Guest post by Bill Plympton.
I’m very excited to be given the opportunity to pontificate about the state of indie film on the wonderful “Hope for Film” site.
If some people don’t know me, it’s understandable. My name is Bill Plympton, I create animated shorts and animated feature films. And because they’re animated, it’s very difficult to get any press, respect, or even distribution for my films. I also have two other strikes against me – they’re not family oriented films, and they’re very low budget. So there you go! That’s my dilemma. How do I get distribution for a film that no one wants to touch?
I think a lot of the prejudice is because there is sex and violence in my films, and the audience in America believes that animation is sacred territory. How dare I put raunchy material in a purified, Disney-created art form? That’s blasphemy! I’m tainting the holy art form of cartoons.
Yet Quentin Tarantino puts tons of sex and violence in his films and they’re very close to being cartoons. So, why can’t I? Why can’t the U.S. Public make that great creative leap from kid cartoons to adult animation?
