Plympton's Twisted Toons

Plympton's Twisted Toons

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. Enjoy two features and four shorts from the legend himself, streaming on demand.

“Although my films were widely appreciated by the audiences in festivals, the distributors felt there was no audience in the US for adult animation. Now people are starting to realize the wit and beauty of my films.” —Bill Plympton

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Plympton's Twisted Toons
  • At Home with Bill Plympton

    Directed by Metrograph | 12 mins | 2025
    Animator Bill Plympton discusses his life and work as part of our series Plympton's Twisted Toons.

  • I Married a Strange Person!

    Directed by Bill Plympton | 72 mins | 1997
    Newlywed Kerry becomes suspicious of her husband, Grant, when he starts manifesting signs of what seem to be superpowers in Plympton’s surreal film of shape-shifters, unusual sexual couplings, and covetous conglomerates.

    “Probably the socket and most t...

  • Cheatin'

    Directed by Bill Plympton | 77 mins | 2013
    A lurid film noir opera that eschews intelligible dialogue, "Cheatin’" follows a couple, Jake and Ella, from the first blush of attraction at a carnival meet-cute to the cusp of marital disintegration.

    “My second non-dialogue film and I believe it's my...

  • Push Comes to Shove

    Directed by Bill Plympton | 6 mins | 1991
    With its pair of mute, suited protagonists trading increasingly elaborate blows, Bill Plympton’s Cannes Jury Prize-awarded short evokes the surrealist bodily harm of Jan Svankmajer’s "The Dimensions of Dialogue" (1982).

  • Footprints

    Directed by Bill Plympton | 4 mins | 2014
    When a man’s rest is disrupted by the sound of glass shattering at his front door, he grabs his hat and gun and sets off in mad pursuit of the culprit. After traversing land and sea, he is unprepared for what he discovers.

  • Hot Dog

    Directed by Bill Plympton | 6 mins | 2008
    Dangerously determined to win the affection of humankind, Bill Plympton’s beloved, bug-eyed pooch—first seen in Academy Award-nominated 2004 short "Guard Dog"—pits himself against a raging house fire.

  • Santa the Facist Years

    Directed by Bill Plympton | 4 mins | 2008
    Doe-eyed elves manufacture weaponry and snowmen goose-step into Lapland by order of a radicalized Santa in this twisted miniature fantasia, narrated by Matthew Modine.