During most of the war, Paul's parents lived in New York City, while he lived in small towns with American families; from Drawn from Memory. © Acme Filmworks.

"Another way of getting funding is through illustrating a book and publishing it. Get it published, and then it's easier to get a film made from it. However, you're dealing with a world of insecurites. I am quite disappointed with the corporate world of America. It's not what it used to be. What I always admired about Americans, especially the business world, is they had guts, and they were not afraid to try something new. I find that attitude has disappeared. Today, everybody is afraid. Everybody's favorite line is, 'My ass is on the line. Don't screw this up or you'll never get work again.' People are awfully afraid to make an original commitment. It's always whenever I come up with an idea, say for a book, they say, 'What age group is it for?' They want to put it in a drawer that is predesigned. And if it doesn't fit in one of their favorite drawers, they don't have the guts to put it out. They'll say, 'Well, we've never made a book like that,' and that's it. So to get funding for a film by making a book first, you have to make a very standard, run of the mill book, and hope that along the line you'll be able to change something. It's not easy.

"Another way to get funding is to create a lot of it first yourself. I'm finding out that it's not enough to just describe it. Show what it's gonna be like. Make a sample of it. The other three people who got the ITVS money with me already had half of their films done. ITVS was just funding the rest of the budget. I was the only one fully funded by them. That happens a lot. Start the film with your own money. Show what it's going to look like. What helped Ron Diamond get Drawn from Memory for me, was my treatment was heavily illustrated. It looked almost like a book, and had lots of little color plates with it. The American Playhouse people said that through the drawings they could imagine what the film was going to look like, that it was not going to be a cartoon, that the drawings were in a different category than children's cartoons. If you don't draw yourself, try to find somebody who will go out on a limb with you and illustrate your story and make a really attractive proposal. Today with computers and desktop publishing, and now even desktop video, it's not such a deal to make something attractive. That's what Sandra, my wife, and I did for our children's book. Instead of just delivering a manuscript and a bunch of illustrations on paper, today you can print a book on your home computer with a $150 scanner and some basic software. And that's what we did. It's about a 150 page book, with illustrations, and the guy at the publisher's said they don't accept unsolicited material, but that this was so attractive that it made a difference and they made an exception. Make your proposal visually attractive. It has to be packaged. So if you have substance, just add packaging to it, and you're closer to getting something.

Independence
"That word, `independent'...a lot of interesting discussions can be had around it, but I don't think it will ever be solved. I think the only true independent I know is Bill Plympton who makes a film first, then sells it. That's true independence, but he ran out of steam, too. You can't sustain yourself on being an independent. What helped him was that for years he didn't have children and he had a working wife, and then once in a while he would make a film and it would get some money. People like that can do it if they have a partner in life and don't have children. That's independence, but it didn't last forever. Now he has commercials. You can see in the commercials that they're twisting his arm and his mind. They're making him think along their line. There's nothing wrong with it. They're paying for it and they have certain goals, so they're making him adapt to them instead of accepting whatever comes out of him.

"It's not easy and I don't think it's even necessary to be that independent. It's team work: it's somebody needs a film, and they need somebody like you to help them with it which means it's your ideas and their ideas. It's their money, your income. What's wrong with adhering to their wishes to a certain degree? I don't find anything wrong with being dependent. We're all dependent on income. I don't think there is any real independence in this business.