By Woody Weingarten
An online bio of the animator notes that “Plymptoons Studios started in 1987 with the creation of the Bill Plympton’s Oscar-nominated short film ‘Your Face.’”
It neglects to mention that many fans regard Plympton as an animation and graphic design genius.
As if to prove them right, the 77-year-old’s credited with animating, writing, producing, and directing Slide, a new, dark, musical Western that acerbically spoofs Hollywood while feeling like an animated graphic novel.
…the flick’s worth looking for…
The 1 hour, 20-minute flick spotlights a slide-guitar player, the title character, who assumes multiple roles but always keeps his cowboy hat on.
Action begins quickly, when Slide faces off with two obese, evil twin brothers, Mayor Jeb Carver, who kills people without blinking, and Zeke, the town’s sheriff, whose niece Delilah is a plaintive Lucky Buck Saloon and Bordello hooker who craves a singing career. The brothers aim to cut down the forest, pave over Sourdough Creek, their 1940s Oregon logging town, and build a casino.
To make all that happen, the twins enlist the aid of an army of assassins, one at a time. One of Plympton’s most creative inventions, tangentially, is a contest for most evil laugh among the hired killers.
Slide, a combo hero/anti-hero who at one point runs a bulldozer, seemingly can do anything. He slips through a tornado, fights off a humongous Hellbug, saves Delilah from a torrent of bullets, stops a cadre of protesters who want to burn down the Lucky Buck, and, naturally, joins two other musicians onstage.
Plympton’s signature hand-drawn animation is stylistically sketchy and primitive but highly artistic. The result is either a viewer’s delight (along with multiple laugh-out-loud moments) or repulsion.
The multi-talented artiste, who funded Slide in part via an $85,000 Kickstarter campaign, is often considered the King of Indie animation. His skill set has resulted in his winning a second Oscar nomination, and collaborating with Madonna, Kanya West, and Weird Al (on videos and book projects),
Plympton has compared the music in Slide — in the style of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline — to the outrageousness of Blazing Saddles, one of his favorite movies.
He’s written that the flick “looks beautiful” and is “different from any other animated film I’ve ever seen.” Accurate, but spoof or no spoof, this feature film contains so much amusing but hardline sexual content that parents should keep their kids away.
According to the IndieWire website, Plympton noted last year at the Mendocino Film Festival that he likes “to try to break the rules as much as possible.” Clearly, Slide, succeeds in doing just that.
Slide has had difficulty finding a distributor, so it currently has no opening dates, and it was pulled from the Mill Valley Film Festival, where it was supposed to be screened in two movie houses this week.
The flick’s worth looking for, though — whenever animator / writer / producer / director Bill Plympton pins down what he needs to pin down.
ASR Senior Contributor Woody Weingarten has decades of experience writing arts and entertainment reviews and features. A member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, he is the author of three books, The Roving I; Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates; and Rollercoaster: How a Man Can Survive His Partner’s Breast Cancer. Contact: [email protected] or https://woodyweingarten.com or http://www.vitalitypress.com/
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