Bill Plympton

Born in Portland, Oregon to Don and Wilda Plympton, he grew up in a large family of three girls and three boys. For the six children it was often far too wet to play outside. Plympton credits Oregon’s rainy climate for nurturing his drawing skills and imagination. When he discovered the Walt Disney films, he made his mind up at the age of 5 to become an Animator. In 1964 he graduated from Oregon City High School where he participated in the art club. He went on to Portland State University, where he published his early cartoons in the college paper “The Vanguard”, edited the yearbook, and was a member of the film society, creating posters for them. Here, he picked up his obsession for film and first attempted animation, making a yearbook promo that was accidentally shot upside-down, rendering it totally useless… On top of this, after graduating with a degree in Graphic Design, he found no schools that taught Animation. It seemed that after Walt Disney passed in 1966, The Disney Studios were suffering financially, amongst other titans in the industry at the time - Fleischer Brothers, UPA, and Warner Bros. All his life, Bill Plympton has been fascinated by animation. When he was fourteen, he sent Disney some of his cartoons and offered up his services as animator. They wrote back and told him that while his drawings showed promise, he was too young. It wasn’t until 1983 that he was approached to animate a film. The Android Sister Valeria Wasilewski asked Plympton to direct and animate a film she was producing of Jules Feiffer’s song, BOOMTOWN - But there were two problems - 1. Bill didn’t know how to animate & 2. They didn’t have the money to hire him. Connie D’Antuono, another of the film’s producers, became his Animation School, “sort of held my hand through the whole process,” Plympton says. “It was a great way to learn to make a film.” Since he wasn’t able to afford film school, he drew the entire film by himself for free in exchange for learning the techniques of professionals, and it was a hit! It played in numerous theaters across the US with a British feature called “Ploughman’s Lunch”. This gave him the confidence to make his own film. Immediately following the completion of BOOMTOWN he began his own animated film, DRAWING LESSON 2 - Production of the live action scenes was slow due to inclement weather, so Plympton decided to start on another film. At the time, he was doodling with the human face, which led to his decision to make a whacky animated short about facial distortion. For this one, he contacted Maureen McElheron, an old friend with whom he had performed in a Country Western Band (he played pedal steel guitar), and she agreed to score YOUR FACE . Due to budgetary considerations, she also sang. Her voice, eerily decelerated to sound more masculine, combined with a fantastically contorting visage helped garner the film a 1988 Oscar nomination for best animated short. “Suddenly people began returning my phone calls,” remembers Plympton. He became very hot in the commercial business doing spots for such clients as Trivial Pursuit, Nutrasweet, Taco Bell, AT&T, Nike, Geico, United Airlines and Mercedes-Benz. His work also started appearing more frequently on MTV, including a music video snippet for Madonna in the WHO’S THAT GIRL music video in 1987, and in the increasingly popular touring animation festivals. After a string of highly successful short films in 1988-1992 - ONE OF THOSE DAYS , HOW TO KISS , 25 WAYS TO QUIT SMOKING , and PLYMPTOONS , he began thinking about making a feature film. His shorts were winning prizes like crazy and he wanted a new challenge – and, as he puts it, “I’d wanted to make a full-length movie ever since I was a kid.” What came to be called THE TUNE was financed entirely by the Animator himself - a USA version of “The Yellow Submarine”. Sections of the feature were released as short films to help generate funds for production. These include THE WISEMAN and PUSH COMES TO SHOVE the