JS: I've shown Frankenstein to no reaction, and found out after that they were silent because they were all blown away by it. I don't know if I'd feel the same if it was a comedic film.

SD: Isn't Frankenstein a funny film?

JS: I don't think so. People laugh, but it's not like Grim, which started out as a goofy, funny film and got sad when I put the soundtrack on.

SD: Do you think it works better because of the soundtrack?

JS: Definitely, it's a film about loneliness.

SD: I don't mean working for you, I mean working for an audience.

JS: I've never really understood how to make a film for an audience other than me, I'm sorry.

SD: Is that the difference between an independent filmmaker and a 'commercial' filmmaker?

JS: You can be commercially successful and still make films to please yourself.

SD: Of course, but I'm not talking about your intent. Is the difference between what we're defining as a 'commercial' filmmaker and what we're arbitrarily calling 'independent,' that one makes a film that everyone watches and laughs at and the other first makes a film that satisfies themselves and then takes whatever audience the film finds? There are those who would say that pleasing yourself first is more important than trying to please an audience. There's a lotta self-indulgent crap that gets made for that reason.

JS: I'd rather see that crap these days.

The subject turns to being 'pigeon-holed.'

JS: Bill Plympton has a style; you wouldn't hire him to do someone else's style. I think being pigeon-holed is a real advantage that neither one of us wants to fall into.

SD: Well you're a lot closer to it than I am. You have a body of work that is substantial enough to show themes and a particular perspective.

JS: Themes and perspective would never lead to work.

SD: Really? I think they do. I don't think it's just his drawing style that gets Bill Plympton jobs.

JS: That's true, his humor, his sensibility. Let's face it, the thread that I've got going for my stuff is more conceptual than a style of humor.

SD: Although your graphic style up until you took that radical left turn working with photographs, was fairly consistent. I happen to think that the sequences of cartoon animation in Frankenstein are among the best stuff you've ever done.

JS: I was always happy with that. Done in crayon and really, really loose.

SD: Radically different from everything you've done before.

JS: Well I followed with a film that had a very standard drawing style, which I think is better animation in some ways, Opposing Views. Character animation was something I hadn't done in awhile and wanted to get back to. I also like that I did the children's film for Nickelodeon, followed it with some PSA's about Tourrette's Syndrome, with a possibility of a children's thing next. After that, the back burner thing is a series featuring skeletons, a nice brain eating kind of series. Now you're part of that group of directors that Klasky Commercials put together...

SD: They're all that kinda-independent-ish animator...Sally Cruikshank, Corky Quakenbush, Debbie Solomon, Stig Berqvist, etc. The point that I'm making is that if we're defining them as independent, all these people were making films that they wanted to make. For the most part, they weren't making films aimed at any particular demographic, or market. Maybe they were making animation for a group beyond that kid specific market, without it being for TV. Like Bill Plympton is doing. And y'know as far as market-wise nobody knows Bill Plympton, and he's arguably the best known independent animator in the country.

Debra Solomon's Everybody's Pregnant. © Debra Solomon.

JS: I saw The Tune twice. Once I saw it at an ASIFA screening where, you know, it's interesting or whatever. Then I saw it in New Brunswick at Rutgers, at a college screening. It was a huge, packed auditorium. It was the funniest film I had ever seen. It was just so great with the right kind of crowd.

SD: So why do people say that Bill Plympton can't make a good feature?

JS: Like I say, he did, but I didn't know it until I saw it with the right crowd.