JS: They should because you have to know the past if you're gonna get anywhere.

SD: You sound like my father. How do you make that argument and be persuasive to people who look at it and only see `boring, old stuff' and can't look at it without laughing?

JS: We laughed when we were students too, but some of it soaked in... You just have to hammer at that brick wall.

SD: Y'know what's amazing? Even the most jaded students still flip out when they see the Fleischer 3D backgrounds. Nobody knows what the hell they're looking at!

JS: That's the biggest kick I get out of the technique I used in Frankenstein; animation using posed photographs combined as animation art. People are just blown away by it, and ad agencies spend tons of money to duplicate the look you get by shooting still photos and then re-shooting it as animation.

SD: This whole thing started when I told AWN, 'John Schnall has this film [The Great Switcheroo]with a look that's different and an interesting technique and we should write about it.' That technique came from you taking your process in Frankenstein and Buy My Film! and messing with the photos in the computer before cutting them out and using them as animation art.

JS: It's not new anymore. It's everywhere.

SD: Using the Inferno, the Flame, the Paintbox, or maybe just After Effects.

JS: They're spending tons of money. They could spend it on me.

SD: And you'd do it for $1.20.

JS: $1.25, please. But that extra 5 cents went to the lawyer.

SD: Your lawyer works cheap.

JS: I had this great idea for a project that combined still photography and animation. I pitched this idea emphasizing my technique in Buy My Film! because that was what they wanted. Then I started doing this other short project for them, and I developed this other style for it. In that short time, the style that to them was 'John Schnall' became not the Buy My Film! style but the style of that short film done for them. So by the time I got back to this short pitch, 'what John Schnall, does best' became the style of the recent piece, and the pitch was 'what John Schnall did best last year,' which now doesn't fit in with this style. They can't think of a person doing two styles at once. It's the whole 'development' process which I think is really messed up. People get drawn to a project and decide to 'develop' it, but almost without fail, the first thing to go, or to change beyond recognition, is what drew them to the project in the first place.

John Schnall's Opposing Views. © John Schnall.

SD: You're generalizing. It's not all bad. Your film Opposing Views was in Cartoon Sushi.

JS: And I thought it was the worst collection of films I'd ever been part of.

SD: Well, then you stood out.

JS: Frankenstein was shown as part of the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and I thought it really stood out.

SD: Because of you, not because of the content of the film...

JS: No, it's funny how in that context it made sense. To me, the film is about raising children, but you could also see it about a repressed character who is watching an idealized image of a woman on a TV screen... With the gay audience, it took on a different interpretation.

SD: To your credit, Frankenstein is a film with more depth than the average cartoon.

JS: It felt good for one of my films to stand out in that context, standing out in Cartoon Sushi didn't make me feel that good. I thought Fishmael stood out on Cartoon Sushi.

SD: Thanks. I was just happy that MTV pays as much as they do.

The pitch from hell in Dovas' Call Me Fishmael. © Steve Dovas.Click here to view a Quick-time movie from Call Me Fishmael.© Steve Dovas.

JS: Here's a question about independence. You made Fishmael. You've had it screened with great success.

SD: Mostly live-action festivals. A few insightful animation festivals (laughs), but it went over amazingly well in a whole lot of 'film' festivals.

JS: Have you ever seen audiences react to it and felt kinda sick, because it didn't reach people the way you wanted it to? That's a feeling I've had.

SD: No, because I'm easy, I guess. If an audience reacts positively, I love it. I was in a festival out in East Hampton, and this was the most dead audience I've ever screened for. No reaction from the audience, and I was horrified. But afterwards, people came up to me and told me they liked it, and suddenly that made it all right.