Courtesy Bill Plympton
There may not be a name more synonymous with hand-drawn animation than Bill Plympton, the mad genius behind such endearing and impressive animated films as The Tune, Idiots & Angels, Cheatin' and so many more. Plympton's career has been so prolific, in fact, that the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival honors him with a lifetime achievement award and a screening of his 2016 film created with writer/voice actor Jim Lujan, Revengeance. As lifelong Plympton fans, we reached out to hear more, tell him we love him and learn that those who attend the event can meet him afterwards for a free portrait drawn on the spot. Score!
What does it feel like to get a lifetime achievement award? Weird? exciting? Some combo?
Well, it's definitely exciting, and always a pleasure to get them. I've had a few before, and it's always a pleasure. In a sense, they want to make a big splash when I come out, so they say, 'Let's give him an award and get a big audience.' But [the festival] values my work, I think it's genuine. Filmmakers are very suspicious of people saying they love them and love all their work, because sometimes people just want to be friends with you.
It seems like Revengeance has a different look than we're used to from you.
Oh, absolutely. Let me go back: I've been going to San Diego Comic Con for 15, almost 20 years, and this guy keeps coming up and saying hi to me, Jim Lujan is his name; saying that he's a big fan, and he hands me a DVD of his work and I say that's nice, thank you. But I get a lot of DVDs, I don't have time to watch them all. About three years later, it was a rainy night in New York City with nothing to do, and I happened to spot one of his DVDs, and I was just stunned by his imagination and his writing talent. His stories are very similar to mine in terms of the crazy, dark humor, so I called him up and said I love his stuff. Then he wrote the film in about three months—he designed the characters, he did the voices, he did the music, which is amazing as it took a big load off my shoulders and I could just focus on the animation. There are about 40,000 drawings in there, however, we did color it on computer since to paint cells would take forever and be expensive. And y'know, I realized after going to a couple screenings that it's a stoner film. The characters are so twisted and bent, and it really pulls the film together—so I encourage the people of Santa Fe to take a few tokes before they head in.
Do you think hand-drawn animation still has a place and can continue to grow?
I think it's very viable. People are starting to get tired of the computer look, especially the really bad computer films—they're really amateurish. Maybe I'm speaking just for myself, but I love to see something animated by hand. It's like going to a museum and seeing a Degas or an NC Wyeth or someone like that. That to me is really wonderful to watch. I think in terms of money, the box office, Pixar and Dreamworks and Blue Sky will make a ton of money, but I think there's still a place. Not only that, but puppet animation like Tim Burton or Henry Selick, or painted cells like The Red Turtle, which was a beautiful film. And I'm doing a new feature film called Slide, a musical based on Hank Williams' kind of music—I can't afford his music—and it's Western, the kind of modern Western that takes place in the mountains of Oregon, where I'm from. Oh! And one thing I did want to mention, when I do my showing, it's my custom to meet with the audience afterwards and do a little drawing of them; I'll have little postcards. So tell people to hang out and get their free sketch!
