Hello there, and welcome back to the disc Connected. I'm here with legendary
animator Bill Plimpton. Bill, thank you so much for doing this today.
Hello. How is everybody today? I'm sure that they are well because we
were all just graced with this wonderful new release of the tune from Deaf Crocodile.
It has been totally remastered by the Academy, so they did a great
job. It looks so beautiful. It was gorgeous. I gotta admit I've
watched it twice since it came out, which is crazy because it literally just
came out and it looks so much better than you could imagine something like this
could possibly look more than thirty years later on such a unique style of animation.
I imagine you're very proud of the way that it was restored. Yeah.
Well, one of the interesting things about it is that I didn't know
it at the time, and I well, let me go back and start
for the beginning. I started doing animation when I was a lot older.
I think it's forty when I did your Face and that was a huge hit,
and then I went on to I quit my print illustration jobs and went
on to do more shorts, twenty five Ways Quit Smoking, how to Kiss
one of those days, platoons, a whole bunch of and commercials and stuff,
and I put it in a video cassette and when I looked at it
all together, it was an hour of animation. I went, Wow,
I've done a feature film in the last few years. And then the thought
occurred to me, why not do a feature film, because that was my
goal when I was younger. I saw Sleeping Beauty and I said, oh,
man, I would give anything just to do some of the drawings on
Sleeping Beauty. You know, I really love feature animated feature films. And
for me to come to the realization that, hey, why not do the
whole film, I thought that was wonderful. So I talked to Marine mckellarin,
who was my musician. We played bars and clubs around New York.
I did pedal steel and she sang and played guitar, and I said,
let's do an animated feature film along the lines of Yellow Submarine, which is
one of my favorite all time films, but using American music. American music,
you know, surfing, country, western rockabilly, jazz, you know,
all sorts of styles of music. And she said yeah, let's do
it. We tried to sell it. Even though I was nominated for an
Oscar, nobody wanted to buy it because it was kind of an adult film
and a lot of distributors, you know, are afraid of adult animation.
So I said, we'll do it ourselves, and I I financed it because
at that point I was making money doing commercials. Your Face was such a
hit, such a big hit, that I was picked as an animator for
a bunch of commercials, big time commercial so I had money. So for
about an hour a year and a half, I financed my film and it
came out, and little did I realize that this was the first time anybody
had ever hand drawn their own animated feature film. And what happened was then
the whole digital explosion was kicking in, and people realized they don't need to
hire a cameraman or go to a Kodak and buy film, or get the
pro film processed and all that garbage. They can just do it at home
on their laptop. And for now, I see all these people making their
own animated feature films, and they say, yeah, Bill Plimpton did it,
why can't we do it? And so I kind of started in my
mind, I kind of started a revolution in animation that people on their own
DIY make their own animated feature films. And I think that's that's fantastic because
there are some great films out there with people doing it themselves. And I'm
absolutely happy to say, proud to say that the tune kicked off this revolution
that's going on now. Well. I mean, one of the things that
I did want to get into is the fact that it is so difficult to
get distribution for so many things, and you've not to you know, worship
at the feet of Bill Plimpton, but you've made yourself this subset of things
that are even harder to get distribution for animation. Animation is already difficult.
Adult animation is even further difficult than Yeah, shorts are even difficult beyond that,
which is also where a lot of the successes come from. So as
somebody that made such an impact. One of the things I'd really love to
hear about is that first Oscar nomination. How'd that feel? How'd that affect
you? Well? The weird thing is I never entered it in the Oscars.
I think it was with either the Spike and Mike's Show or the Tournay
of Animation, and they entered it in the Oscars and I got a phone
call from this guy from the Canadian Film Board one morning saying, this is
Bill Plimpton. I said, yeah, did you know you got nominated for
an Oscar this morning? I said, what are you kidding me? And
I had to call someone else to confirm that this wasn't a prankster, and
sure enough I did get nominated, and it really did change my life completely.
I mean, for my first animated film to be that successful, it's
very rare. A lot of it had to do. I was forty,
and I had experienced doing comic strips and I knew how to, you know,
make people laugh with my drawings. That helped a lot. But still
for my first film to be that successful, it's really really amazing to me.
And going there to the Oscars was incredible, meeting all these people and
it was just changed my life completely. I spent an evening this week with
this brand new disc of the tune, watched all of it, which is
a wonderful release. We've got a bunch of the shorts on here. We've
got an hour long interview with you and some of your collaborators from the tune.
We've got a new audio commentary, We've got an essay by Walt Shaw,
who's a wonderful film critic. But I was astonished because my wife had
never seen anything from Clinton, and I loved sharing it with her. And
what's funny is everything still works. Something about this animation. Yeah, he's
so timeless. Yeah, yeah, And animation is like that. And I
did it purposely. I didn't want to bring in any Reagan jokes or you
know, contemporary humor. I just wanted to be like a universal, a
universal story. Can I tell you one story? I tell you what mean?
Yeah, you were talking about getting distribution for animation. Not only is
it independent animation, but it is for adults, it's not for kid And
I was at sun Dance for I believe it was around two thousand something like
that with my film I Married a Strange Person. Maybe it's earlier, right,
nineteen ninety nine, And the audience loved the film. It's probably my
most bizarre film. It's a really crazy film. But nobody was picking it
up. Nobody was buying this film. And this was the film I did
after the two and I was very frustrated. And then I was on the
school but not school by the bus of Sundance. It goes around and drops
people off with all the movie theaters, and I saw the head of Lionsgate
Films there and I said, oh, I know that guy. I met
him once. So I walk up to him and say hello. I think
his name was Tom and I said, I'm Bill Plimpton. I have a
new film here at Sundance. It's called I Married a Strange Person. You
got to see it. It's really people are loving it. He said,
well, you know, I'd love to see it, but I got a
stack of films, you know, this high to watch. I'm really busy.
I just don't have time to see another film. So I was really
frustrated and I have book PS pissed off. And then the doors to the
bus open and this young guy twenty years old jumps on the bus and he's
got that little knit cap, you know, with snow coming down the side,
and he had a snowboard and he'd just come down the hill and he
was covered in snow. And as he gets on, he says, dude,
you're Bill Plimpton. Yeah, you made I Married Strange person that rocked
my world, though, you are God. And then he jumps off the
bus and heads on down the hill on the snowboard and that was it.
And I know what to do. And so the guy from Lions guy says,
well, I guess I better look at this film. And he looked
at it, and he bought it for a lot of money. And I
even get royalty checks from that, and that is rare. It's really rare
when you get royalty checks from a big studio, especially when you're a small
guy like me. You know, I'm not Brad Pitt or anything like that.
So it was and that's the that's the business. That's how it works.
The weirdest connections can can change your career, you know. And that
kid, I never I don't know who he is. I should have paid
him for that. He should get royalties. Yeah, that's the business.
You got to be on a bus and hope that this random skier gets on
with dripping water and snow all over all of us, you know, that's
that's what Anyway, that was my I love that. And one of the
things that has to, you know, for a certain generation, be the
you know, some of the fine you know, references for Plinton that they
have is you were kind of everywhere for a little while that you were,
you know, working working with certain people that were perfect for my demographic.
So I got to ask about a handful of these, like MTV's Liquid Television.
How was working with them back in the day. Yeah, they saw
my film Your Face at Anissey, I think, and they went they kept
going Tony's Animation Festival in France where it's purely animation. It's it's like the
can Film Festival of Animation, and so they contacted me. They were there
and they you know, invited me out to dinner and said, we want
to show your film on MTV, and it was a big success with the
channel. And then I did Twenty five Ways with Smoking, which was really
big success on on MTV because not only was it funny and animated, but
it had a real point to it, you know, I stopped smoking and
so MTV loved that. And then I showed how to Kiss and I think
plimp tunes in one of those days. So my stuff was all over MTV,
but they never gave me a credit, and I had no sense they
cut off the credits whenever the end of the film came, they cut it
off, and you know, I didn't mind. I was so happy to
be on MTV because at that point was hot. I mean watching MTV and
I did too. I love watching that channel. And I ran into some
people later on and they and I told them about myself on MTV and says,
that was you. We didn't know your name. We just said,
oh, it's the credit, the color pencil guy. I was the color
pencil guy that they watched. And apparently I had a lot of big following
as a color pencil guy on MTV. So MTV was was very important to
my early early start in animation. Well, now that you brought that up,
I'll hold on the other collaborators that I want to bring up. But
one of the things that is so important for you and your style is that
individual, almost like very textured look. It's something that no one else has
and as somebody that you know, as you can see behind me, I
love tangible things. I love physical media. I love that this can never
be taken away from to you. Me too, that your animation has meant
a lot because it feels like that and when you watch not not that the
Disney animated stuff is bad or anything. Some of those are my favorite.
But something about everything from Bill Plimpton has always been special because it's like I
can reach out and feel the shavings of the colored pencils. Well, it's
it's handmade right, and there are a lot of mistakes in there, and
I happen to like the mistakes. It makes it a fresh feel like it
was created by hand. And I think that's that's why my stuff stands out.
And you know, uh, it's interesting everybody says as soon as they
see their work, they say, oh, it's Plimpton. It's I'm identified
with that real kind of crude, crude look of my animation. And it's
funny because I was influenced by a lot of people, you know, certainly
Disney at the beginning, and tech savery above lamp At winsor McKay, and
then some of the current animators like Marv Nulan and Joanna Quinn and people like
that who I really love their work, and Tim Burton, and so you
would think that I would I would be repeating someone's style, but I mix
them around in a pot and it comes out totally a unique, unique style.
So and I like that I want to I want to do stuff that's
really uh never been seen before. Yeah, that's important to me that it's
a totally unique style. I it's such a unique style that there are certain
times in my life when I've been growing, I've been going through different periods
and I've loved things like weird Now and there's Plimpton out of nowhere showing up
with things that I love. With weird l Uh, you go into the
Kanye West phase of loving hip hop there there's Bill Plumpton, Like, first
off, how did these connections get made? Or well, Kanye was he
grew up in Chicago, as you know, and his mom would take him
to see the Spike and mic show, which played at the Big Theater there,
I forget the name of the theater and he had huge audiences and he
loved my animation as young kid. And then he's you know, then he
has this big career and MTV hired him to uh didn't hire him, but
asked him to premiere his new music video on their channel t r L.
I think it's called and Uh. He asked Michelle Gondry to do it.
You know who. Michelle's a big name, big and movies and in music
videos, and what Michelle Gondre delivered Kanye did not like. Uh. He
took like half a million dollars and rented the top of Macy's and did this
whole stop thing. Wow. And so he was freaking out because he had
a week to premiere on MTV. So he called me. He said,
I remember that guy Plimpton who did the torn A or the Sick and Twisted
animations. I love that stuff. And so he called me out of the
blues, like the middle of the night. This is Bill Bleimben, it's
Kanye. You do the cartoons. So yeah, that's me that I need.
I need you to make an animation video for me. So to do
a music video in a week is really suicidal. But I knew as Kanye
West, and it would get a lot of a lot of circulation, so
I said, yes, I will do it. He didn't give me a
number, didn't say how much money I was getting paid, but I figured
it wouldn't be bad just to do it for free. Uh. And we
I stayed up for about a week, me and my producer finishing this film
and weed it one hour before it was supposed to air on MTV and it
was shown all over the world. I mean, but I was in Finland
doing a festival and I turned on TV and here's my Kanye West music video.
So I did very well. And you know what, he was a
great guy. He came to buy my studio once and he looked over my
shoulder and said. The only thing he said was, you know, I
think I'm more handsome than that. You got to make me more good looking.
I said, sure, I'll do it. And we did a book
together, which was nice, and he did a gallery exhibition of all my
artwork from the from the film. So I have a lot of respect for
him. He was really He treated me very well, and I think he's
extremely talented guy. The other stuff, you know, I can't explain that,
but he's extremely talented. That comes back to whirred owt for me,
because he's one that everybody that I know that is close with him or has
worked with him multiple times cannot say anything but positive about him. Any any
super fun, weird al stories, Yeah, well, yeah, one was
I was working. I think I've done two or three for him, I
can't remember. For the second one, I went out to la to meet
with him to talk about the project, and we went to like Hollywood and
Vine is so so real, fifties Hollywood kind of diner place, a bar
bar, diner bar, and we had nice dinner and we were walking out
and a homeless guy came up. Weird Well, oh my god, weird
Hell, can I have your autograph? And he didn't have a pad,
didn't have a pen, and you know, weird Al is so polite.
He reached down, he saw a matchbook cover in the gutter. He picked
it up, he signed Weirdell on it and gave it to the guy.
I mean, how many rock stars would do that. That is just so
absurd that he would, you know, care so much about this homeless guy
to get an autograph. Wow, that's amazing. And then the other big
one. You have multiple times done animation for the Simpsons, which yes,
it's huge, and it's it's so interesting to have two animation institutions collide in
a way. That is, it fits in the rhetoric of what the Simpsons
do because they bring in different animators for that. But yeah, it serves
the way that you animate as well, because they've been doing this for so
long in such a unique way. Well, that's for sure. They're so
successful. I mean nothing, there's never been TV animation that successful. It's
just it's just phenomenal. I do have a Matt Grading story if you're interested,
absolutely, Okay. Uh So I went to Porton State in Oregon.
That's where I grew up. I went to Porton State College and they had
a film festival Internet Portland International Film Festival, and I was really getting into
the film and the movies end. So I went to it and there there
was this guy showing industrial. Do you remember what an industrial is? Oh?
Yeah, oh yeah, they were. They were big back then,
and they were hilarious. They were like money Python. They were so deadpan
and strange. And the guy was there and I introduced myself. I said,
I'm Bill Plumpton. I love your films. They're really terrific. And
he said, and I think you might have seen some of my cartoons,
and so he kind of knew who I was. He said, well,
I live right up on the hills there. Why don't you come up.
I'll show you some more of them. I said, oh my god,
that'd be wonderful. And when he drove me up there, I walked in
the door and there's this little kid laying down on the on the on the
carpet doing cartoons, drawing cartoons. And I said, oh, you're a
cartoonist too. Wow, that's what I'm I'm doing cartoons too. And that
was matt Uh And we became friends ever since. And you know, we
don't hang out a lot together, but usually we'll runn into each other at
Anniecy or at the Annie's or some film festival and we have a beer and
stuff. And he is really a super nice guy too. He goes to
Annisy. I used to go every day every year, and him and David
Silverman, you know David Silverman. I never met him, but yeah,
I know about him. He directed a bunch of the Sins of the movie.
And they would go there and you know, when I would go,
I would do sign to autograph my DVDs or my books or something like that.
They would go and they just autograph paper and they would line would be
all the way around the block out to the lake, and I swear him
and David would sit there for four or five hours as long as the line
took of autographing this stuff. And you know, to think he's a spoiled,
rich guy, it would be absurd. He really believes in his art,
he believes in his cartoons, and he really wants to make people happy,
and that that's an inspiration for me. Really. He's a workhorse too,
like he's one of the busiest people out there. Yeah. Yeah,
And he does the Futurama and he does he produces short films and so he
does really work hard for for his his career. You brought up a couple
of the things that inspired you at the very beginning, but I would love
to hear if there was anything that inspired your specific style, because obviously inspired
your specific style because it's so unique. Yeah. Well, like I say,
it's it's really I steal from a lot of people. You know.
Our crumb was a big influence, Ralph Bakshi. You know, the Beatles,
Milton Glazier and see why if uh and I really I copy of them
all. But the style for my new film it's called sly. I guess
I shouldn't talk about that, should I should know? We can't. I
was going to bring it up in just a minute. Actually for a totally
different style, and that's the style I used when I was doing illustrations for
magazines and newspapers. And it's I go with a ballpoint pen and do the
character, draw the character, and then I go in with the colored pencil
and build up the volume and the shading and all the detail work. And
I never did it in animation simply because it's a lot of work. I
mean, every drawing I have to draw twice and I have to get into
the detail. So this it was a a new thing for me. And
it just seems like people really respond to this new technique. And I mean,
you'll never see the Simpsons done like this, or Disney or Pixar really
handmade and rough and sketchy. It's very impressionistic. I like to call it
impressionistic because it looks like a drawing you might see in an art museum.
You know, It's very rough and the edges are not sure, and everything's
kind of kind of crude. And I love that style. And that's why
I want to be independent and not work for Disney, because they would they
would definitely get rid of that in a second. But I don't want to
saying against Disney. I love Disney. I wouldn't be here today without Disney.
As a kid, I was obsessed by Disney and I still love their
stuff, so I don't want to be negative on Disney. Well, and
there's been a handful that have left Disney that they started with Disney and that
they found their way. Don Bluth is one of my favorites from when I
was a kid, and I mean he's probably one of the bigger names that
made an imprint in Disney and could have been very successful with Disney. But
yeah, yeah, I mean arguably he went and made his own thing,
probably bigger than he would have been able to be at Disney. Yeah.
And Jim Burton was a huge success for sure from starting out with Disney.
And he's another one that influenced me because of his independence and his weird weirdness
factor. He doesn't do happy films, you know, kids and songs and
stuff. He does stuff on the edge and I like that. I like
doing humor that's on the edge. Well, and a lot of your stuff
is that way. It's on the you know, not like death necessarily,
but like dark humor and black humor done in a way that is almost essentially
like British humor. That's funny. Yeah, I see a little muddy python
in the very dead pan but very surreal, extremely surreal, and that's where
I find my humor. There is in the tune there's one scene about,
oh, I don't know, three quarters of the way through and there's two
gentlemen just beating the hell out of each other. Yeah, And my wife
again saw that, this time for the this week, for the first time,
and after about three rounds of them going back and forth, she said,
this is still going on, and I said, yeah, it's perfect,
isn't it. That's very Mondy python. That was, And then I
released that. While I was making the tune, I started running out of
money. I don't know, I wasn't getting enough commercials or something, and
so I decided to release that film and The Wise Man where the guy says
to cut one loaf into two, you have three. You real kind of
magical stuff. And they were both very successful as short short films. In
fact, the one Push Comes to Shove the two guys beating up on each
other were won the prize It Can the critics choice, and that was.
And I wasn't there. I was I was shooting a live extra film at
the moment, and I was I was really tired of shooting all day.
And I came home Tron on TV and they had the broadcast of the can
Film Festival and Madonna gets on. She was a judge then, and the
winner is Bill Blimpton. Mister Blimpton, please come up and get your prize,
and I go, I want to why am I not in you know?
And can getting a prize from on it? So that was a big
mistake. But yeah, that was that was. That film got me a
lot of commercials too, and I think I did a game, a computer
game with that, with that idea, that concept there. There's another movie
that has affected me a lot. And the first time I shot the first
time I saw it, I I think I may have just laughed so hard
that I missed like nine of the scenes. Then I could rewatch it your
I think it was two thousand and four, The Dog short film. Oh
yeah, yeah, guard Dog. Yeah that was too hard to five.
So I don't even remember where I was the first time I saw this.
But this movie, the shortest perfection, the attitude through it first. Where'd
the idea come from for that one? Well that's interesting because I live here
in Chelsea, New York, and there's a park about a block away that
I go running in to get healthy. And I was running around the park
and I saw this dog barking at a little bird, a cute little bird.
You know, why was the dog freaking out for the bird? And
then I went inside the dog's brain and realized that the dog was afraid that
the bird would attack his master and ruin his relationship, ruin his keeper,
ruin his home, you know, just ruin his life basically. So the
dog was extremely paranoid dog, which I think some dogs are. You know,
they barking and well, I don't know if your dog does that,
but absolutely when we had a dog when I was a kid that barked whenever
the garbage man came, or the mailman or the milkman came, he would
bark him and chase him. So I thought that was a funny idea to
make this dog totally paranoid of everything. And the lesson is the more paranoid
he gets, the more in endanger his master is. And that's what the
film is, with his master dying. And this film, I thought it
was kind of a throwaway film. I did it real quick. It was
the first film I did digitally. I didn't use a camera on it.
I did computer scanning on computer and compositive computer, and we screened it in
Maryland the Maryland Film Festival, and it was a bunch of other shorts in
fact, and the reaction I got I was not ready for that. It
was just people went nuts and they were screaming and yelling, and they all
ran up to me and said, I want to a stuffed all of the
dog. Do you have any mugs to the dog? You have any towels
I want? I got to have the dog. So he was really big
from the very beginning, and clever me. I thought, gee, maybe
I should do another one. I think I've done six or seven of them
now, and I'll probably do one next next year. Sometimes nice Well,
one thing I would love to touch on is how animation has changed since you
started doing it, and you just brought him that move to digital? Were
you Were you anxious about that move when you when you first made that.
Uh. I wasn't anxious because I always had people who worked for me that
knew all the specifics of you know, how to make it, all the
programs and that stuff. I was so happy, unlike Tarantino. I was
so happy that this happened because as an independent buying the film stock, getting
a camera, and getting the film processed and screened, and doing the soundtrack
on optical tracks. All these things were just so expensive. In the past,
I would spend about eighty percent of my budget on the technical side of
making a film. Now I spend about ten percent of my budget on the
technical side, and then all the rest of money can go into the artists
making the art. And that's the way it should be. It should be
that the more money goes to the artists than to the technical labs and stuff
like that. So I'm overjoyed by And then also I remember carting those big
reels you know, remember some big reels and cans you had to take to
the post office and ship ship them out and that was expensive too. Oh
yeah, So I'm really happy that we just send a digital file and you're
done. You know. It's an astonishing difference. Yeah, it really was
wonderful. The the cost difference alone, especially for people inspired by work like
yours before that was that was a giant barrier of entry. And now you
can basically do everything that that you need to at home, and I love
that. I love I can't do it myself, but my studio can can
facilitate my my my working on that. Well, speaking of the studio,
Plimp Tunes is huge. I mean, you've been doing stuff for for a
very long time. I'd love to hear about Slide. Could you? Could
you share with everybody what slide is? Yeah, I think I have some
artwork here. Let's see. I'm gonna get a good one for you.
This is a fun Uh. These are some of the cowboys, nice cowboys.
And then they're they're going to kill this woman who wants to sing a
song. Let me find her. Well, here's the stage. So as
you know, animation has been in stages. Uh's up again, all right,
And so these cowboys are up there on stage and they're going to kill
the woman. Who's who she is, who's singing the song. She's the
star of the film. Let's see. I want to get it. There
you go? Can you see it? Yeah? Wow? And so the
question is that she have guts to perform with the gun to her head or
not. And that's one of the questions of the film. It's it's real.
And you can see by this the two textures I do pen and ink
like this. Oh yeah, this yere is a pen and ink style,
and then I'd go in with a color pencil and I'll do that. So
it's a really unique style that you'll never see anybody else do because it's no
one enough to do that well. I mean, there's a lot of stuff
with the animation that you've kind of been like the harbinger for trying new things.
Yeah. No, Slide was influenced by my growing up in Oregon.
We lived in the woods and there was a lot of lumber mills around there,
you know, because there's a lot of forestry going on, and every
day these logging trucks would go by our house in the country, and I
just thought that would be a fun location to do a Western. I wanted
to do a Western that had Hank Williams music because something about Hank Wayne's music
and animation just fits together. It's really fun. And so I can't afford
the Hank Wayne's music obviously, but my writers Marie ba Keller and Hank Bones,
they can mimic that sound, the old old timey country Western music,
and that's what I wanted to do well, and you've been doing that for
years. The tune does that quite a few times, that's right. And
I have so many favorite parts on that. I love the blues No Knows
Blues is one of my favorites, the surfing song. I remember we were
recording the surfing song. It's called Dance All Day, and it was going
so well. We had the surfing guitar and everything, and we realized that
it was too short, and so Marine was there to sing. She was
singing, and I said, Marine, we need another verse. So she
sat down in five minutes and wrote another verse and it was funnier than any
of the others. I don't know how she does that. She really is
a genius. So she gets a lot of credit for this film. She
did a lot of the sound, she did a lot of the voices,
a lot of the music, and she was really an important part of this
baking of this film. Well. And she is in the hour long interview
with Dennis Bartalk from Deaf Crocodile on this highly recommend watching that. Uh,
the conversation is great between the four of you. Thank you Deaf Crocodile.
They're close friends of mine, and I got to hear how is it working
with them? Are they good people? We really enjoy it. We're very
excited about it. We I do have other films that we may also release
on DVD, so they're definitely somebody we want to keep in touch with in
the future. And you've, I mean a lot of that you've been doing
throughout the years. Has the has the physical media side of Plimpton's been important
to you that entire time because it's it seems like it really is. And
the media, the physical media being able to release the films and something we
can have a home and be able to watch it. I love I have
a big library of DVD's. I love DVDs there so great. And then
there you have all the extras, you know, the documentaries, interviews,
the voiceovers, that kind of stuff. So for me, it's it's really
an important part of you know, my releasing, getting the films out there.
Do you remember any of your favorite titles with some great extras on it,
like those interviews and documentaries. Yeah, I like some of the foreign
ones. Those are really cool. You know Ardman. Ardman does great animation.
I love their stuff, the Tim Burton films, Nightmare Before Christmas,
I mean that's fantastic. Yeah, so I love that's Mark Newland, one
of the great, great animators. He did Bamby Beats Gotzilla if you ever
saw that, and to me, that is the perfect animated film because he's
I think there's maybe twelve drawings in the whole film, and he spent five
hundred dollars to make it. He did it in a weekend, and it's
probably one of the most popular animated films ever made, and it's probably made
him over one hundred thousand dollars. And I went, oh my god,
I wish I could do that again. I do that. So Marvel was
a good buddy of mine, and I use his films as examples. I
mean he made other great films too, not just Bamby Meet Scott Zilla.
So he's one of my influences. I would also love to hear some thoughts
from you on modern animation because obviously, with such a unique, very very
personal, old school tangible design style that you have, how do you feel
about the polish that we're seeing an animation today? Well? I like it,
you know, if the story is good, I like it. Chris
Miller, who did a lot of the Lego movies, yeah, used to
work for me. He worked for me one summer and he was a college
kid I he was a sophomore or something like that, and I just thought
he was a guy who liked animation, But apparently he was really he's really,
really smart, very funny. I wish I could work with him at
some point, but that'll never happen. He's up in the stratosphere. He's
grown a little bit. Yeah, a big time now. But going back,
like to the earliest days, how difficult was it for you to start
getting your work into publications? Because I think the hard part nowadays for people
inspired by stuff like yours, A lot of those publications just don't exist anymore.
It's super difficult to compete. Like, what publications are you talking about?
Anything like magazines or newspapers or any of that. It's not even an
outlet anymore. Yeah, a lot of my illustrator friends are having a tough
time, and I feel bad for them because their work is brilliant. I
mean, it's really gorgeous stuff. So yeah, when I was doing it
in the seventies and eighties, illustration was big time. You know, you
can make a lot of money. Now it's very difficult. So I'm glad
I moved to an animation. Quite frankly, that was My initial goal was
to be an animator. It wasn't to be an illustrator. The only reason
I became an animator was because that or an illustrator. Rather, it was
because the animation business was dying. It was really it was Hanna Barbera,
and I hated Anna Barbera. I didn't think that was animation and that was
the only way to place to get a job. There was no really really
good openings for that. So I said, well, I'll be an illustrator
and maybe something will come along. And then in nineteen eighty seven, I
was contacted by a client of mine. I had done a brochure with her,
and she said, we have this song by Jules Sniper and we want
to make a music video out of it. And I said, yeah,
that's great, but I don't know how to do animation. And they said,
oh, we'll get someone to teach you. Her name was Connie de
Antonio, and she walked me through every step of making the film. And
that was my school. That was my animation school. And that film was
called Boomtown and it was kind of a semi hit. It got distribution all
across America and got some really good reviews. So that's when I said,
Okay, now I know how to do it. I'm going to make my
own film. And that was your Face, which changed everything. And your
face is so there's something so iconic about it. Looking back now, it's
so so interesting that that caught like it. It was everywhere, it seemed
like for a little wi. Yeah it was, and even today people are
making sort of variations on it. You know, they use their face and
do to digital weirdness to their face and sing that same song. And Homer
Simpson sang it too, he did your face cameo. So yeah, that
that stupid three minute film is successful. Looking back on when you were first
getting started, what is that first moment that you felt like, wow,
I'm making it. That's a good question because I distinctly remember that I had
finished your Face. For me, it was just an exercise. It really
wasn't supposed to be a film. It would just see how many ways I
could distort the human head. And someone told me I should enter it in
the a SIFA Awards, which is a organization of animators around the world.
There's different chapters, so I entered it in a SEFA. I went there
and it was a room of about forty people something like that, and I
was very nervous because it was a stupid film. There was no plot,
no editing, one character crudely drawn, who sings a very bad song.
Who's going to want to watch that? And after about four seconds the room
was in convulsed and laughter. It was It was just crazy. I've never
heard so many people laugh at one of my drawings before. And that's when
I realized that this was what I was born to do. And it just
was was like a drug. I was floating on air hearing this laughter.
I just could It was unreal. It was totally unreality, Like am I
in a fantasy right now? You know? This is too weird. And
then afterwards they all came by and said, are you Bill Plumden? Did
you make that film? Because nobody knew who it was? Of course,
yeah, that was me. And I said, well, let's go out
and have a drink and talk and I said, yeah, I feel like
I'm home now. This is this is why it should have been twenty years
earlier. That's so lovely to think about, too, that there's just this
supportive community for something like that. Yes, yes, it's not so well
organized. Now it's the SIFA in New York has sort of dissipated. They
don't have money or anything. But back then it was really a strong organization.
One thing that I've tried to really advocate for, especially over the last
couple of years, is I kind of touched on it earlier too, but
we don't see a lot of just plain respect given to shorts. And it's
somebody that your your life has been a lot of it has been shorts.
Yeah. Is there something in twenty twenty four that you think as a society
we should be doing to support shorts better? Well, I don't know.
You know, they used to have those tournay of animation and the Spike and
Mike used to play theaters art theaters all around the country and those are gone.
Now we have one small show show of shows that does that. But
their choices are a little more artsy, fartsy. I don't think they're very
commercial. But it's got to be on the internet. I mean that's where
people like Pez make it big. And you know, some of the other
independent filmmakers do very well on the internet. I I I show my films
on the internet. I don't get a lot of money but they do get
a lot of audience, right, So it's that's I think that's the future
right there. Patrick Smith does very well on the internet, so it's it's
I think that's the only thing I can think of it. I'm not a
real tech guy. I don't really know the programs and it's and the channels
and everything, but that's I still play on TV, especially in Europe.
I'm very popular in Europe. I still play TV there and in Asia,
you know, Japan and China and Korea. I do well there. So
I hope that it builds up. The fan base is definitely a strong one.
And I think Slide wasn't there a kickstorre campaign to help read for it?
Was that was that difficult to do well before? We made about eighty
thousand on it, which is a good start that lasts about half a year.
Slide has taken about seven years to make, unfortunately, but that's that's
because of COVID. I had to stop and do a lot of commercial jobs
to pay for the bills. So but you know, it's it's something I
don't do for the money, as you probably understand that seeing my word.
Unfortunately, Yeah, but the pleasure of seeing the audience enjoy it, and
drawing all day long. I get up at sometimes six in the morning,
go right to my drawing board and draw until ten. Then I come into
my studio and draw here all day, and then I go home and draw
till eight. So it's for me drawing as an addiction. Animation. Drawing
is an addiction, and it's a happy addiction. I'm not complaining. So
that's that's my life. That's beautiful. One thing I really wanted to end
this on too, is you've always done well to support other artists. You've
always done well to lift up other people. And I'd really love to hear
like just some some quick fire answers, like it the last piece of animation
or illustration that excited you, that's somebody else that's maybe new in the industry.
Yeah. Well, like I say, Joanna Quinn, it really does
beautiful work. She's an inspiration. She's a British animator and the people should
look her up. She's really brilliant. Of course, Marv Newland I talked
about him before. There's you know a lot of young people doing animation now
that is really exciting. And so I'm kind of old school, old style,
yeah, stuff, but people still like it. So that's I'm happy
about that. Is there a piece of your work that you feel like is
underrated You're surprised more people didn't attach to it. M well, yeah,
the film Hair High. I don't know if you ever saw it. Anyway,
I was complaining to Martha Plimpton and who's a relative of mine and a
bar she used to live in New York. We hung out and I said,
for some reason, my films just don't get distribution. You know,
they're they're they're independent, they're not they're not for kids, and I just
can't get distribution. And she said, you know, maybe you should have
some movie stars in there. So I said, yeah, that'd be great,
but I can't afford you know these movie stars, right, and so
she said, don't worry, I will I will get them, and bless
her heart, she was. She was very connected. She got David Carodine,
Keith Carradine, a lot of big name Sarah Silverman, Beverly to Angelo.
They are really top notch people. And I went out to LA and
recorded them and I actually had money then. I think I did a big,
a big program for a country network and so I didn't have money to
pay them and put it together, and it just flopped. And I think
it's one of my best films, hair High. It's really great music,
great humor, great style, real classical, sort of Donald Blues style,
and it just really flopped. And I think that's one of those films like
the Tune, that will be rediscovered and people say, geez, I really
liked it. How Come I didn't. I couldn't see it, you know,
how come I was movie theaters? And so that's the one disappointment I
had looking back on everything, and this will be the last thing I'll ask,
So I'll give your time back. What are you most proud of?
What piece of work is the one that you go, Man, I made
that, and I'm so ecstatic that that's my Yeah, well all my work,
I feel, you know, I really respect and feel happy that I
did it. I did do three live action films, and those were complete
flops, especially Jay Lyle, and I thought that was a cool film.
It's sort of David Lynch, kind of David Lynch meets Bonny Python kind of
film, and maybe it was too David Lynch. The Guns on the Clacamus,
which is live action I thought that was really a funny film. I
was surprised that one didn't get picked up. And then I did a film
called Hiller's Folly, and there was a very low budget digital film. I
think it costs about ten thousand dollars, and that one we couldn't we couldn't
really sell it because there was a lot of Mickey Mouse in there. Although
now Mickey Mouse is He's probably domain, so maybe I could release it now.
I never thought of that. Anyway. That's a pretty wacky film where
you know, we Hiller was wanted to be an artist, you know,
he wanted to be a painter, and he went to art school. He
wanted to go to art school, couldn't get in. What would happen if
when he went to art school he got turned onto animation and became an anime
and wanted to make the greatest animated film of all time. And Eva Braun
was the one who was mastering all the invasions and the military movements and things
like that. Well, and Hitler just wanted to make cartoons to make people
laugh. I thought that was a really absurd thing. But it gets a
few hits online. But you know, maybe now that Mickey Mouse is pubbly
domain. Maybe I can release it theatrically well, ideas like that, or
I've always been attached to your work and loved it. I've been a big
fan for years and everybody needs to go out and pick up this brand new
edition in tune. It is an astonishing release. And Bill, I just
want to say thank you so much for your time. And it's a dream
come true to be able to speak to you great well, thank you very
much. I appreciate it. Have a good Maybe I'll be a dad the
city soon. Yeah, well, I'll make it. Try to make that
contact the barbecue. Thank you for listening to the Disconnected podcast. There's one
big thing that you could do to help the show, and that is to
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