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. 

Holiday offer from the Plymptoons store

Things don't always go as planned. We released my latest animated feature, "CHEATIN'"  on Blu-Ray, and we made an initial run of discs to sell at San Diego Comic-Con.  Then I had plane troubles and I missed the first day of the convention, so we didn't sell as many as we could have.  Then New York Comic-Con came around, and I accidentally scheduled myself to be in Argentina at the same time - so we didn't sell very many of them there, either.

Bottom line - I've got a stack of boxes full of Blu-Rays here in the studio, and my office manager says I'll have a "Blu" Christmas if I don't start selling some of them.  So I lowered the price for the holidays to try to increase sales.  From now until the end of the year, you can get the Blu-Ray from my web-site for $20 instead of $25 - that's 20% off!

As an incentive, I'll include with every Blu-Ray a signed copy of my annual Christmas card, featuring a very irreverent holiday tale about some very unlucky carolers.  This is the card I send out to all my friends and family - I've done this for many years, and this is the first time I've made this offer to customers, too. 

Some people may remember that I did a Christmas special for Cartoon Network some years ago, it was called "12 Tiny Christmas Tales".  Those little animated stories started out as my Christmas cards, I adapted them into that TV special, and Maureen McElheron composed some great music for the show, like the rockabilly "Plucky Present", "Cecil the Snowman", and the beautiful "Remember Christmas". 

So if you want some extra Christmas fun, please consider my DVD called "Bill Plympton's Dog Days", because we included the "12 Tiny Christmas Tales" show as a special bonus on that DVD.  It's not listed on the box, you have to play the DVD and look for it in the "extras" section.  But it's there, and I hope you enjoy finding it.  My short film "Santa, the Fascist Years" is also on that DVD, so you get two films about Christmas!

http://www.plymptoonstore.com/dvdsbluray/cheatin-blu-ray

http://www.plymptoonstore.com/dvdsbluray/compilation-dvds/dog-days-dvd

--Bill Plympton

"Trumbo"

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been running a lot of movie reviews, because it's getting close to the end of the year and every studio is in a rush to get their films out on the screen to be eligible for the upcoming awards season.  As a member of the Academy, I've been invited to so many screenings, luncheons, dinners, and tea parties it's starting to seem excessive. 

Jay Roach's new film "Trumbo", starring Bryan Cranston, is a well-made, well-acted historical retelling of Dalton Trumbo's survival of the infamous Hollywood blacklist from the 1940's and 50's.  However, it's pure propaganda.  Even though Mr. Trumbo was a great writer ("Spartacus", "Roman Holiday"), he was a member of the Communist Party, and in the film we never see any Communist meetings or rallies, or Russian agents, and very little mention of Stalin.

The film bases its philosophy on freedom of speech issues, not Communism itself.  However, if Mr. Trumbo had lived in Russia, a country he loved and aspired to and had mentioned freedom of speech, he would have had a bullet in his brain within weeks.

It's my feeling that there were only two reasons that Americans at the time became Communist Party members.  The first was that they were uninformed and naive (which is ironic because they labelled themselves as intellectuals), or the other was that they wholeheartedly supported Josef Stalin and his mass murders.

Someone told me that during Stalin's regime, there was no press about his mass murders, or about the true situation in the Soviet Union.  However, many U.S. papers covered the terrible Stalin-enforced famine in Ukraine (in the early 1930's) that killed a large percentage of the farmers there through starvation.  In fact, when the Nazis invaded Eastern Europe, the Germans were treated as liberators by the Russians and Ukrainians.

And then there were the infamous Purge trials of 1936-38, which were widely reported on in the NY Times and other international papers.  Check out Robert Conquest's informative book "The Great Terror" for more details. 

Another good example is the great 1939 Hollywood film "Ninotchka", directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Greta Garbo, where they bring up the terrible political situation in the Soviet Union many times - the purges, the assassinations and the Siberian gulags.

Another issue with "Trumbo" is that they talk about the tragedy of people being out of work, families falling apart, and even suicides because of the blacklist.  Why didn't these talented writers move to New York, where there was plenty of work for them in TV, magazines, books and theater, and no one really cared about the blacklist?  A lot of writers and directors did move to Europe during this time, where Communism was much more popular and accepted. 

I would have loved to see an explanation for why Mr. Trumbo became a Communist, what he thought of the German-Russian Pact, and why he never renounced Communism, once it began to enslave Eastern Europeans after the war. 

Because of the recent fall of Communism, a lot of the correspondence and writings of Stalin have come to light, and it's been revealed that the courageous Americans who joined the famous Lincoln Brigade to fight fascism in Spain would have all been liquidated after the Communists had won the Spanish Civil War.  Fortunately for the Lincoln Brigade, Franco was victorious there.

The film "Trumbo" makes its issues about artistic freedom and the First Amendment - when it should really be about the evils of Stalin and Communism.  I wonder what all the Communist sympathizers would feel about the blacklist if, instead of Trumbo being labelled a Commie, he was, say, revealed to be a member of the Nazi Party. 

Please let me know what you think of my scandalous comments.  I give "Trumbo" a "C-".

--Bill Plympton

"Beasts of No Nation"

As I was attending the Telluride Festival in September, one of the hot tickets there was "Beasts of No Nation", directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga.  It's a film about young boys in central African countries being recruited to fight in their rampant civil wars.

Now, this is not the kind of film I'm usually going to rush out and watch.  I prefer wacky comedies, so this subject matter was at the opposite end of my usual entertainment spectrum.

However, I'm glad I saw it - first of all, it is very well made, almost like a documentary.  All the acting, by a mostly amateur cast, is superb.  What realistic performances!

But, similar to the story from "Room", it focuses on a young boy forced into a very dangerous situation by events that are beyond his control.  So you empathize with his terrible situation, as this young black boy is recruited by a rebel colonel and forced to take drugs and murder people. 

Even though it does have a relatively happy ending, the experiences of this young, 11-year old kid create a total horror show.  I hope it gets recognition as the Oscars.  I give it an "A".

--Bill Plympton

"Room"

One of the most talked-about films from the Telluride Festival is a kidnapping film called "Room".  But please, don't confuse it with the "so bad, it's camp" film called "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau.  The two films are at opposite ends of the scale.

"Room" is directed by Lenny Abrahamson and stars the great Brie Larson as a girl kidnapped at the age of 16 and used as a sex slave.  Her son, played by Jacob Tremblay, is fathered by the kidnapper - it's one of the most powerful and haunting films of the year.

The mother and son are isolated in the kidnapper's shed, where they set up a home in a 10 ft. by 10 ft. room, with only a small skylight for any connection to the outside world.  They also have an old TV set and the young boy assumes that everything he sees on the TV is not real. It's all make-believe to him, since he was born in the shelter and knows nothing about real life.

The film does not deal with graphic sex or violence - the horror is more of a psychological nature.  How cruel it is that this mother and son are forced to live in captivity and have such a minimal life experience.

The film begins when the young boy turns five, and it is at this stage that the mother tells him exactly what happened six years ago.  They then plan an escape, so about halfway through the film, the boy is able to get free and get help. 

The second half of the film deals with them confronting the real world and handling the media.  Just because they've escaped the horror chamber, that doesn't mean that their pain is over.  There are a lot of terrible after-effects from their terrible ordeal.  And the small boy even misses his time in slavery.

The screenplay by Emma Donoghue is so well written and wrenching, it deserves an Oscar.  And the acting by everyone, especially the young boy, is amazing. 

If you get a chance, please go out and see "Room".  I give it an "A". 

--Bill Plympton

"Revengeance" update

Dear readers,

Even though I've been swamped with commercial work lately, I still have to find time to continue production of my next feature film, "Revengeance". 

As most of you know already, it's a fabulous dark story, written by the great Jim Lujan, he's also doing the character design and a lot of the voices.  I'm producing the animation for the film, and I'm having a ball.

Jim's characters are so compelling and fascinating that it's a shame some of them are on-screen for short periods and then gone so quickly.  Jim has a real talent for observation and design.

In any case, I wanted to show you some of the recent work that's been done for the film.  I'm about 2/3 of the way through the script, and barring any major interruption, I'm hoping to finish the animation in the late winter or early spring of 2016.  I'll be posting occasional updates here in the blog, showing off new designs and animation.

I hope you like the new stuff -

Bill Plympton

"Last Days of Coney Island"

As most of you may know, Ralph Bakshi is one of my heroes.  He really pioneered the whole adult animation genre - I wouldn't be making the films that I make without the influence of Mr. Bakshi.

I'm a big fan of his work, especially his music-based films like "American Pop". 

Well, now he has a new short online, called "Last Days of Coney Island" and I know he's been working on this film for a long time.

I just saw it this morning, and was totally seduced by his great artwork.  The drawing is very loose and stylized, and the backgrounds are powerful collages of Coney Island imagery. 

He could have done without the multiple views of Kennedy's death, and the story could be a bit more coherent.

But his style of filmmaking is unique and so personal that I totally got sucked into this visuals.  I think you will, too.  Check it out at:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/lastdaysofconeyisland

--Bill Plympton