DOVAS: Is the question in flux or is the question just not real?

JS: I think it's in flux, the same way independent films have a certain validity even though the big hype kind of hides it. There are still people making their rotten pirate films, or whatever the joke was in Fishmael. I think the question has been put on hold for awhile because of so many opportunities to exploit it commercially. You know that's not going to last. I think we ride out this dependent form of independence. The fact that there is a market isn't a bad thing. The fact that we can't really define a term right now doesn't mean that what we're doing is any less valid. We need to ride out this particular period of ambiguity.

DOVAS: I might get into the validity of working for Jumbo.

JS: Well, I might too. I don't question the validity of buying a house. Come on I've already expressed my opinion on how perfect it is to sell out.

DOVAS: Especially since once you have a mortgage you have to make those payments...

JS: Then the films that I manage to sneak in on the side will be fascinating. I don't think that's what stopped me from making a film.

DOVAS: But the films that you manage to sneak in on the side are always going to be fascinating, I would say. It doesn't mean that the films that pick up and fly...

JS: Fly, payoff and independent film? What are we talking about here? What about all those people we haven't come across because they're a little bit more obscure. Is what they're doing any less notable? We know Jim Duesing's films. How many people know him? Chris Sullivan? I mean there's plenty of people, still completely independent.

DOVAS: But the aspiration has become, 'I want to get a job at DreamWorks,' or as some student said to me the other day, 'I just want to make a film that will get into the Sick and Twisted Festival.' And I said, 'That's all you want?' and he said, 'That's all I want.'

JS: But Jim hasn't done that. Chris hasn't done that.

DOVAS: Does it matter then, that so few people know who they are? Who any artist is?

JS: Paul Glabicki hasn't done that. You know who he is.

DOVAS: Emily Hubley hasn't. A lot of people haven't, but I don't know that they'd turn it down, though...

JS: Let's face it, George Griffin hasn't done that, and we'll always admire him for it. What about all these people I've been skipping over as we try to say there's no independents? There's a lot of people still doing it. I got an email from Luke Jaeger a little while ago. Did you get that? Asking everyone to just create a character and have it get hit by a train?

DOVAS: Oh yeah.

JS: I sent him a Quick-time movie that same day of a character being hit by a train, because I thought that it was so cool. Somehow it just struck me as awfully fresh and keyed and enthused and...

DOVAS: ...and Luke-like.

JS: That's it. We know Luke.

DOVAS: Nobody knows Luke and Luke works for Disney.

JS: Yeah, but who cares how many people know what he does?

DOVAS: Does your work have any value if no one sees it?

JS: Absolutely. If you're happy with it, absolutely. If you've gotten out something that you needed to get out.

DOVAS: We're back to the self-abuse analogy again.

JS: Which I'm all in favor of.

DOVAS: We have no conclusion, you know that don't you?

JS: Yeah, we have no conclusion whatsoever. Let's stop the tape.

Steven Dovas' film Call Me Fishmael will some day, maybe, be released as part of the Cartoon Sushi collection, or can be acquired directly from the filmmaker.

John Schnall's short, The Great Switcheroo, won a prize for "Best Animation" at this year's ASIFA-East Animation Awards. One can purchase his video collection, Death Laughs Among Us, from the AWN Store.

Video sources for many of the other films mentioned by Steve and John can be found in The Animated Film Collector's Guide: Worldwide Sources for Cartoons on Videotape and Laserdisc, which is also available in the AWN Store.

This conversation was transcribed and edited by Steven Dovas and copy edited by John Schnall and Steven Dovas.