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Plympton's latest film, the feature-length I Married a Strange Person, was shown in this year's dramatic feature film competition at Sundance, the first time his work has ever been in that prestigious category. "I've been traveling since September, going to two or three festivals a month. I wanted to exploit this film--I wanted to travel and relax and have some fun," he says. "The people at Sundance have great enthusiasm for film--you hear them talking about the movie as they're walking out. They ask questions." While this year's Grand Jury Prize went to the gritty urban drama Slam, Plympton's film had people talking. They talked about the tale of newlyweds Grant and Kelly Boyer; they talked about the couple's strange sex life and the unusual powers the muscular husband has over evil men trying to take over the world--sort of an if-you-dream-it-it'll-happen story. It's a very strange movie, and that suits the Portland-born artist. "I take being called strange or weird as a compliment," he says, chuckling. "My film is not for sophisticated audiences. Politically correct audiences with high morals wouldn't like it. It's just a wacky, sexual, violent bloodfest, basically." The feature film began as a short--a skewed how-to video called How to Make Love to a Woman. The short was featured at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and served as a calling card for Plympton's larger vision. How to Make Love... is included within I Married a Strange Person, a move some might say is a way of lengthening the feature without doing additional work. Plympton looks at it a bit differently. "When you're an independent like this, it's a matter of trying to make as much money off as little work as possible," he says. "I've doubled up on jobs, tripled up on jobs--get a lot of uses out of one thing." Plympton funds his unusual creativity through the television commercials he creates for everyone from AT&T to NBC, Soloflex to Microsoft. All of his work--including his animated collections and live-action features like J. Lyle and Guns on the Clackamas--is available for perusal and purchase over the Internet. But while computers have invaded his life from a marketing perspective, the question he hates most to hear from audiences is "Do you plan to go into computer animation?" "I don't know why people assume that most animation is done by computers these days, when it's really only about 5 or 10 percent of the animation out there," he says. Plympton continues to hand-draw, color and create the cels that make up his films. The absurdity of his art is its trademark. Two shoes having wild sex as their human owners bonk on the bed would take an entirely different look were it done by computers. It's Plympton's pencil-to-paper style that sets his work apart--a style that's garnered him an Oscar nomination in the past. But even Plympton admits that artists need to continue growing to sustain their creativity. "My next film is a lot more personality oriented, a lot more psychological. It's still funny--it's about about two twins, one evil, one good, and how they interact--but not so bloody or sexual as I Married a Strange Person. I'm trying to do new things." Being in the environment of a film festival like Sundance gets the animator thinking about process. "Usually I write the script very fast, and I think it hasn't served me well," he says. "Seeing some of these films here, like Next Stop, Wonderland [bought last week by Miramax for $6 million], you see all the detail in each shot, in each bit of dialogue and in each little phrase or action. "I realize I get too sloppy, and I should really explore every little possibility in each shot. So for this one, I'm going to take a year to push the script as much as possible and see how far I can take it." Plympton sees his life in 10 years as quite similar to the life he now leads, and that makes him happy. "It's so much fun," he says, laughing. "I'm sort of like a mini studio now. "In the last 12 years, I've done 20 shorts, 30 commercials, six or seven feature films. And they're all on video, and that has brought in income that gets channeled to my new work. If I can keep doing that until the day I die, then that's just fantastic."
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