“King of Indie Animation” Bill Plympton’s wonderfully weird creations are unmistakable: the wriggly, hand-sketched style, warped humor, and endlessly shape-shifting, transmogrifying images are the hallmarks of a singularly bizarre and brilliant imagination. Originally a newspaper cartoonist, Plympton found success as a film animator when his entrancingly twisted musical YOUR FACE received an Oscar nomination for best animated short, leading to dozens more shorts and features, regular play on early 1990s MTV, another Oscar nomination (for the short GUARD DOG), and a worldwide cult following. A self-described “blend of Magritte and R. Crumb—that European surrealism, but the weird, goofy sexual craziness of R. Crumb,” Plympton is a one-of-a-kind auteur of the absurd, an underground animation hero whose films hold a funhouse mirror up to the innate strangeness of everyday reality.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1992 • United States
Starring Daniel Neiden, Maureen McElheron, Marty Nelson
Bill Plympton’s first feature-length film incorporates elements from a handful of his early shorts into a kaleidoscopically oddball musical fantasia. Del is a songwriter for the obnoxious Mr....
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1997 • United States
Starring Charis Michelsen, Tom Larson, Richard Spore
Cult animation surrealist Bill Plympton lets his subversive worldview and flair for grotesque absurdity run riot in this deliriously deranged dark comedy. A newlywed woman gets an unsettling sur...
Directed by Bill Plympton • 2001 • United States
Starring Dan McComas, Francine Lobis, George Casden
Marooned by design in a strange asteroid inhabited by bizarre creatures, a left-for-dead astronaut miraculously heads back to Earth with a band of abominable mutant aliens to tie up some loose en...
Directed by Bill Plympton • 2004 • United States
Starring Eric Gilliland, Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Silverman
Bill Plympton spoofs the teen movies of a bygone era in this gothic, 1950s-set high school comedy about a love triangle that goes terribly wrong as two murdered students return to their pro...
Directed by Bill Plympton • 2008 • United States
An embittered misanthrope is transformed into a reluctant do-gooder when a pair of angelic wings with a mind of their own sprouts from his back in this riotously surreal tale of unwanted redemption from animation visionary Bill Plympton. Told enti...
Directed by Bill Plympton • 2013 • United States
Starring Sophia Takal, Jeremy Baumann, Alex Markowitz
Through his singular, freewheeling animation style, Bill Plympton weaves an emotionally rich, unconventional tale of love, jealousy, and reconciliation. In a fateful bumper-car collision, Jake ...
Directed by Bill Plympton and Jim Lujan • 2016 • United States
Starring Jim Lujan, Sara Ulloa, Keith Knight
Bill Plympton teamed with fellow indie cartoonist Jim Lujan for this wild-ride black comedy set in a sleazy 1970s Los Angeles, in which a low-rent bounty hunter named Rod Rosse, the One Ma...
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1987 • United States
A man’s head undergoes all sorts of bizarre contortions and transformations as he sings an original love ballad in Bill Plympton’s Oscar-nominated breakout short, which introduced many to his surreally twisted world.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1988 • United States
As a brave couple demonstrates, the narrator uses quotes, examples, and advice to help us all reach the highest heights in the art of kissing.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1988 • United States
One man’s day in suburbia goes from bad to worse to the absolute pits.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1989 • United States
The perilous road to kicking the habit is explored in twenty-five vignettes involving outlandish suggestions and contraptions.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1991 • United States
Starring Chris Hoffman
A shape-shifting guru delivers an utterly bizarre lesson in enlightenment.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1991 • United States
It’s the little things that really hurt in an epically demented battle between two relentlessly transmogrifying businessmen.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1996 • United States
An animated look at the eleven essential steps needed to make the pilgrim’s progress from finding a woman to making love to her.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 1997 • United States
In eight minutes, animator Bill Plympton gives us twenty-four vignettes: seven are clearly about sex, ten about violence, and seven others deal with human frailties, particularly related to the body as it ages.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 2005 • United States
An ill-fated and unconsummated romance between a fan and a flower magically creates a fairy-tale ending.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 2008 • United States
Starring Matthew Modine
We all think of Santa as “Jolly Old St. Nick.” But who knew that he has a hidden dark side? Bill Plympton uncovers Kris Kringle’s flirtation with politics and greed.
Directed by Bill Plympton • 2010 • United States
Bill Plympton spins a children’s fable about the power of advertising, the meaning of life, and ultimately the test of a mother’s love.
