Timothy and Stephen Quay (r-l in b&w photo, reverse in color). All images unless otherwise noted courtesy of Zeitgeist Films. Right images courtesy of Sarah Baisley.

If you really intend to understand the Brothers Quay from the ground up, get ready to Netflix a lot of European movies from the silent era — and everything you can get your hands on by Borowczyk. And this fall you definitely gotta snap up the three-DVD Jan Svankmajer collection. You’d better check out Kafka’s diaries too. Oh, and Un chien andalou. Of course you can skip directly to the Quays’ filmography if you like — and if you haven’t yet, you’ve missed getting a firsthand look at one of animation’s most important stylistic touchstones of the last 25 years, and an inspirational ingredient in 99% of today’s stop-motion animators’ mental bag of tricks. Because the good news is that, unlike most makers of animated short films, twins Stephen and Timothy Quay have been lucky enough to have their work anthologized on DVD (thanks to the globe-hopping and vault-spelunking stalwarts at Kino Video).

The Brothers Quay, who will turn 60 next year, have been name-checked by just about every stop-motion animator coming up in the last 20 years as a primary influence. These charming and effusive twin moptops from Philadelphia, now Europe-based, who have given the world such surrealistic wonders as Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies, The Comb and Street of Crocodiles, work in a milieu that eschews dialogue and narrative and aims directly for the exquisitely rendered question mark.

Animation World Magazine caught up with the Quays at an outdoor restaurant in Hollywood just prior to their first-ever U.S. appearance supporting of a program of their films, in the form of the 10th Marc Davis Lecture at AMPAS’ Samuel Goldwyn Theatre on April 21, 2006. AWN publisher Ron Diamond and Academy lecture coordinator Randy Haberkamp also joined the roundtable with the Quays in a discussion that touched on various aspects of their career, including their reasons for working overseas, the films that have most electrified them and the necessary and not-so-evil evil of making television ads. (At their request the Quays have been attributed collectively throughout the text, except at one point where the brothers go off into their own illuminating interrogatory sidebar.)

Taylor Jessen: How did you guys end up at Royal College of Art? What made you want to go?

Quays: There was a visiting professor from the Royal College of Art who taught the final year at the Philadelphia College of Art. He said, “What are you guys doing after this?” And we said, “Nothing.” He said, “Why don’t you apply to the Royal College of Art?” Simple as that. And we said okay.

TJ: What was nice about London that made you want to stay?

Q: It was on the edge of Europe. It was like an outpost of Europe. We were fascinated by Europe, and I think we just wanted to have a chance to be there. And also just to continue going to art school.

TJ: What’s your European heritage, personally?

Q: Both sides Anglo-Saxon, completely.

TJ: What does “Quay” mean?

Q: It’s “Manx." So we’re tail-less. The Manx cat is tail-less for some reason.

TJ: When did you go over?

Q: Late ‘60s. Just around the time of Vietnam.

TJ: Were you more inspired by painters growing up?

Q: I think more by photography. Probably at that time it was Josef Sudek, a Czech photographer. We had a book by Plicka on Prague. We had discovered Kafka’s diaries. And we wanted to investigate — so, what’s Prague? What does it mean? We found this beautiful book of black and white photographs of just Prague as a city, and it was very graphic, very powerful. A mixture between the baroque, between the alchemical alleys beneath the castle — which is where Jan Svankmajer lives now, has always lived, lives in the shadow of the castle.