“Like my films, these stories seemed childish, but were written with both children and grown-ups in mind”: An Interview with Paul Driessen

All Lit Up: You’ve had quite the storied and successful career as an animator and cartoonist. And you’ve hopped around a bit from Holland to the UK and Canada. Can you tell us a little about how you made your way to drawing and animation? How does your personal history factor into your work?

Paul Driessen: In 1947, when I was seven-years-old, my family moved to Moscow where my father had a diplomatic job at the Dutch embassy. It was a time when foreigners where quite isolated from Russian day to day life and, often left by myself, I developed a strong personal fantasy world.

Besides having a father who had a lot of humour and who was a great storyteller, I remember that I was very interested in the cartoons in the various English, American, and French magazines which were laying about at the embassy.

Since I loved to draw, I suppose that’s how I developed a taste for cartooning, basically telling little stories with a twist in a funny drawing style. In retrospect, it was the perfect training for my later career of making animated shorts.

ALU: Has there been a project you’ve worked on that’s had a major effect on your approach to animation?

PD: The first independent film I made at the National Film Board of Canada was quite complex and took me a long time to finish. Therefore, I made sure that my second film about air pollution was a a project which I could handle more easily. The film AIR! was based on a very simple visual idea: a plain horizontal line divided the screen in two, representing subsequently soil, water surface, a wire and land mass, where plants, fish, birds and ultimately man, all desperately breathing for air, succumbed to air pollution.

The simplicity of the design and impact of spare sound effects made me aware of the use of “narrative space,” an approach to filmmaking, which I used in almost all of my later films.

ALU: I realize it’s been many years, but can you tell us a bit about your time working on the Beatles feature Yellow Submarine? What did you take away from that project?

PD: After the success of the early Beatles series produced by United Artists in the US and executed at TVCartoons in London, its director George Dunning, when offered to make a feature based on the Beatles’ music, decided not to repeat the cartoony design of the series but to give it the look of the emerging psychedelic style of the sixties. As one of the 25 animators working on Yellow Submarine, it was a challenging but very enjoyable experience. Since there was no script yet when I was hired, I first helped with ideas and storyboards.for the film. Then, when the outline for a script was more or less established, we developed a style of animation which suited the beautiful design of Heinz Edelmann.

My background in cartooning had always been drawing in black & white. During my time at Yellow Submarine I discovered the world of colour.

When I started my career of making my own independent films at the National Filmboard of Canada shortly after the Yellow Submarine period, one can see my hesitant approach to colour in my first films. It’s a style which is still apparent in my work and shows my care about the importance of colour in my films.

ALU: Not to get too technical, but how do you approach a new animation project?

PD: Usually when animating one of my films I already think of new ideas for other projects. Often there are elements in the film I’m working on which gives me some clues to explore in a next film.

This could be the use of dividing the screen in two or more parts to tell a story; or turning the design upside-down; or animating a story backwards; or a special approach of using sound, all interesting challenges to the kind of animator and storyteller l am.

ALU: Can you tell our readers a little about what to look forward to in your book, My Life in Cartoons?

PD: What I really enjoyed putting in my book was all the great and funny cartoon ideas from a variety of artists which inspired me to do my own work. When reading My Life in Cartoons, I think you will come to an understanding of my taste in cartooning and animation.

I also think that the book describes well the nomad life I lived in order to survive making animated shorts. It’s an art form which, in general, has no commercial value and is very much dependent on subsidies from art foundations from various countries. And last but not least, the book will give you an idea of how I approach the “storytelling-on-screen” ideas of my films.

ALU: Is there something you’re working on at the moment that you’re able to tell us about?

PD: In 2014 I moved to France, a country very supportive of the art of animation. Right now I’m animating a film called Le coucou, a project produced by Sacrebleu, a french animation studio in Paris.

Le coucou is typical of my “narrative space” approach. In this case I use the element of time to set an apprentice cuckoo in a cuckoo clock on the wrong foot, resulting in a surprise ending.

I’m also trying to set up a short multiscreen film called Prumf with help of the National Filmboard of Canada, one of the few places which appreciates ideas which are not based on linear storytelling for films.

Prumf is a film about disinformation, these days an increasingly consequential topic. I look forward to have the opportunity to return to my beloved Montreal, where I spent a large part of my creative life.

ALU: I know you’ve given so many interviews over the years. Is there a question no one has asked that you kind of hoped they would?

PD: Yes, there is one. Since the interviews were always focussed on my films, nobody ever asked me about my stories for books.

I love writing and I very much enjoyed writing my autobiography. Similar to my animation ideas, my written stories are slightly mischievous with unexpected twists at the end. But unlike storytelling in films, these stories rely on the play between the printed word and the illustrations.

All through my life I wrote short stories to be published in book form. Like my films, these stories seemed childish, but were written with both children and grown-ups in mind.

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Paul Driessen drew cartoons from an early age. In 1964 he started to animate commercials at an animation studio near Amsterdam. A few years later George Dunning invited him to work on the Beatles film, The Yellow Submarine in London, UK. In 1970 Paul Driessen emigrated to Canada and started a freelance animation career, producing most of his personal films for the National Film Board of Canada. Since 1976 he also animated and directed many of his films for independent producers in The Netherlands. Of late his projects are also made with the support from Belgian and French production houses.

Paul Driessen has won a great many international awards for his work, including six Lifetime Achievement awards. His film 3Misses earned him an Oscar nomination in 2000.

From 1988 to 2005 Paul Driessen taught animation at the university of Kassel, Germany. Under his guidance his students have won two Oscars.

Paul Driessen is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

My Life in Cartoons is available here on All Lit Up.