The legendary Australian animator, Dennis Tupicoff, sits down for some short and not so magnificent questions.
'A Photo of Me' by Dennis Tupicoff
Dennis Tupicoff has made many award-winning films (e.g. The Darra Dogs, His Mother's Voice, Chainsaw, and most recently A Photo of Me) as writer, director, producer, and animator. These have been fictional and documentary, animated and live-action, comedy and drama – and often inventive combinations. He has also been a full-time lecturer at the VCA School of Film and Television in Melbourne, and has taught and conducted workshops in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.
He agreed to meet on the shores of Sydney for a game of chess as I pestered him about the goings-on of Midnight Oil and other Australian things he did not feel as passionate as I about. It was December. The weather was cold, but Slovenian hot toddies made life and me bearable for a time.
I get the greatest pleasure from being a man about town and raconteur
The name of my autobiography would be My Time in Space
My most beloved possession is memory
A (non-family member) person I have high respect for is the Florida cartoonist Mick Stevens, who years ago drew the World's Greatest Cartoon for The New Yorker. No words, no faces, no action, and not even abstract. Sad, true, wise, and - still, always - funny.
The song that makes me tingle is Don Gibson's "Sweet Dreams"- as sung by Patsy Cline, but most of all the instrumental version by Roy Buchanan
The funniest thing that happened to me was in 1977, when I was a young man and still 2.1m. An elderly lady in the street said to me: "Young man, if you fell over you'd be halfway home."
It's the only funny or original remark ever made to me on the subject. [editor’s note: Dennis is really tall]
I’d like to be remembered as a man about town and raconteur.
A well-known figure in the world of independent animation, writer, author & curator Chris Robinson is the Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
