Awarded by the Academy and the Festival de Cannes, a staple of Spike & Mike’s 
Festival of Animation programs, 
guest couch gag contributor on The Simpsons, and a fiercely independent artist, one-man industry Bill Plympton is the American underground animator par excellence, his meticulously hand-drawn style, with its fluid, distending line and voluptuous figures, one of the most immediately recognizable in the 
business. The legend himself will be at the Metrograph Theatre on Sunday, June 1st for two programs of his features and shorts—and will be whipping up sketches on the spot for any audience members who want to take home a little piece of cartooning history.
Titles include Cheatin’, Footprints, Hot Dog, I Married a Strange Person!, Push Comes to Shove, and Santa the Fascist Years. The Films of Bill Plympton arrives on Metrograph At Home on June 1 with an exclusive new interview with Plympton.
Bill Plympton in person for special introductions. Following each screening, in lieu of a Q&A, Plympton will be hand-drawing original works in the Metrograph Lobby for interested members of the audience.
For more go to: metrograph.com/bill-plympton/Metrograph
For more go to: plymptoons.com
At the Metrograph Theatre
7 Ludlow Street, New York City
Sunday June 1 at 5:15 PM
I MARRIED A STRANGE PERSON! – 1997, 75 min, DCP
HOT DOG – 2008, 6 min, DCP
SANTA THE FASCIST YEARS – 2008, 4 min, DCP
At the Metrograph Theatre
7 Ludlow Street, New York City
Sunday June 1 at 7:30 PM
CHEATIN’ – 2013, 756 min, DCP
PUSH COMES TO SHOVE – 1991, 6 min, DCP
FOOTPRINTS – 2014, 4 min, DCP
About the filmmaker – Born in Portland, Oregon to Don and Wilda Plympton, he grew up in a large family of three girls and three boys. For the six children it was often far too wet to play outside. Plympton credits Oregon’s rainy climate for nurturing his drawing skills and imagination. In 1968, he moved to New York City and began a year of study at the School of Visual Arts. Making the Big Apple his home, Plympton served 15 years as an illustrator and cartoonist. Between toting his portfolio and catching cheap matinees, he designed the magazines: Cineaste, Filmmakers Newsletter, and Film Society Review. His illustrations have graced the pages of The New York Times, Vogue, House Beautiful, The Village Voice, Screw, and Vanity Fair. His cartoons appeared in such magazines as Viva, Penthouse, Rolling Stone, National Lampoon, and Glamour. In 1975, in The Soho Weekly News, he began “Plympton,” a political cartoon strip. By 1981, it was syndicated in over twenty papers by Universal Press Syndicate. in 1983 that he was approached to animate a film. The Android Sister Valeria Wasilewski asked Plympton to direct and animate a film she was producing of Jules Feiffer’s song, “Boomtown.”I mmediately following the completion of “Boomtown,” he began his own animated film, “Drawing Lesson # 2.” For his next project he contacted Maureen McElheron, an old friend with whom he had performed in a Country Western Band (he played pedal steel guitar), and she agreed to score “Your Face.” Due to budgetary considerations, she also sang. Her voice, eerily decelerated to sound more masculine, combined with a fantastically contorting visage helped garner the film a 1988 Oscar nomination for best animated short. After a string of highly successful short films (“One of Those Days,” “How to Kiss,” “25 Ways to Quit Smoking,” and “Plymptoons”), he began thinking about making a feature film. What came to be called THE TUNE was financed entirely by the animator himself. Sections of the feature were released as short films to help generate funds for production. These include “The Wiseman” and “Push Comes to Shove,” the latter of which won the 1991 Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. With money from his short film prizes and commercial work, he was able to complete THE TUNE. After personally drawing and coloring 30,000 cels for THE TUNE, Plympton moved to live-action feature, J. LYLE, a wacky, surreal comedy about a sleazy lawyer who meets a magical talking dog that changes his life. Plympton’s second live-action feature, GUNS ON THE CLACKAMAS, a behind-the-scenes look at an imaginary disastrous Western, was shot in Oregon and New York. In 1996. Bill Plympton completed WALT CURTIS, PECKERNECK POET. In 1998, Bill returned to animation with I MARRIED A STRANGE PERSON. Bill’s next animated feature, MUTANT ALIENS, the story of a stranded astronaut returning to Earth after 20 years in space. It won the Grand Prix in Annecy 2001 and was released in theatres in 2002. It has played all over the world to huge audiences. Bill’s feature film, HAIR HIGH, is a gothic ’50s high-school comedy about a love-triangle that goes terribly bad. Bill’s short film GUARD DOG has been a hit at film festivals and it brought Bill his second Oscar nomination in January 2005. Two equally successful sequels soon followed, “Guide Dog” in 2006 and “Hot Dog” in 2008. His feature film, IDIOTS AND ANGELS, was completed in 2008. The film features the music of Tom Waits, Pink Martini, Nicole Renaud and Maureen McElheron, and no dialogue. After the release several successful short films, such as THE COW WHO WANTED TO BE A HAMBURGER, SUMMER BUMMER and DRUNKER THAN A SKUNK. But eventually his plans returned to feature-length animation, and he started work on CHEATIN’, the story of two lovers, Jake and Ella, who encounter jealousy and insecurity after their perfect courtship. CHEATIN‘ may also be the first animated feature partially funded on Kickstarter, with loyal Plympton fans kicking in over $100,000 needed to finish it. Bill latest work includes HITLER’S FOLLY, a mock-umentary about Adolf Hitler’s love of animation and REVENGEANCE, written by animator Jim Lujan.
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