Ca'Foscari Short Film Festival

There's a wonderful writer named Giannalberto Bendazzi - a number of years ago, he put out the definitive history of animation.  It's a comprehensive look at every country in the world, its animators and its films - to attempt something like that is crazy, but Mr. Bendazzi did it.  And now he has a new, revised edition of the book, all the chapters are updated, and it's now so big, it takes up three large volumes.

In any case, he felt so strongly about my films, he invited me to the 6th Annual Ca'Foscari Short Film Festival in Venice, Italy.  Now, this young festival doesn't have much money, but how could I say no to Venice and Mr. Bendazzi?

So, after landing in the Venice airport, I took one of those very cool water taxis (they look like those old 1930's Chris Craft runabouts) to my very old, very beautiful Hotel Palazzo Stern.  Everything was first class.  I had two students who were at my beck and call (whatever that means) to get me whatever I needed or escort me wherever I wanted to go. 

The festival is not strictly an animation festival, in fact, there were more live-action shorts than animated ones, and there were a lot of student films - so, needless to say, I spent a lot of time sightseeing.  My guides took me to the Lido, where 25 years ago I visited the Venice Film Festival.  I had a film screening there and amazingly, I don't remember a thing - was I drunk on Italian wine?  But I do remember the glorious beach.

I then visited the requisite tourist stop, San Marco (St. Mark's), which is very beautiful.  There is a wonderful difference between NYC's architecture and Venice's buildings - as I was riding in my water taxi along the Grand Canal, my eyes almost exploded because these Italian buildings had so many decorations, statues and faces.  Each building was a masterpiece of fantasy. 

If you walk down a NYC street, say, Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue, it's all boring glass and concrete.  Each building looks pretty much the same, and there's nothing to really catch your imagination.  If I were an architect, I'd put some fantastic designs, sculptures or large faces on those edifices.  Why not?  Money's no object for today's real-estate moguls, so why not build something that stands out and is actually fun to look at?

Everyone says that all of the people that live in Venice can't afford it, and are moving out, and soon the only industry there will be tourism.  In fact, it's becoming a sort of Italian Disney Land. 

The festival was put together by Maria Roberta Novielli. and she did a terrific job with very little money, but with a vibrant corps of volunteers from Venice's Ca'Foscari University. 

So if you have an animated short, or even a live-action one, please submit it to the Ca'Foscari Short Film Festival, and please try to go, it's a wonderful event!   I give the festival a B+.

--Bill Plympton

"The Brainwashing of My Dad"

I met Jennifer Senko in the early 70s at an art gallery opening at Pratt - and we've been friends and more since then.

It's interesting, because when I met her she was seriously into art and fashion, and I was heavily into politics - mostly because of my fear of being drafted into the Vietnam War. Over the years, we've retained our close relationship and we both moved into filmmaking, but while I concentrated on humor and entertainment, Jennifer went into politics.



The exciting news is that her latest film "The Brainwashing of my Dad" is opening up in the U.S. and it's a terrific film. In fact, long ago I met her dad and he was a great guy - then he started listening to talk radio, particularly Rush Limbaugh, and his politics swerved to a hard right wing position.




So Jen decided to make a documentary about her dad's drastic political transition, examining the huge influence Fox news and talk radios have had on the political direction of this country.

She interviews other people in the film who have had loved ones turn into political zombies - plus, there's a very educational examination on the history and the tricks used by right wing media to control the country.




I loved the film and I recommend that anyone who cares about America to talk to your friends and go see "The Brainwashing of My Dad", now in select theaters and available on Itunes.

Find out more here:
http://www.thebrainwashingofmydad.com/screenings

http://www.thebrainwashingofmydad.com/

Bill P.

Green Gravel Comedy Festival & Monstra Festival

I just got back from a round of traveling, only to find that March is half over already!  And I'm falling behind on blogging, while I'm trying to finish the animation for "Revengeance", so I think I'm going to have to double-up, and write about the last two festivals I went to.

In the first week of March, I flew out to Iowa City for the Green Gravel Comedy Festival, and Jim Lujan flew in from L.A. so we could present some footage from "Revengeance" together.  I arrived on Friday, March 4 and hosted a show of my own short films at the FilmScene Theater, and then on Saturday Jim and I talked about the new film at the University of Iowa. 

The crowds were great, people stood in line after to get signed sketches from me, meanwhile Jim got to go to a show hosted by Rachel Bloom!

As soon as I got back to New York, I had to fly to Lisbon, Portugal for the Monstra Animation Festival.  Now that Salma Hayek and Roger Allers' feature "The Prophet" is being released internationally, I've found that some festivals want me to come and introduce the film, and the Monstra Festival was one of those places.

But I felt that if I was going to take a long flight to Portugal, I should do more than just introduce a movie, so I suggested a couple of other events.  I offered to host a Master Class and then I wanted to show parts of "Revengeance" as a work-in-progress.  The festival organizers liked those ideas, and made some room on their schedule for those events.   So BAM!, I was on my way to the Iberian peninsula.

I had been to Monstra before, the director of the festival, Fernando Galrito, invited me about 7 years ago to present "Idiots & Angels" (if my memory is right) and I had a blast.  So, those wonderful memories brought me back.  And, truthfully, it's one of my favorite destinations - the beautiful baroque architecture and decorative tile buildings are such a joy to behold.  Also, I loved swimming on the beach and eating fresh cooked fish in the sun, then going back into the water.

But the coolest aspect of the Monstra Festival was the terrific audience. They're quite knowledgeable about animation and they love to laugh.  For those reasons, I give the Monstra Festival an "A" - be sure to send your film there! 

--Bill Plympton

Another "Revengeance" update

Hey, it's Wendy, Bill Plympton is away at a festival but he asked me to post an update on his new feature.  

The production team is working very hard to finish up the coloring for "Revengeance". Each scene in the film has a distinct mood, so the color design is crucial for communicating that.

We recently finished coloring a flashback sequence in the film, and Bill wanted an aged look to the visuals. So, as you can see, the colors here are quite different from the rest of the film. Where the rest of the film is very saturated and colorful, the flashback sequence is more nuanced and monochromatic.

Here are a few stills from the flashback sequence, where our main character Lana recounts her childhood with the Inland Emperors (the biker gang at the center of "Revengeance"):

Stay tuned for the film's release!

Ford - "The Importance of Paying Attention"

I've been buddies with J.J. Sedelmaier for a long time, he's been one of the stars of NYC animation for years.  Also, parenthetically, his father is the famous Joe Sedelmaier, who did some of the funniest and most famous commercials of the last 50 years.  (Remember those FedEx commercials with the guy who talked really fast?  And who can forget Wendy's "Where's the Beef" campaign?)

J.J. called me a few months ago to do a short spot for Ford Motor Company, it's a campaign to promote safe driving, how there should be no distractions while you drive.  In other words, our mission was to create the most wacky, far-fetched examples of drivers losing their concentration when behind the wheel.

The other two artists involved were Al Jaffee, the famous MAD magazine cartoonist, and the great M.K. Brown.  I've been a fan of M.K.'s cartoons since the old National Lampoon days, and she was also married to one of the great cartoonists of all time, B. Kliban.

My story was about a woman who, after discovering a mark on her teeth, proceeds to pull a dentist's drill out of her glove compartment and performs a delicate oral surgery operation on her teeth while she's driving at 80 mph.  You know, of course, that it's going to end badly - and it does.

However, even though they asked us to go crazy with our imagination, they forbid me to use a scream as her teeth fly out of her mouth when she hits a pothole - so I had to change the sound to something like "Ouch" or "Oh, dear!"  It doesn't have the same impact as a woman screaming - it's just not as funny, but I gess they were afraid of dentists calling in to complain about the gratuitous violence.

In any case, the three spots are very funny.  Please check them out on line here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL0I1P1VLMI&feature=youtu.be&list=PLCFM1h5Oz66gOeyMczRt-_-5E2UgiKbCh

Trip to L.A. and Santa Barbara

A couple of events were set to occur in L.A. and they seemed to coincide, so I decided to make the trip out to the West Coast and also catch up with some friends.  My office manager straightened out my frequent flyer accounts and came up with a bunch of miles, so he got me a free plane fare there and back. 

One event was the screening of "The Loneliest Stoplight" at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.  I've heard great things about this festival over the years - since it's essentially the last big festival before the Oscars, and close to L.A., a lot of Hollywood celebrities appear there to promote their projects.

They put me up in the luxurious Fess Parker hotel on the beach - I thought I'd take a nice swim in the ocean, just across the street from my hotel and as I was basking in the 90-degree sun, feeling the good California paradise vibe, for some reason a lunatic on a bike started swearing at me, then threatened me.  Whoa!  That was weird - did this guy follow me from NYC?  He seemed so out of place in such a mellow environment.  I had to run back to my room to escape from this psycho!

Tuesday night (Feb. 9) was the first screening of my film in the shorts program.  There was a packed audience, but what I hadn't realized was that Santa Barbara is basically a retirement village, like Palm Springs.  So my audience consisted mostly of older folks, definitely not my kind of crowd.  But since my newest short is probably the most innocent of all my movies, it got a good reaction. 

Earlier that afternoon, I had met with the "Simpsons" creative crew at Sony Studios to do a sound edit on my latest couch gag for the long-running animated series.  Of course, they were very professional and had the job done in one hour, leaving me plenty of time to drive to Santa Barbara.  I love that.

                                       Showing Jim Lujan the new "couch gag" for a certain
                                           FOX animated series.  OK, it's "The Simpsons". 

The new gag is about some hanky-panky between a couch and the TV - you can see it on FOX possibly as early as March 6 - so check it out! 

It was a bit of a weird trip, because I started in L.A. and then drove up to Santa Barbara, then back to L.A.  And the festival only covered one night of hotel, so I stayed in four different hotel rooms in four days, my office manager nearly went crazy setting all that up. 

                                            With Rick Farmiloe and Christi Haydon in L.A.

When I got back to L.A. I hung out with my buddies Rick Farmiloe, PES, Sarah Phelps, Biljana Labovic (my old producer) and then I had a session with the great Jim Lujan to go through a very rough cut of "Revengeance".  We're now in a fun part of the process - sound, music, voices, coloring and animation are all coming together, and we're starting to get a sense of how the film is going to look.  It's so exciting - and soon you'll be able to check it out.

                                           With Jim Lujan and Ken Mora in old-school B&W

                                                  With PES on the beach in Santa Monica

                                                   With Biljana Labovic and Sarah Phelps

--Bill Plympton

VOID - International Animation Festival, Copenhagen

About a year and a half ago, I was contacted by the Cinemateket (Film Institute) in Copenhagen about doing a retrospective in 35mm of my best features and shorts.  But at the time, I was in the middle of donating all of my 35mm prints to the Eastman House in Rochester, NY to set up an archive there.  So the timing just wasn't right.

About four months ago, the retrospective seemed back on, but the Cinemateket had trouble getting the 35mm prints from the Eastman House.  The Academy in L.A. has all of my negatives now, and ultimately we'll be making new digital copies from restored negatives, but it's sort of a slow process. 
We've got digital copies of my newer features like "Cheatin'", but not the older ones. 

So the major problem for the Cinemateket was locating good quality 35mm film prints.  The Academy had created a new 35mm print from the restored negative of my film "The Tune", but that's just one of my older animated features. 

So, my office manager recommended that they contact E.D. Distribution, my French distributor, and they came to the rescue with their collection of 35mm prints of my movies.  Vive la France!

I've been to Copenhagen before, about 15 years ago when I did a master class at the Viborg Film and Animation School - so it was nice to return.  The Cinemateket is very modern and expertly run - plus I had good crowds for all of my films.

                                          Giving a master class at the Danish Film Institute

But the really terrific thing about my screenings was that they were part of a larger festival called VOID, which was a weeklong screening of animation for adults.  What a great idea, why can't someone in the U.S. do something like that?  They had sold-out audiences - so it's clearly what the public wants.

I hope, with the success of festivals like VOID, that other cities will being showing animation that's not just for kids.  So, if you have an animated film that's for adults, please send it to VOID.  I give VOID an A+ !

--Bill Plympton

Robert Valley's new film

I've been a fan of Robert Valley ever since I saw his stuff at the San Diego Comic-Con 10 years ago.  Since then, I've met the man himself, and he's a super nice guy.

I just found out he has a Kickstarter campaign for his new short film, "Pear Cider and Cigarettes", and the artwork is friggin' amazing. 

Nobody draws women as sexy as he does - and his art style is beyond brilliant.  I'm going to donate to his campaign, and I encourage you to do the same.  This guy is a genius!  Please check out his work.

You can find the campaign at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/395550245/pear-cider-and-cigarettes-the-animated-movie

--Bill Plympton

Society of Illustrators

When I first moved to New York City, back in 1970, one of my holiest of shrines was the 100-year-old Society of Illustrators - there I could see all of my heroes: A.B. Frost, Winsor McCay, N.C. Wyeth, Milton Glaser, Norman Rockwell and others.

As my career moved from illustration to animation, I discovered that the great Society of Illustrators' annual show included what they called "sequential art", and that included animation.

So, for the past few years, I've been able to enter the prestigious Society's Annual Exhibition with my cartoons.  Well, this year my film "The Loneliest Stoplight" won the very rare gold prize - and of course I attended the packed awards ceremony. (I had to wait in a long line to enter...)

I gave a very short but heartfelt speech, then we all retired upstairs for food and drink.  It was there I got to hang out with my contemporaries - Victor Juhasz, Tim O'Brien, Anelle Miller (the director of the Society), Joe Ciardiello, and John Cuneo.  What a fun night!

I'm so happy that the Society recognizes good art in animation.  I've always felt that my success as an animator is due in large part to my 15 years spent as an illustrator.

Thank you, Society of Illustrators!

--Bill P.

                               At the party following the Society of Illustrators awards, with
                              Tim O'Brien, John Cuneo and my producer, Wendy Cong Zhao

"Revengeance" update

After three months of working on commercial jobs in order to pay some bills, I'm finally able to concentrate on completing the artwork and animation for my next feature film, "Revengeance". 

From an excellent script by my buddy Jim Lujan, the film has been in production at my studio for almost two years now.  And as I'm nearing completion, I feel I'm really getting a grasp of the story and characters.  In fact, at this point, I'm using the light box less and less, and just drawing freehand. 

It's almost experimental how I'm distorting and bending the characters.  And that's what makes it so much fun.  It's like jazz - I'm free-flowing the animation straight from my imagination. 

I'm about 2/3 of the way through the script, and I figure I have about 300 shots left to draw.  If I can animate 7 shots a day, I'll be able to finish the animation by the end of February, and hopefully have something to show the festivals by June. 

Keep your fingers crossed -

Here's some sample art from the film, I hope you enjoy it.  Please send me your comments.

--Bill P.

Animation Respect

I usually don't reprint press articles, but I found this one in Hollywood Reporter in December and I thought it was particularly interesting. 

However, two points Tim Gray failed to bring up are the extreme prejudice against animation that deals with adult topics, and secondly, why should animation be relegated to its status as a minor art form when the year's Top 10 box office grossers usually includes 3 or 4 animated features?

It seems like audiences have no problem loving animation, while the Hollywood establishment just doesn't get it. 

Anyway, please let me know what you think of this article.  Thanks!

--Bill

The Hateful Eight

As most of you know, I've been a fan and friend of Mr. Quentin Tarantino for a long time - since he screened "Reservoir Dogs" at Sundance.  I got a special invitation to see "The Hateful Eight" in 70mm at the huge Ziegfeld Theatre in NYC. 

As you would expect, it was a packed house and an excited crowd, there to see Quentin introduce the cast (all except Samuel L. Jackson), and Quentin's one of the best introducers in the business.

The film opened with a still piece of art of a stagecoach, set against the Rocky Mountains, as 10 minutes of Ennio Morricone music played.  Then the film began - it starts off pretty slow, with lots of dialogue as the various characters are introduced to the story.

I could have done without a lot of the extra exposition - let's get to the anticipated conflict!

Finally, all of the Hateful Eight were assembled in the haberdashery and the bloody standoff was put into motion.  And what a bloody standoff is was - heads exploded, hands were blown off, testicles were eviscerated and bodies were hung.  And it's all done with a dose of Tarantino black humor, it's wonderful -

My only suggestion would be to cut a lot of the early redundant dialogue and bring it down from a three-hour epic to a more manageable two hours.

Somehow, I didn't mind a film like "The Revenant" being three hours long, I wasn't bored for the entire length of that film. 

I'm happy, though, to give "The Hateful Eight" an "A-" - it's vintage Tarantino.

--Bill P.

Santa Fe de la Antioquia, Colombia

Alexy Budovsky is a great Russian animator and a good friend, and he stopped by my studio a few months ago to give me an update on his life and travels. It seems he's now married to a Colombian woman and living in Bogota.

I asked him how life was there, and he said it's fantastic!  The weather's perfect and they have all different types of landscape - desert, rainforest, beautiful plains, snow-peaked mountains, and beaches that are to die for - well, that sold me.

So when I recently got invited to a festival in Santa Fe de la Antioquia, Colombia, I said, "Sign me up!"  The festival is small but it's been around for 15 years, and Santa Fe is also small, but very quaint.  It's an old, colonial city with charming cobblestones and horses and weird scooter-taxis in the streets. 

The Festicine Antioquia opened with a screening of "Cheatin'" in the town center.  Apparently they neglected to check the film for adult material first, so all the kids in the audience got a great education on human anatomy. 

But the screening started late, because a few of the dignitaries were still preparing for the event.  So instead of waiting for them to show up, I introduced the film one hour before the delayed screening started.  (I'd been up since 4 am and I was dead tired.)

It seems that in Colombia, people don't put much meaning to what the clock says - and that was a theme throughout my stay.  My master class the next day was well-attended, but again, it started late.

They put me up in a fabulous colonial hotel with a beautiful tropical pool, where I swam to the sounds of Bing Crosby's "White Christmas".  Weird.

Unfortunately for me, it's a big party town, and every night is like Mardi Gras - so I had a big problem catching up on my sleep. 

On my trip back to the airport, I had time to stop off in Medellin, to visit the Museum de Antioquia.  Since the great painter Fernando Botero grew up there, they are the repository of a large collection of his work - pencil art, sketches, sculptures, and of course his fantastic paintings. 

I've been a big fan of Botero's work since college, and I was surprised to learn that he's still alive, and painting in Italy.  I think he fled Colombia when Pablo Escobar sort of took over the country.  In fact, there's a wonderful painting of the death of the infamous drug lord included in the show.

Medellin once had a reputation for being a lawless city of 3 million, but since the death of Escobar, it's become much safer - though still a little rough around the edges.  They said I shouldn't walk around alone because I looked like such a "gringo".

Anyway, I give the festival an "A" because I had such a great time, despite the late starting times.

--Bill P.