DOVAS: Like what?

JS: Like doing everything yourself, even to the point where some filmmakers are scratching right onto the film. Well now when the filmmaker scratches right on the film it may then be composited in a computer, or can be used to pitch a pilot, so once again the definition slides and shifts and maybe that's healthy.

DOVAS: But the definition slides and shifts depending on the point the person making the argument wants to make. So the person who is making an independent, black and white or whatever, stop motion picture, like a Tony Nittoli...

JS: Who?

Tony Nittoli'sJunky. © Tony Nittoli.

DOVAS: He did a film called Junky, about a parrot who's a cracker addict so in order to feed his cracker-jones he lets his owner screw him. You may not be missing anything, but he's a darling of the alternative indie film festival circuit. Nittoli thinks of himself as a more legit 'independent' than someone who gets public funding. The people who get public funding but make the movies they want to make feel they are more independent than those who sell their film to a video distributor. Those who run their own production studios consider themselves more independent than someone who is either in a relationship with someone who helps pay for their way of life, or who works at a corporate animation house; who thinks of themselves more independent based on the show they're working on than someone who's working at Hanna-Barbera or some other corporate animation house; who look with disdain on the guy who's making schlocky black & white pictures about a junkie parrot who's screwing its owner.

JS: While what you're saying is undoubtedly true, do you not think there's a certain value in every once in awhile stepping back, and even though no one can be objective, trying to say, 'Where did we lose sight of that which we thought was important when we were making parrot fuck films?'

DOVAS: It's debatable whether anyone making a parrot-fuck film thinks they have anything important to say.

JS: I don't think it has ever been quite as hard to say where we are in the sense of what comes next with independence in animation.

DOVAS: If we deign to call ourselves independents, what are the choices that are available to us? Plus, for you to be saying you're an independent working for jumbo, is almost just as hypocritical as me saying I'm an independent, when my next commercial gig is coming from a large production company, in order to help pay for a film that I want to make which may have no commercial prospect whatsoever. Though I'll make that next film, so will you.

JS: No complaints of that here. At this point I say I was an independent. I will be again, I think. But I don't feel I'm an independent right now in any way. If you don't go through periods where you are really dependent how do you know when you're independent?

DOVAS: Waxing philosophical. Is it a label that has completely lost its weight?

JS: I sometimes think so, but we've pointed out good examples of people today who are still doing it, like Bill or Faith.

DOVAS: And Debbie Solomon, who's directing a pilot. And who else?

JS: And who else? Like Barry Purves, who with tons of money and backing is still being an independent, he's making films that are...

DOVAS: But is it an illusion, that kind of independence? The 'independent' who sells a series to TV...

JS: I don't think so. How can you say it's an illusion when you choose between...

DOVAS: When you choose between what? What are the poles?

JS: So many compromises have been made along the way, that at this particular point the question's in flux.