GREAT BRUCE A’MIGHTY

André Cholmondeley very kindly offered to phone Bruce Bickford and ask him a few questions on my behalf. While doing so, their conversation naturally evolved and André asked a few of his own, making for one heck of a great little interview.

AC: How did you first meet FZ and get to work with him?

BB: I was in LA, in early 1973, looking for work...and I just kept going around town, to the animation houses...and I showed the stuff to the people who did stuff for 200 Motels, and they put me in touch with Cal Schenkel. And then he arranged for me to meet Frank.

AC: OK. So you were familiar with Frank Zappa's music and his 200 Motels movie, then?

BB: Yeah.

AC: Were you a big fan, had you seen him play live by then?

BB: Yeah - I saw him play live in 1970.

AC: So that was it? Schenkel introduced you and the rest is history, right? That was it: Frank immediately wanted to work with you?

BB: He called me back a year later. I went back down with him and we started talking about making a movie. I moved down there from Seattle in June 1974 through 1980.

AC: Did he pretty much just let you get on with it, or did he direct any of the claymations used in Baby Snakes?

BB: Oh, he directed, um, 1% of it maybe [chuckles]. I was usually working totally alone.

AC: Give us an example of one of your ‘blues raps’.

BB: An example of what it sounds like?

AC: Yes.

BB: Well, it’s best when I have some people there...coz that gets me hyped up. I'll just give you the opening line [chuckles]. It goes like...well, you know, you have to act a little if you're gonna sing [laughing - drops his voice into semi-faux blues-guy vocals]: “Lemme tell you a li’l story about a place called Monster Road...Now you might think, there couldn't be a road named that...Well, the road was named for the people who originally lived there...They were the monsters, but that's another story...This story is about the road, and about all the other weird stuff that goes on there.” So, that's the opening line.

AC: OK! Well that's great!! We'll have to do one with some music. Maybe I'll dig up the tape from when you performed with Project/Object in Seattle and Andrew can insert the audio link here... Do you have a favourite spoon?

BB: Um...what's that for?

AC: Well, I'm not sure...that's a deep reference! Maybe he's talking about that guy from Seattle - Spoonman?

BB: Well I met him once! I met him at that concert where they were playing with the Persuasions and the Seattle Symphony. Steve Vai, I think, was there. Yeah, he was there - a bunch of old Zappa members.

IB: That'd be An Evening Of The Music of Frank Zappa at the Avery Fisher Hall...but I simply meant do you have a favoured utensil consisting of a small shallow bowl at the end of a handle-type-of-cutlery – or flatware - kind-of-a-thing! But never mind!

AC: OK. Warren Cuccurullo told Andrew he’d love to get you to animate his song, Think Kartoonz. Is there a chance of that?

BB: Well I met him, last time I was in LA. When was that? I think last August. He had some...well he was talking about animating the 9/11 image, or something like that. But it was very vague. He was very hard to, uh, communicate with. He just...he'd keep changing the subject on me [laughs]. Even though I, ya know, I knew what he wanted, and everything. He would just...and he never got back to me! Sometimes, someone else has to make the first step [laughs]!

AC: Well, yeah! I hope that happens. I love Warren - his music, and as an artist. I've met him a couple of times, and I'm actually probably real interested in some of his 9/11 thoughts. But he does, um...he's interesting, sometimes when you're trying to communicate with him! So, in other words, you would do it? But he's just gotta get in touch and kinda make things happen, huh?

BB: Well, he's gotta WANT it. I mean, he's gotta want it bad! He's gonna want to get ME interested. Coz what I do...if I'm gonna do anything, I WANT to do it, I want to make something interesting, but good! It takes a hell of a lot of commitment. And I don't just want to fiddle around. I want to have some kind of plan. I'm just frustrated as hell. I'm working on my own stuff, coz it's all I can do. I can barely do that, coz it just takes so much organisation to get the right images and everything. But I'm going ahead with it, and I'm gonna keep doing this...gonna keep doing my own projects until someone comes along who feels like gettin' serious.

AC: Do you get a lot of requests like that - where people ask you about doing some animation, and then they don't follow up?

BB: Not a lot, because I'm not in the mainstream. But I get requests sometimes from these crackpots... and people who are sincere, but they overvalue their own product, ya know? They think their story or their music is really hot, when it's dog crap! They want my animation, but they’re offering peanuts.

AC: But you're not saying Warren's a crackpot, right?!

BB: No - he's got money!

AC: And you like his music?

BB: Yeah.

AC: What do you think of Wild Strawberries?

BB: It was a movie...oh , look, they mentioned that in the documentary [Monster Road]. Or I must have mentioned the movie. It was something my dad liked. We were just talking about my dad a lot in the documentary, and so that's where that came from. Wild Strawberries wasn't one of my favourite movies...I didn't understand it very good [laughs]. But it was one of my dad's favourites.

AC: Do you think Bill Gates will ever help finance a war movie for you?

BB: What kind of war movie?

AC: I guess Andrew means one that you dramatize...with your animation.

BB: It's up to Bill Gates. I have no influence.

AC: Have you ever met Bill Gates?

BB: No. I think Paul Allen [co-founder of Microsoft with Gates] would be more accessible. But even then, you'd have to go through ALL kinds of stuff. I've heard Paul Allen has these five rules when you go to talk with him: you can’t look him in the eye; you can’t shake hands with him; you can’t ask HIM questions - he'll do the asking. Or - if you're talking about what you're doing , if you say ‘Now I've got an idea for this’, you don't go ahead and tell him the idea - you wait for him to say ‘Okay, tell me the idea’. THEN you get to tell it. He's gotta have these things set up - probably coz HE gets hit by every kind of crackpot. Even rich crackpots! [laughs]. He's gotta have that filter to get down to business.

AC: I would go for Steven Jobs. His company seems more supportive of art and artists. What are you working on right now? You've got proposals out...you're trying to get grants...getting your work out to Disney and others. Does that describe what you're working on right now? Can you add to that?

BB: Well, that's about it. Doing illustrations, mainly. And then trying to back 'em up with some written descriptions of the scenes. I’m just getting the flavour of the exotic places in this pirate story [laughs] and trying to make it as ethnic as possible.

AC: OK, coz right now you do have some real ethnic pirates...you've got these Somali guys.

BB: Yeah! I've got some drawings of them.

AC: Are you gonna throw in any Irish/Scottish ethnicity -- the 'classic pirates'?

BB: Well, yeah! Those guys come back from the past. But there's all these modern day pirates as well.

AC: Sure! But you've got the classic, the Pirates Of The Carribean type-guys - the Johnny Depp model, though they made him a lot nicer than most pirates act!

BB: Yep- that period.

AC: These illustrations you're doing - are they line drawings? Paintings? Sketches?

BB: Mostly line drawings. But I'm colouring a few of them...and that's where the time...I mean, that's where the labour comes in. Well, or just simple line drawings or coloured stuff...it's just, equally, you know, time consuming.

AC: OK, well great! And, of course, we are all hoping you can make the Zappanale.

BB: Hey, how do you spell Zappanale?

AC: [André spells Zappanale] Like ‘biennale’, I'm probably saying it wrong. Ya know the French word for...?

BB: Well, there's a bacchanal!

AC: Exactly - same word-root, I believe. This is the 20th anniversary, so it's a real important one. Terry Bozzio is gonna be there. Bobby Martin, Ike Willis, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Don Preston, Roy Estrada, Denny Walley - really a fantastic bunch of people, and most of them people you’ve worked with already. At least in the movie. It's in north eastern Germany, right near the Baltic Sea. It’s really charming. It's this old, kinda East German town. It's really green, about three hours from Berlin [André tells Bruce about the Molli, the beach, the Ost See, the schedule, etc.].

BB: What's the name of the town?

AC: It's actually near Rostock...the next town over, where the downtown is. Well, it's really a village, called Bad Doberan.

[Bruce writing it all down]

AC: Alright! See you soon! Bye!

To be continued...