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I'm happy to announce a new feature for my web-site, which I call the Plympton Scrapbook. It's a collection of ideas, drawings, and photos from the past week just to let you know what I'm concerned with, what I've been up to, and just plain anything that's bouncing around in my brain that perhaps you'd be interested in - or maybe not.
Last week, I went to the premiere of "Gerry", the new film by Gus van Sant (a fellow Oregonian). Now, I'd seen part of it at the Woodstock Film Festival and thought it was tremendously boring and slow - but I wanted to see the whole film. I even missed accepting the prestigious Gold Medal award from the Society of Illustrators (for my film "Eat') to see the premiere.
It's a beautiful, funny and compelling film. I think it's terrific that Gus can have a huge commercial success with "Good Will Hunting" and then turn around and make such a personal and experimental film like "Gerry". The experience, rather than being static and boring, was actually very relaxing and almost zen-like. Tell your friends to go see it.
Also, last week I had a party for two of my film festival friends, Chris Robinson of the Ottawa Animation Festival and Gerben Schermer from the Holland Animation Festival in Ghent. It was a big success, we showed a couple of short films, and everything was going great, until a gang of drunken frat boys showed up, asking "Is this the cartoon party?" It was getting late and they were starting to insult all the women, so I decided to shut the party down.
Another big event was Signe Baumane's "Filthy Fest", which took place on Valentine's Day - it was at the Millennium on 4th St. here in the East Village. The theater seats a little over 120 people, but the crowd was so big we had standing room only - and even with the addition of a second show, we had to turn away about 100 people. Who knew there was such a demand for sex cartoons on Valentine's Day? I'm including the program - the hits were "Chirpy", "Sex Life of Robots" and "Roof Sex".
This is my first weekly edition of the Scrapbook. I have way too much to show or talk about, so over the weeks, I'll try to catch up with what's going on in the exciting life of independent animator Bill Plympton and also talk a little more about the production of my new feature, "Hair High".
See you all next week,
Bill Plympton
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