Late February 1999
John Schnall has been independently producing singular and highly individual short films from his home-studio in New Jersey for almost two decades. Schnall's work has been described as wittily sardonic, mordant, along with both morose and funny-as-hell, and all are wildly inventive both graphically and intellectually. In addition, he has worked for several different animation studios in New York. Since last year, he has completed The Great Switcheroo, produced for Nickelodeon's Short Films For Short People, and is presently working for Jumbo Pictures as an Assistant Director on PB & J Otter. He has also produced a series of PSA's about Tourette's Syndrome. He recently went to contract on his first home, and would appreciate your congratulations.

John Schnall (left) and Steven Dovas exult in their bright future as air conditioning and refrigeration repairmen.

Steven Dovas has been working in animation in New York City for the past 16 years. His recent award-winning cartoon Call Me Fishmael has played at festivals across the world and will be seen next at the upcoming New York Animation Festival. He is represented as a commercial director by Class-Key-Chew-Po Commercials in L.A., for whom he just completed a 60-second spot for Dockers Europe. He is presently animating a film for the Ink Tank, directing a pilot for Nickelodeon, teaching at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and working on new films of his own. His studio in Brooklyn also holds his extensive collections of flipbooks and eyeballs.

Dovas and Schnall met in a dank Times Square bar one evening in late February to talk about the business of animation as an individual artist in New York at present. They are joined by their acquaintances Johnnie Walker Black and Jim Beam, each of whom did their best to prod the conversation along, with water and ice. We join them in mid-sentence.

Steven Dovas: We are here to talk about independent animation in New York. So, since you are an independent, or an ex-independent, let's just talk and see what comes up.

John Schnall: Ex-independent. That's interesting. You're one too.

SD: I don't know.

JS: No, no, everyone is.

SD: You, to my mind, were one of a very small number of people that I considered the quintessentially independent animators.

JS: There was awhile where I would definitely say that.

SD: You were turning out a film every year, or year and a half, or whatever, as fast as you could, and it was astonishing to me. I was struggling just to pay my rent. Doing a lot of work for other people, maybe not commercial work, but work that I enjoyed, I felt like I was learning, but you were turning out films. I gravitated toward commercial work whereas you were steadily making short films. How was it possible then that it isn't possible now and what happened?

JS: It was possible then for me to keep making my films, because I really almost felt like I didn't have a choice. You draw a hell of a lot better than me. You're much easier to hire than I am. I've found a different niche, but I can't do what you can do. What you can do is everyone's style, in a way that I just can't.

SD: Now I'd disagree with that (laughs), but that was where the work was from the beginning. I wasn't making shorts.

JS: Yeah, and I got less work. I was living at my parents' house for awhile accumulating some money, then when I moved out, the money got spent, and I was living damn cheap too.

SD: What changed?

JS: My lifestyle changed, in a lot of ways. You know, thinking about two people instead of one person, and where we're going to be ten years from now, is much more of an issue.