Eating Sausages was an Edelmann illustration from the Frankfurter Allgemeine magazine, circa, 1990.

JS: A Grand Day Out does have a kind of otherwordly, quiet strangeness to it. Since then their work has become more dramatic and narrative-driven. It sounds like you’re not all that interested in narrative — you’re more interested in emotion and feeling.

HE: I could look at stills, I like to look at paintings. In my heart of hearts I still harbor the idea that animation does not need to be about movement.

I like the characters in The Tick. I haven’t seen that many [episodes], but I’ve got the dolls. Then of course The Simpsons, if you don’t get an overdose. My wife, not my daughter is a great fan of SpongeBob SquarePants. We do have all sorts of SpongeBob devotionalia around our place —

JS: What did you just call it?

HE: “Devotionalia” — religious objects. SpongeBob and the Simpsons are great work. I personally can’t take too much of them but once a week or so I think they’re really very enjoyable. And the SpongeBob is more like classical animation.

JS: Is there anything else you’d like to say about Yellow Submarine, or do you feel you’ve talked it out?

HE: There’s one thing. I did feel there was no… The movie might have opened up some new possibilities. It was mainstream but I think it was intelligent mainstream. There wasn’t any real follow-up on that, and Disney went its own sweet way, undisturbed. I have been to see the more recent Disney features. Whatever your opinion might be, you could see the absolute desire for quality. Everything in the old features was done well.

JS: In addition to everything else, you’ve been teaching art for a long time.

An illustration from The Book of Lost Tales by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1985.

HE: Not during the Submarine. I was teaching on and off for about 25 years. After a few years I always quit. I somehow ended up in Stuttgart where I was just too tired to quit, so I hung on to the end. I was with a few of my students yesterday. With that group it was great fun. I’m very proud of them I still can talk with them. This was very enjoyable.

When I reviewed my notes of our conversation the next day, I realized I had neglected to ask or follow up on a handful of questions. Edelmann’s daughter Valentine was kind enough to forward my e-mailed questions to Heinz and relay his answers to me:

JS: I read a long time ago that the chief Blue Meanie and his temper tantrums were inspired by newsreel footage of Hitler’s speeches. Is this true?

HE: Yes, by way of Chaplin’s Great Dictator.

JS: Did the Boob intentionally resemble Lyndon Johnson? Or is the resemblance entirely in my imagination?

Theatre of the World festival poster, 1991.

HE: Sorry, unintentional, but you are quite right about the resemblance.

JS: When you spoke at the SVA you said you made a decision to use a very thin outline to Submarine’s characters that added $500,000 to production costs, an expense that fortunately no one seemed to notice.

HE: The $500,000 (in today’s dollars) was a figure of speech for the benefit of the students. The thin outline, however, consumed a hefty bit of the production budget — in terms of the effect on a big screen I thought it was a worthwhile investment.

JS: How many languages do you speak? What is your native tongue?

HE: Originally I was bilingual in German and Czech but my Czech is almost forgotten now. After that English, Dutch and a disgraceful, despicable French.

Joe Strike is a NYC-based writer/producer with a background in TV promotion and a lifelong interest in animation. He is writing a children’s novel.