Bill_Plympton

MMMMM! I would love to do a graphic novel with Patton Oswalt.

I'm meeting with him next month to talk about this very subject.

And maybe it would turn into a film. Who knows?

More and more, my drawing time is work-related. But I still like to draw in front of the TV, draw the characters from movies, especially the ones I like, and on airplanes, and subways, I like to bring out the sketchbook and do sketches of strange-looking people. I think it's very important to keep the hand moving, and keep my sketching skills up to date.

Oooooooh. Oh, that's a tough one. There's so many great animators out there. I like Signe Baumane. I like Joanna Quinn. I like Peter Chung. I like Mike Smith.

I have an answer to that. It is MIND GAME. Which I think is the CITIZEN KANE of animation. By Masaaki Yuasa. But then also I loved HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, 1 and 2. I loved DUMBO. YELLOW SUBMARINE. I mean, there's so many great films... TOY STORY 3... I can come back to that one later too!

I can't leave it at one filmmaker. But certainly Quentin Tarantino is really, I love his stuff. The Coen Brothers, I love their work. Steve Soderbergh. James Cameron is a big hero of mine. Those are sort of the top ones, I think, that really turn me on. Terry Gilliam.

I believe that the digital revolution has changed it immensely.

Speaking for myself, before digital filmmaking, half of my budget went into the technical side of making films. Things like a rostrum camera, film stock, processing, interpositive, internegative, editing, optical soundtrack, etcetera, etcetera... NOW, I only spend 5% of my money for the technical side of filmmaking. SO that means that 45% of the budget extra goes to my art.

Which is how it should be.

PLUS, I don't have to lug around those giant 35 mm film prints. Which was a big pain.

Yes. Back in 1990, Disney sent a lawyer to my studio, and offered me a million dollars to join their company.

People say that negotiating with Disney is not so much "good cop / bad cop," but "Bad cop / Anti-Christ." And there's a certain truth to that.

For example, I asked if I could make my own short films on the weekends. They said "yes, that would be fine, but they would own the film."

I said "What if I told someone a funny story?"

Well, Disney owns that.

"What if I had a dream?"

Well, that's Disney's.

So it seemed like they wanted to control my soul, haha! So I reluctantly said no. And I say "reluctantly" because it was my boyhood dream to be a Disney animator. And they never told me what I was to work on. And I only found out LATER that they wanted me to animate the Genie in Aladdin.

It woulda been nice.

So I said no. But it was at this time that I was working on "The Tune," and I would've had to end production, and let go of my employees, and move out to Los Angeles. PLUS, I probably would've started drawing little naughty bits in the animation from boredom, after a couple of months.

So it's just as well that I stayed in New York.

No one's offered me a position. I don't know if it's because I keep telling the story, or they're just afraid I'm just some psycho-sexual wacko. I've never been offered another job in Hollywood.

Well, Ralph Bakshi is my godfather, because he pioneered so much of the grown-up animation that I'm doing today.

Fritz the Cat obviously - for all its faults, some of the drawing's not so good, some of the coloring's not so good - was a revolutionary film. And it made a TON of money. I liked the one, AMERICAN POP. Because it had music, it had such a great flavor for music, from my era, from the 60's and 70's. Those are 2 of my favorites. But he did so many great films, it's hard to choose.

Well, by "making a film," I assume live action is included in that.

The first day of J. LYLE, which is a live-action film I did, on this beautiful street in NYC, on a wonderful Sunday morning, I was setting up a shot and this naked transvestite walks on the set - he had nice heels, and a see-through negligee top.

And that was it.

And he claims that we're trespassing on his turf. He jumps in our costume van, and pulls out a long pair of scissors... kicks over the craft-services table, gets hot coffee and donuts all over our actors' costumes (and our actors, haha), and then he rushes towards me with the scissors, I grab a C-stand, I rush towards him, and we're in the middle of this New York street like Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in a sword fight.

I think he was high on crack.

I don't know why.

Anyway, he stabs me in my elbow, and the cops show up just in time, and they wrestle him to the ground, he stabs one of the cops, and they take him to prison, I think he was there for 2 years for this, and i look around at everybody, and I say "You know, this never happens when I'm drawing a film. I think I should switch back to animation."

Haha!

At the time it wasn't funny, but now, I laugh at it.

1.) Well, I studied pedal-steel guitar for a couple of years. And I LOVE pedal-steel guitar. It's such a cartoon like instrument. It's very sad, a very emotional instrument. But I really didn't have a good ear. And I was too busy drawing to devote more time to music. So I probably wouldn't have been too good at that. But other than that... I have no other real talents.

2.) I never smoked cigarettes... However, my mother smoked. She was a chainsmoker. And when she saw the film, she gave up smoking. And she lived to be 93 years old. So for that reason alone, I'm glad I made "25 Ways to Quit Smoking." By the way, that film was probably the most popular film I did for MTV. Because every country in the world - or almost every country in the world - played that film on MTV. And I was getting royalties for about 4,5 years from that film.

3.) Uh... quite frankly, I don't like pizza. But if I do have pizza, I like pineapple. The Hawaiian pizza.