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| Images courtesy of Deaf Crocodile Films |
Deaf Crocodile Films at present is my favorite boutique
releasing label. Specializing primarily
in Eastern European films never before released in the United States or
rereleasing renowned domestic classics published in lovingly restored and packaged
special edition blu-ray sets, the company formerly partnered with Vinegar
Syndrome before making the jump to Diabolikdvd’s webstore with an ongoing array
of otherwise hard-to-find titles.
However, as evidenced by their recent (now sold-out) restoration and
release of Academy Award winning American animator and cartoonist Bill Plympton’s
debut feature length film The Tune, they’re just as interested in
domestic films as the ones coming from across the pond.
The animator behind the 1987 short film Your Dog and
the timelessly hilarious 1991 short Push Comes to Shove involving two
well-dressed middle-aged men trying to kill each other in a succession of Looney
Tunes styled warring, Bill Plympton first started in 1968 with his short
film The Turn On and kept working on shorts as well as music videos
including but not limited to four videos for “Weird” Al Yankovic and even one
for Kanye West. Having amassed a large
body of work that seemingly, the animator and relative to actress Martha
Plympton decided to mount with his first feature.
Entitled The Tune, it functions as a kind of
compilation piece that consists of a narrative involving a songwriter trying to
come up with the perfect song for his girlfriend while incorporating several of
his short films including The Wiseman, Dig My Do, Tango
Schmango and the aforementioned Push Comes to Shove. Surreal, absurdly hilarious and a bit of
a Greatest Hits collection, the previously hard-to-obtain sixty-nine-minute
feature is partially a musical comedy centered around Del (Daniel Neiden) seeking
to write a song for his beleaguered girlfriend Didi (co-writer and songwriter
Maureen McElheron) only to get lost in the Alternate Universe of Flooby Nooby
which exists somewhere between Toon Town from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and
Twin Peaks.
Featuring a bevy of increasingly strange situations and
songs including a love song involving a hamburger and a French fry with a
Cherry Pie and Scoop of Ice Cream, a series of shifting animated pastel styles
and a premise with juxtapositions weirder and more psychedelic than anything in
Halloween is Grinch Night, The Tune restored by the Academy Film
Archive in 2016 and finally released commercially on blu-ray disc by Deaf
Crocodile Films is one majorly surreal jaunt.
With its strange concoction of otherworldly musical numbers seemingly
stemming from the minds of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti with a zany
offbeat sensibility seemingly borne out of small-town America and all of its
deadpan weirdness from David Bryne’s True Stories, The Tune while
hastily compiling together a number of the short films into the narrative is a
fun if now mind-melting surrealist romp.
One of the treats behind this Deaf Crocodile package
includes several of his separate short films including Your Face, How
to Kiss, Guard Dog and a restoration of Winsor McCay’s final 1921
film The Flying House – Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend with restoration and
voicework provided by Plymptoon Studios in 2011. There’s also a newly conducted interview with
the three key creative players Bill Plympton, Maureen McElheron and voice actor
Daniel Neiden moderated by Deaf Crocodile founder and owner Dennis Bartok along
with a trailer for an upcoming film project called Slide. Lastly this wouldn’t be a Deaf Crocodile
package without FilmFreakCentral critic Walter Chaw’s informative essay
included in the collector’s booklet.
A genuine original American artist who could arguably be a
kid cousin to the aforementioned David Lynch and David Byrne for his uniquely
peculiar and oddball regard for small town American lifestyles, Bill Plympton
while prolific and still working never really got the full recognition he
deserved in the blu-ray/streaming era until now. An important slice of surrealist animated
Americana that is unmistakably the creation of Bill Plympton from the rough
hand-drawn animated style to the freely wading through a cartoon landscape that
isn’t quite as abrasively violent or affronting as Dumbland or prickly
as Don Hertzfeldt but nevertheless leaves an indelible impression subverting
what we think we know about life in the United States.
--Andrew Kotwicki
