"If I'm Not Having Fun, I Drop it": An Interview with Bill Plympton, Mutant Aliens

by Scott Thill

When Bill Plympton's haunting animated short, "Your Face", garnered an Oscar nomination in 1988, it was the beginning of a career featuring confluences as strange as those featured in his ensuing films. Corporate vultures, advertising revenues, smoking addicts, amorous lovers, a resolute independence, reality-based funding -- all would keep Plympton's strange tales of multinationals, superheroes and sex fiends afloat for the next fifteen years. Sure, he authored commercials for Geico and Trivial Pursuit, and his notorious "Plymptoons" helped make MTV's Liquid Television worth watching, but he also drew entire animated films by himself, and most of them -- most notably the very horny I Married a Strange Person -- were too hot to handle for the usual toon contingent. Case in point? His most recent film, Mutant Aliens -- a strange tale of a brilliant astronaut who's shafted by his government, only to land on a planet ruled by a queen nose and, with her help, form a band of aliens out for some serious payback -- barely registered a blip on the radar when it came out in 2002, although it did nab a Grand Prix in Annecy. But that's what the DVD market -- and indie business -- is all about, as Bill explains later in this interview. There's always a second time around, especially for a sharp social critic and talented artist with a penchant for government corruption, animated sex, and the genius under duress.Especially if you own everything you've ever created.

Scott Thill: Much of Mutant Aliens' comedy seems to revolve around the human body.
Bill Plympton: From the beginning I've always found humor in the human body, so it's natural for me to use it. Also, I don't have the kind of money to spend on special effects and stuff. I find the human body is much easier for me to draw. If I had millions of dollars, then maybe I could afford to do these epic films, but I have to keep the humor intimate.

ST: Even if you had the million dollars, would there still be something attractive about taking these body parts and still making them central?
BP: Yeah, I always find humor in the human face and body, simply because the key to my humor is taking the cliché and adding a twist to it, doing something bizarre or surprising to it. And the human body and face are probably the ultimate clichés, so I think I'll always be using them.

ST: Isn't that the operational mode of surrealism, taking something familiar and defamiliarizing it?
BP: Absolutely. Put two dissimilar parts together and make them look like they belong together when they really don't. That's surrealism!

ST: Is there a sense that the body itself is not necessarily always together, not always in control?
BP: Yeah, that's definitely true. There are certain emotions that we can't control, certain hormones, needs and desires that we wish we didn't have. I think there is a lot of humor there. That's why the films How to Kiss and 25 Ways to Quit Smoking were so successful. These are obsessions people have that they can't really control, and that's where the humor comes in.

ST: I read that you grew up in Portland, where so many other cool artists, like Sleater-Kinney, have come from. Is there something in the water there?
BP:Yeah, it's the rain, definitely the rain. I think people in Portland have a skewered view of the world, because it does weird things to you. It's just so dark and depressing in the winter; you have to stay inside and amuse yourself, and that's what I did. I was always drawing to amuse myself. It's the darkness. It's dark there a lot.

ST: How do you balance the demands of your work versus the corporate demands from some of your advertisers?
BP: Well, I'm happy to do advertising and I need to do advertising. It's fun, it's easy, and I can do it very quickly. The money is excellent, and it's seen by a lot of people. In fact, my parents were very proud of the Geico spots I did a couple years ago. They said, "Oh, our son's big-time. He's got a Geico spot!" So I have no problem doing advertising. I used to try to inject my own ideas, but I realized very quickly that they don't want to hear that. They just want their ideas done, and it's just easier for me to just make them happy.

ST: Has Geico or anyone else ever seen some of your racier stuff and said, "Hey wait a minute, what did we get ourselves into here?"
BP: Yeah, they know I do these sex cartoons and that doesn't seem to really bother them. They like the style. It's a little dark, but that's popular right now.

ST: Did you ever have an arrangement that bottomed out because someone saw your sexier stuff and said, "I don't think we can go with this."
BP: Not that I know of. I've had a couple of commercials censored but that wasn't anything that I did. That was stuff; it was their storyboard and I just executed it the way they wanted it.

ST: You said that when you were coming out of college, animation was more or less dead, except for guys like Ralph Bakshi. Now it's become one of global culture's most compelling formats. Who are the animators working today that you like?
BP: Well, I think Miyazake is a brilliant animator. I love his stuff. I love Peter Chung; I think he's brilliant too. Nick Park, of course, is totally hilarious.

ST: Have you ever had a chance to talk to Miyazake?
BP: No, I visited his studio but he was involved in Spirited Away, so he really didn't have time to chat. He doesn't speak English either, so it probably would've been a waste of time! I met him once, but just shook his hand and that was it.

ST: Do you ever get young animators coming to you for advice?
BP: Yeah, all the time. That's the problem -- I get all these letters, emails and phone calls and I can't get any work done. I need privacy to get work done, and I feel bad but it's not just me. Everybody has that problem. You have to make a decision whether you're going to spend time talking to the people or working on the films.

ST: Whenever you get a chance to give them tips, what do you usually tell them?
BP: I generally tell them to draw all the time. Keep drawing. Make a short film and send it to the festivals. Try to make it inexpensive, try to make it funny and just draw constantly.

ST: There's a serious explosion in computer animation. How does that stuff sit with you?
BP: Oh, I like it, especially if the story is good. But visually, I much prefer hand-drawn animation. I just think it's warmer; it feels more comfortable for me anyway, but I can't complain. Those films are huge, huge hits and I can barely break a million dollars.

ST: You've said that adult animation is the next frontier. Where do you see it heading and how do you think the themes of sex and sexuality will play out?
BP: Well, my hope is that it does become more popular. I think that everybody loves seeing and laughing about sex. I mean, look at American Pie; that was a huge hit and I think it can be even funnier in animation since there's no real limitations in terms of what you can imagine and show. I'm hoping that animation will have much further penetration -- strange word! -- into the American public. I think the audience is there; they just aren't used to it.

ST: You do everything yourself. I can't imagine the kind of time, concentration and work required to draw an entire feature-length film alone.
BP: Oh, it goes pretty fast. If I can do a minute of animation a day, which some days I can, that should fill up three months. But it's hard to get that kind of concentration with the phone calls, email requests, signing contracts and all that. There are always interruptions.

ST: How do you prepare for the animation process? Do you have a general thematic layout of what you want and draw that, or does it just kind of happen on the table?
BP: Well, if you look at the Mutant Aliens book, you get a good idea of how it works. What I basically do is storyboard it as a graphic novel. Then I actually put the book over my drawing board and go page by page, drawing each scene. It was fairly chronological the way I did it.

ST: Weren't some of your other shorts also books before you put them together on film?
BP: Well, they were ideas for books that never happened. How to Kiss was supposed to be a romance book -- that never happened. 25 Ways to Quit Smoking was supposed to be a cartoon book of 101 Ways to Quit Smoking.

ST: The lesson being that there is no such thing as an idea that doesn't work; you just haven't found the right place for it yet?
BP: Exactly. That's a very good point.

ST: Looking back on your work, which films, shorts or ads do you feel the fondest about?
BP: Well, I think The Tune was a lot of fun, as was Eat. Mutant Aliens was a lot of fun, and that's the whole point. You have to enjoy what you're doing. If I'm not having fun, I drop it and do something enjoyable. I think other filmmakers should be aware of that. Just the idea that it's enjoyable doing it makes it worthwhile -- even if you don't make a lot of money on it. It's still an adventure.

ST: As much as money has always been an issue for you, you've built a body of work with its own style and vision by funding with commercials or your own money. What are the lessons you've learned going that route?
BP: I tell a lot of young filmmakers that if they want the freedom to do whatever they want, they should definitely finance their own films. It pays off in the long run, because there's always a market for those films, whether it's DVD, Internet, video, television or cable. It's wise to hold onto those rights if at all possible. I think the smartest thing I did starting out was produce my own films, because now I have a library of almost ten hours of entertainment and it's very valuable. This is what Disney did; he started his studio and retained all the rights to his films and now they're producing millions of dollars every year. These are films that he did 50, 60, even 70 years ago and they still play new.

ST: And now Disney wants the rights to all of its animators.
BP: Exactly.

BUY MUTANT ALIENS HERE

ST: Is that a natural progression, building a franchise and wanting utter control of everything remotely associated with it?
BP: I hope not. I think that once you turn into a corporation and the suits start running it, then the greed takes over. They have to perform for their stockholders and if they don't, they're fired. There's a certain corporate law of the jungle that I've obviously avoided.

ST: Except in your work, which is pretty tough on the suits. Is there a dichotomy in the corporate world, where you've got people with tons of money but no ideas, so they dig up animators and grab the rights to all their stuff?
BP: Yeah, but I don't begrudge them. That's life, and sometimes it works out. There are animators working for Disney, and they're very happy. They're secure. It's like a family; they're taken care of. I think there's room for everybody, every situation, if you're an animator.

26 August 03

Scott Thill enjoys writing for cats like Salon, XLR8R, Popmatters, All Music Guide, AOL and others. His first novel, The Dangerous Perhaps, should be done by the time the War on Terrorism is over. Does anyone have a calendar handy?

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