Don Hertzfeldt is an anomaly. With cartoons going bigger and better, continually improving in detail and scope, he seems fundamentally anachronistic. After all, he not only works exclusively in pen and paper, his drawings are mainly little more than stick figures (gasp!). And yet, even though he insists on using techniques considered by many to be antiquated, he is on the cutting edge of animated films (take THAT, Pixar!).

Those of you who have attended a few of the earlier Spike and Mike animation festivals are no doubt familiar with Billy’s Balloon, a cynical parody of The Red Balloon in which an unsuspecting playground of children is more or less decimated by balloons — a film that garnered him a nomination for the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival at the tender age of 21. His next film, Rejected, would earn him an Oscar nomination — no small feat for a 23-year-old. The film — about a series of advertisements made by Hertzfeldt that were so bizarre, inappropriate, or offensive that they were rejected outright by the advertisers — would cement him as one of the most unique and original animation filmmakers working today. (In 2004, the IMDB ranked it as the third best short film of all time.)

He is truly a class apart from your traditional cartoonist. Generally devoid of backgrounds and anything other than the characters themselves, his films deal with themes of death, depression, illness, consumerism, and oblivion. While there’s an inherent cynical humor to it all, there’s no escaping the bleak undertones, especially given his most recent work:

A simple narrative about a man named Bill suffering an increasingly debilitating and disorienting mental illness. Entitled Everything Will Be OK, it was as bleak as it was visually inventive. This would prove to serve as the opening chapter of a trilogy — the second chapter of which has just been completed. Mr. Hertzfeldt is currently touring the US with his film, I Am So Proud Of You, and Buzzine was fortunate enough to get a moment of his time to chat with him.

Louis Elfman: How is the tour going so far?

Don Hertzfeldt: The first leg wrapped up last week, and I’m just home for the weekend before heading right back out the door (next up is Missouri, Chicago, Omaha). So far, it’s been fantastic — all nine screenings in the first six cities sold out beyond everyone’s expectations, and the adrenaline’s really kicked in. I haven’t been good at sleeping in hotel rooms, and right now I’m just doing my best to stay healthy through the end of November, but I’ve been having a great time. It’s really been unlike any other time I’ve traveled with a new movie.

LE: You have a bit of a reputation for shunning the limelight. Is this live on-stage interview more for your fans or more of a personal catharsis?

DH: I guess, hopefully, it’s for both of us. I Am So Proud of You took just under two years of production in sort of solitary confinement, so to suddenly be jetting around and finally watching the thing unfold for people every night has been really important for me. Of course, you get bigger audiences when your movie goes to DVD or TV, but you can’t actually be there to see it happen, and meeting and talking to everyone about it and feeding off their energy has gone a long way to recharge my batteries.

LE: Why did you walk away from The Animation Show [an animation festival he put on with Beavis And Butthead creator Mike Judge]?

DH: There were lots of reasons, but basically MTV came on board as an investor in the third season, and I think that sort of changed the chemistry of everything. It wasn’t really a simple or fun situation where Mike [Judge] and I got together to program the films anymore. Before we started working on the fourth season, some executive at MTV said The Animation Show was “boring” and suggested we do an all-comedy show. That somehow freaked everybody out and they all rolled over to doing this comedy thing. I think they thought they could promote it easier if it was all comedy or something. It felt really weird and wrong to me. I never thought The Animation Show should have preconceived notions about the films. We always just tried to reflect whatever the animators around the world happened to be doing at the time. You need a strong mix of very different stuff to make a solid program, and even if you thought an all-comedy program was a great idea, the simple fact is there just isn’t enough great comedy being done in animated shorts every year to fill out a quality 90-minute show. So the content really began to suffer. They started scouting YouTube cartoons to find more comedy to fill this void. The show was just drifting further away from what it used to be, and it just wasn’t really interesting to me anymore. Allowing nothing but comedy knocked out most of what I’d planned on programming anyway. I figured if I stuck around, I’d just be arguing with people every day, so eventually it was the best thing to just let it go and focus on my own stuff.

LE: Do you miss it?

DH: Honestly, not for a second. I think, towards the end, it was just a big ball of stress.

LE: What can you tell us about this new upcoming TV project you’ve mentioned in your online journal?

DH: It’s a mini-series set about 100 years ago. It’s not related to anything else I’ve done. If I can land the team of artists I want, there’s a very good chance it will be amazing.

LE: What is the team of artists you’re gunning for? Why does the project hinge on them?

DH: Well, any project this size would be pretty impossible for me to animate solo, or it would take me 20 years, so I’m really looking forward to not having to draw every frame for a change

LE: Are you worried that your move into TV might be interpreted as “giving in” to the corporate beast?

DH: No, not really. Every now and then there’s some great stuff on TV, and I like the episodic format because you can tell a longer story.

LE: Well what does Don Hertzfeldt think is great TV? Are we talking Mad Men, Seinfeld, or Top Chef…?

DH: Hmm…none of the above. I’ve heard Mad Men is good, though, but i haven’t seen it.

LE: Have you started work on Part 3 of the trilogy?

DH: I dove right into I Am So Proud of You soon after finishing Everything Will Be OK, but I’m not nearly as ready to leap right into Part 3. I did have some film left over from Proud, so I shot about a minute’s worth of stuff for 3, but I haven’t watched any of it. That’ll probably just live under the bed for a while. I think I’m going to let things marinate for now. I’ll be on the road with the tour through the end of November, and then I’ll come back and maybe see where my head’s at.

LE: Your work has always had a comical irreverence and absurd humor to it, but it seems to have grown increasingly philosophical and brutally introspective. Are you actively exploring these themes in your work, or is it your work that reveals this to you?

DH: I guess, in a sense sometimes, it feels like some scenes “write themselves” and surprise me. For example, the ending for I Am So Proud of You had actually been written for Chapter 3, and after i transplanted it, it sort of took root in this movie with a different meaning. But I think, by and large, it’s all just the sorts of ideas that I’m interested in right now, and I am actively writing and feeling my way through. I think some of the earlier films are also coming from that same voice, just moving in a different direction.

LE: With the continued success of your work, including the numerous awards that Everything Will Be OK is garnering (close to 40 now), do you feel it’s helping or hindering your work?

DH: Ha, the day you hear me start complaining about success or awards, you have permission to club me over the head.

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