A Full Head of Hair
It's hard to get personal details out of Plympton; he'd rather talk about his work. Peter Vey, who collaborated on the script of Strange Person, proved equally close-mouthed. When I asked him, "What do you know about Bill?" he told me, "He's tall and he has a full head of hair. He likes to wear shorts."

Musical collaborator Maureen McElheron, who played with Bill years ago in a country band, was more forthcoming. "Bill's funny," she says. "He comes off so deadpan and normal and understated. Not a big talker. But he has that component that all geniuses have, complete focus, singleness of purpose." Bill is very supportive of others, she points out, and the same people collaborate with him again and again. She's very appreciative of the help he gave in promoting her soundtrack for The Tune, making sure it got displayed in record stores.

I Married A Strange Person. © Bill Plympton.

In fact, for someone who puts in such long stints alone at the drawing board, Bill manages to maintain a remarkably large and loyal circle of friends, which includes Matt Groening, cartoonist John Callahan, filmmaker Gus Van Zandt and Portland animators Joanna Priestley, Will Vinton, Jim Brashfield and Joan Gratz.

Bill grew up in Oregon City, Oregon, by the Clackamas River; his parents still live there and he keeps in touch with many childhood friends. He goes back there every year without fail to throw a barbecue beside a mud lake that has formed on the Clackamas. What happens at this annual "Mud Party"? "One hundred fifty people get stoned, take their clothes off and wallow in the mud," says Bill. "It's like warm chocolate pudding." When fellow Clackamas County native Tonya Harding made headlines the other year, Plympton added another party in her "honor."

Soiled Underwear
What else does Bill Plympton do when he's not animating? Well, for one thing he turns out live-action films. The first was 1994's J. Lyle, a comedy about a greedy landlord. Currently touring the festival circuit is Guns on the Clackamas. A fake documentary, à la Spinal Tap, it details the calamities that befall makers of a big-time western after key financing pulls out. Production economies lead to food poisoning and electrocution; frugality necessitates shooting key scenes with dead actors; new money is raised by selling the stars' soiled underwear.

So, how does a kid from Clackamas County end up in the cartoon business? Ever since he first saw Daffy Duck, Bill wanted to make cartoons; but it wasn't until after working on the short Boomtown with Jules Feiffer in 1985 that he had the opportunity. "It was the time of all the independents--Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch-- that inspired me." In 1987, he garnered an Academy Award nomination for the musical short Your Face. In it, the singer's head goes through myriad transformations--imploding, exploding, melting and breaking out in dozens of miniature faces. "It was a cheapo, throwaway experimental film, I thought. This'll weird a lot of people out; they won't get it, but they did."

They didn't just get it, they loved it. Your Face established Plympton's reputation as a leading independent animator. Only three years later, he was turning down a million dollar contract from Disney.

"They wanted me to work on the genie in Aladdin--on all that crazy metamorphosis, fast humor they're not really great at." At 21 he would have jumped at the chance, but at 44 it would have been a step backwards. He was already making a living off of his own wacky ideas without having to tailor them to some corporate board of directors. "Disney contracts are so complete," Bill points out, "that legally, any doodles you do, any jokes you tell, and any dreams you have during that 36 month period, they own." Friends told him that, "When you negotiate with Disney, it's not good-cop/bad-cop, it's bad-cop/antichrist".

He passed on their offer in order to devote his time to The Tune. The irony is that Plympton did once offer Disney his services--in 1958, at age 12. A big fan of Song of the South and Peter Pan, he sent them his drawings with a note emphasizing his eagerness to lend a hand on their next big feature, Sleeping Beauty.

They turned him down flat. Some nonsense about his being too short, or child labor laws, or something like that. It's tantalizing to imagine how animation history might have been changed had they accepted. There might now be a film where Sleeping Beauty rises from her long sleep, gazes deep into the Prince's eyes and then suddenly--bites his head off.

A self-described red diaper baby, Mark Segall has won awards for labor journalism and public service copywriting. He co-authored How To Make Love To Your Money (Delacorte,1982) with his wife, Margaret Tobin. This fall, he will become Editor of ASIFA-East's aNYmator newsletter, which he currently designs and is a regular contributor.