot. So they never

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gave me credit from those, which
I thought was weird, but they were

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set by a lot of people.
Everybody knew my work, and they just

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didn't know, Hey, who's that
guy doing the color pencil all? It

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must be the color pencil guy,
that's till they knew. So I never

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got credit on Poor Joy and that
was MTV. I guess it was good

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that I was seeing him at the
animation festivals and stuff, so I can

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actually make that connection. Yes,
that's important. In fact, I showed

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two excerpts from the tune on MTV
the Push Jumps to Shoves, the two

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guys fight which won the big prize
that can that was a strange event,

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and then the Wise Man and those
were also on Torna and Spiking Mike.

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I really remembered those. When I
was rewatching the tune yesterday, I was

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like, oh, these are Yeah. Where were you in your career when

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the tune came about? I must
admit that when I moved to New York

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from Oregon and sixty nine, animation
was pretty dead. There wasn't much going

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on in animation Hannah Barbera, which
I hated, so I felt, I

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really want to be an animator,
but there's no career there. So I

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became an illustrator and I was somewhat
successful. I did a lot of men's

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magazines, Playboy, Panhouse through people
like that, and then a lot of

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straight arrow stuff New York Times and
Rolling Stone, National Lampoon, places like

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that, and I got by.
But I just really had the urge to

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see my drawings move since I was
a kid watching Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons.

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That was my goal in life,
and it wasn't until nineteen eighty five

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when this woman, Valeria vaz a
Leski, who I did some brochures for,

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asked me I do animate a song
that her and Jule Spfeiffer had done,

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and I thought, oh, this
is my opportunity. She knew I

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wanted to do animation, so she
stepped in and hired me to do it,

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and the film was quite successful.
It played in cinemas all over the

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US. It was very popular short
film. And then once I knew how

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to do it, then I did
my shorts. I did my first short,

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Your Face, which was a phenomenal
success for the first film that you

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do by herself. It's pretty rare
that it's as successful as Your Face was.

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And then I did was Chris Smoking
How the kids one of those days.

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Put them to a bunch of shorts
and some music videos too, And

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when I put those together on a
video cassette, I realized, geez,

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that's a feature film. I did
a feature film in the last three years,

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and so I said, why do
I just do a feature film?

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Is actually created one? And so
my musician partner Maureen mckellarin, was hired

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to work on the script and do
all the music. We want to do

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a musical along the lines of Yellow
Submarines, because I love Yellow Submarine.

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I love the Beatles, of course, and so we did a bunch of

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songs and we wrote out of script
and trying to sell it, and nobody

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wanted to buy it, a course, because we were we had no money,

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we were independent. Who knew who
we were, We had no same

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or anything like that. Fortunately,
after Your Face came out of the Other

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Felt, I started geting a lot
of commercials and there were two commercials.

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I got Trivial Pursuits and It's a
Sweet And those two commercials gave me enough

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money to finish the tune, and
so it was finished around nineteen ninety one,

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I think something like that, and
we got into Sundance and Sundance I

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think we were the first animated feature
to get into Sundance because nobody was doing

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animated features back then. Disney had
done a few and maybe Japan, but

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that's about it. And I remember
going to a luncheon. They had a

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luncheon for all the filmmakers, so
everybody could meet and greet and exchange stories

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and stuff, and this nerdy guy
comes running up to me. Oh my

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god, Bill Blimpett, Oh you're
the man of your faments. I've seen

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all your films I've seen. I
had a kids one of those days to

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Boomtown. That was the one I
did independently, Boomtown. I saw that

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and he started asking me technical questions
about the films and how I came up

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with the idea. And it turns
out it was a Quentin Tarantino. And

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this was before Reservoir Dogs had played, and as soon as that played,

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everybody wanted to talk to him.
He was like God was the star of

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the festival. But we real mean
friends. I see him in certain festivals

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sometimes we hang out, but we
never got to work together. I always

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wanted to take one of the scripts
that he never did to make an animated

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film out of it, but I
don't know if that's ever going to happen,

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but anyway, it's It did very
well at Sundance. It was a

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lot of applause to state applause,
and we were very popular there. But

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it was an animated film that was
not for kids, and the Siberians didn't

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want to touch it. They said, we only do animations only for kids.

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It's not a adult animation. They
can't do that. And so I

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was very disappointed that we didn't get
a bunch of offers because that was when

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Sundance literally was a big market.
It was a all the distributors were there,

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and we got one distributor, and
the catch was the ship of the

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film. But there was no money
up front, and for an independent film,

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everything is expenses, and all the
money that US looked to get went

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to expensive posters and film brands and
all that stuff. But still it was

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fun. We did a lot of
festivals and Marina and I had some small

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success with the tune, and it's
still been in circulation. It still plays

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a lot of places. And the
Academy were really great. The Academy Board

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of governors there decided to refurbish the
film, so they got the negative,

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they cleaned the negative, it re
redigitized it, and thanks to them,

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I got a beautiful new print.
And that's what their distributing now on DVD

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and Blu ray is the Academy refurbishment. We must come up with the idea

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first, or do you come up
with the drawings first? And then the

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ideas flow from them. Well,
certainly the idea we wanted to make an

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American version of Yellow Submarine, which
is one of my favorite films, and

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with using all types of Americans like
rockabilly, surf and music, country,

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western blues, all the idioms that
America has spawned. And her and I

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wrote a script that was basically about
a music writer or have you seen a

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film, I'm sure, but this
music writer, songwriter who has to get

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a hit in forty seven minutes are
he's fired? And so that was the

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urgency where they had to do it. And once we did that, Marine

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started doing all the songs, and
I started writing the script with her help,

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obviously, and I think it took
about six months to do the script

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and the plan out, the music
and the dialogue. And we try to

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sell it. Like I said,
nobody wanted to buy it. So I

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just said, screw it. I'm
not going to sit on this for ten

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years waiting for someone to buy it. I'm going to just make it.

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And so I did all the drawing
myself, every drawing the he's about forty

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drawings. I did every drawing myself, and it's different techniques. Some is

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paint on sales, and then there's
also xerox the drawings water colored and glued

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to the cell, and there's a
color pencil on paper to the wise Man

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and some other ones. So I
wanted to vary the styles of the film

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so that it would be more interesting
and more entertaining, and I think that

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worked out really well. Plus the
music was different too, so there's always

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something variety going on. And then
I wanted to use a lot of my

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weird sulil gag, try to get
the crazy surmialism in there that people find

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so funny. So there's a lot
of ideas in there that I thought were

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very funny. Some people didn't laugh, but I thought they were hilarious.

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So who cares. How did you
find your voice talent? My sound engineer

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do some people, And I think
I maybe put an ad in Variety or

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one of those things, one of
those magazines, And we had really good

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voice talent Daniel Knighton It was really
good, and some other people that did

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Greater Marine did some voices. It
was non fag. I couldn't afford that.

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It was just too much money,
so we had a hire actors that

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were not fagging. Are you shooting
this all on sixteen or thirty five.

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No, that was shot at thirty
five on our giant ROSTERM camera. One

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thing is interesting is that I didn't
know a lot of musicians either. I

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wasn't plugged into the music world.
And Marine knew soft musicians and they were

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networked. I wanted a country Western
thing, and so we got Hank Bones,

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who now does almost online music with
Marine, and Larry Campbell, who

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I don't know if you know him, but he's one of the top pedal

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steel players in the world. He
played behind every little Harris and Willie Nelson

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and a bunch of big names.
He tours with all the biggies, and

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I just thought he was a pedal
steel player. But boy, he was

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so good. That's from what I
remember. You had Hank Bones, Larry

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Campbell, was it Tom Malone?
Is that right? Bones? Wow?

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From the Blues Brothers band? He
was good. He was very good.

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And then Mark is it Rybo?
Mark Mark Greebol. That's what I was

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trying to remember, And I didn't
know he was a lot of stuff.

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People come to me, You had
Mark Reebol on your band. Wow,

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that's cool. So that was a
real education for me. Are you still

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doing all hand drawn things and then
scanning them or yep, that's it.

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That's it first the till and it
wasn't scanned. It was shot on film

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obviously. But from two thousand and
five that's when I switched over to digital,

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and that really made my life a
lot happier. I tell people that

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before digital, about seventy five to
eighty percent of my costs went to technology,

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going to the lab and getting the
sound transfers and the video transfers and

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all this stuff is a nightmare.
Now like twenty percent goes to technology and

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the rest of that money goes to
my artists, which is what it should

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be. That's what I said.
So it was a nightmare doing the old

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film technology. It just was so
many roadblocks. You know, it's getting

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that thing finished. Oh boy,
I can't even imagine how that must have

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been for you. You've got studio
recordings for the voices, and then you

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also have to worry about yes,
music as well, and then yes wow

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yes. And they all wanted money, of course, and fortunately I had

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those commercials, those two commercials to
help pay the way. It was a

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tough time, but but I think
I did five feature films and the old

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technology. And it's interesting now because
everybody's making their films on our iPad.

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It's you can make a feature film
there. And so now there's thousansands of

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animated feature films coming out, not
coming out, but being finished. And

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I like to think that I inspired
these guys that, hey, you can

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make your own feature film by yourself. You don't need to book with Netflex

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or Disney or anybody like that.
Just go home, do drawing on your

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iPad and scan it in. It's
a really wonderful world. I can't even

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imagine how much influence you and your
fellow animators in the late eighties early nineties

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had through things like liquid Television,
which so many people say yeah and got

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inspired by. I'm sure no.
MTV was a big boost. That was

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really I was really great working for
them. I watch MGV constantly. I

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really loved it back then. You're
probably too young to remember, but it

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was all the great music and the
great art directors and the great animators.

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That's where you see them would be
on MGV. You do something in your

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animation that I've always been curious about
how you accomplish it, which is everything

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pulses. There's that movement to everything. How are you accomplishing that? That's

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because I'm cheap and lazy. Basically, if there's someone standing still, most

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people would just have a scale drawing
and they're frozen there. But I do

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two drawings. Sometimes three drawings are
the same post. I just retrace it

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on another sale, and so I
alternated on three. So there'll be three

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frames of one drawing three frames and
a drawing number two. Three frames are

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drawing number three, and then let's
just a cycle and it gives it a

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throbbing kind of look, and you
feel like you got to watch it all

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the time because you may miss something. So it's a trick I use.

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I didn't invent it. It's been
around for a long time, but I

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do use an extensively. Let's see
between that and the colored pencils. I

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could always tell what your work was
as soon as it came up. Thank

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you, Thank you. How has
the process for you changed over the years.

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You talked about the use of digital
technology. You've made a ton of

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short it's a ton of commercials and
many more features since then. How has

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that technology allowed you to continue your
work? Work? The distribution is more

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very now. There's a lot of
markets to show my films and to sell

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them, so that helps that I
can make money on my films, and

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that money obviously goes into the next
film and so on. So leap looks.

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But my process is this, after
I do an outline, I'll do

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the storyboards. In fact, I'm
working on new short right now when I'm

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right in the middle of the storyboards. And then once I complete that,

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then I'll do an animatic. Do
you know what animatic is that middle ground

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between the two right? Maybe like
moving storyboards exactly, moving storyboards with sound

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and voices and music and stuff like
that. But then if I approve that,

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and sometimes I show it to people
to get feedback, what do you

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think about this? Is that you
understand the idea and stuff, And then

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I'll do the animation. We'll write
to the animation, and I'll draw it

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on paper eight and a half by
eleven typing paper, and we test it.

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And once I test it, I
ink it with a ballpoint ten.

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I love ballpoint tens are really great. And then we scan it on our

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scanner and then my helpers they composite
the drawings or they clean the drawings and

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then they composite them and then they'll
add color on top of that. Sometimes

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I do the color when I draw
on with color pencil, but other times

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they do it digitally. They will
digitally put the color on and that that's

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a very quick way to the color
a scene, whereas in the Disney days

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where you had to have some artists
do the ink and ink aligne outline the

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black outline, and then the other
artists would do the coloring all the all

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the parts of the body. And
that was very time consuming and they I

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think that was the largest part of
Disney's studio where the tinkers and painters up

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to three hundred people filling in the
color. But now we can do it

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digitally. It's so fast, it's
so quick. What was it like for

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you when you would go into live
action things. I love some of your

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live action stuff like Hitler's Folly I
think is fantastic. Thank you. I

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thought that was really great. I
may put it out there as sell it

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actually at some point, because now
the copyright lay a lot of change,

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I can use Mickey Mouse and some
of those characters without getting sued. But

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I'll be honest with you, I
haven't been so successful with live action films.

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I like them. I think they're
really good. I think Guns and

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the Clack of Us is one of
my favorites. Chilile was complete flop,

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and then I did a little Curtis
documentary about sixty minutes seventy gains something like

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that, and that was really popular. I actually made money on that.

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But the Hitter thing, I did
it, and I think it costs about

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ten thousand to make, and I
never expected to make it money on it.

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But I just thought it's such a
wacky idea that Hitler was supposedly an

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artist and wanted to be an artist. He didn't want to be a politician,

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he didn't want to go to war. He just wanted to be an

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artist and he was frustrated in art
school, so he turned to cartoons.

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He wanted to making joints move,
and I thought that was such an absurd

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basis for a film, that it
would be lots of fun. I haven't

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got any negative feedback on it yet. Fortunately it's been positive, but you

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never know. But I've pained nine
animated feature films, and I don't I

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can't think of any director, maybe
me as Zaki, who's an animation director

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who's made so many feature films as
I have, because usually in Hollywood they

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use him for one or two films
and they disappear because they want to get

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someone younger or someone with different ideas
himself. So really proud of the films

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that I did. I'm proud of
the tune. Started out this whole new

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phase of my career and it was
a semi success. I can't say I

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got rich on it, but it
was. It really got out there.

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It was on video, cassette and
d D and everything, and a lot

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of people love it. A lot
of people sing the songs to me.

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I love that sort of thing.
So for me, I was real proud

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to make the tune. You don't
seem like you're satisfied just doing the same

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thing over and over again. Maybe
it's an Angels was just such a quantum

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leap. I was like, oh
wow, yes it was. And also

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cheating those both of those films that
no dialogue in them, and I when

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I give it a shot, it
seems like I do. It's my I'm

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not so good at writing strips.
I just like to make the drawings,

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and make the drawing is really crazy
and bizarre. And beautiful, and so

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if I why don't I make up
idiots and angels and just have visual storytelling,

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purely visual storytelling. And that was
a success that got in a lot

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of theaters. And then also Cheating
did very well too. So but the

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new one I'm working on now is
called Slide, does have dialogue and it's

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doing very well too, so I'm
pretty happy. I've only seen the trailers

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for it, but it looks fantastic. We're still doing a festival circuit and

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so the producer, my producer,
i should say, doesn't want us to

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release it yet to regular people.
They want to keep it under wraps.

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So that's the plan. But we're
hoping it comes out this time sometime that's

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fall. How many years does it
take to make a feature film for me,

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it takes between two and a half
and three years, but Slide took

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seven years because of COVID. In
the middle of working on it, COVID

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hit and I had to shut down
the studio and all my markets tried up,

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movie theaters, film festivals, comic
cons, things like that. They

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all went away, so I had
no money. So I had to take

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commercial work like publicity and music videos
and I worked on some documentaries and things

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like that, so that's why it
took so long, and I'm just finishing

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it now. And then I had
no money. I was really in debt

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making this film, extremely in debt. And now I'm finally starting to stop

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paying for flight and work and started
doing commercial work and starting to pay off

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the bills. So that's a good
feeling that I can do that. And

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also the film is very successful so
far. It's gotten five awards and five

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festivals. So really up popped in
about the future. Mister Plimpton. Thank

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you so much for your time.
This has been so great talking with you.

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You know, likewise likewise you seem
to know what you're talking about.

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That's your correct Thank you. I
appreciate that. Okay, all right,

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thank you so much, and hopefully
we'll talk about release days. Okay,

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all right. Your face is like
a song, your sweet eyes whisper,

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and now to sing alone, your
feet choose on. Let's sing together every

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month to ju your face hot.
It makes me a happy fellow, no

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singing out the pelon, no longer
lonely loving you. Only your leaves with

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mine will rise, and when they
touch me, it's a something divine,

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your cheap it choly show weave me
a melody, a melody somewhere your face

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ys home makes me a happy fellow. Go singing or the call London Loly,

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loving you all me