Monday, August 29, 2016

Sausage Party

As most of you probably know, my long battles to get distribution for my animated features are all caused by an old mind-set, that there's no audience for adult animation.

With that in mind, I was looking forward to seeing if Seth Rogen's new feature, "Sausage Party", was any good, and also to see if it could attract an audience.


So, last week I attended an afternoon screening of this adult film at my local multiplex.  I was happy to see a large crowd - but I was especially delighted to experience the totally entertaining and raunchy film, directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon.

The film is a wildly erotic and profane look at the lives of food products in a supermarket.  It portrays the sexual and romantic lives of these edibles in a very hilarious way.  And, believe it or not, it works.

The people in my audience were in constant hysterics.


And you can see the film's popularity in the box office reports - not since Ralph Bakshi's "Fritz the Cat" in 1972 has an "adult" cartoon done so well at the box office - and becaues of the failure of a lot of Ralph's later films, the consensus over the years came to be that animated films with mature subject matter just have no audience.

I thoroughly disagree with that belief.  I just believe that the stories, art and characters have to be made better.  I know that a lot of people are just like me, they grew up loving animation and now that they're adults, they still want to see animation, but with stories and characters that speak to them.

A great example is the "Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation" show, which still pulls in great crowds, and has been doing that for 30 years.  People love outrageous animation.

I realize that Hollywood doesn't understand animation at all, but now I hope they have a better appreciation of the marketing potential of cartoons for adults.


I give "Sausage Party" a B+ (I took off points for the cheezy animation)  But go grab your (adult) friends and go see Seth Rogen's "Sausage Party"! 

Bill Plympton

                                     with Seth Rogen at the Telluride Film Festival last year!

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