Interview with Seth Swirsky

Synopsis: VanTongerloo is a hippopotamus. He had a dream. You have to see it to believe it.

IAG: How did the project come about?

SS: I was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They were doing an exhibit on the very early days of photography (1839-1869). There was a photograph of a sleeping hippopotamus at the London Zoo in 1852. That picture stayed with me for a few weeks. One day, I just started writing verses in rhyme about this hippo, who I named “VanTongerloo” after the Belgian, mid-20th century abstract painter Georges VanTongerloo. The name just fit.

IAG: As a professional songwriter, I’m very used to writing lyrics that rhyme, so writing the verses was not too much of a departure for me. I quite enjoyed it!

SS: The more I wrote, the more quirky it got. From “Pearshapes” — VanTongerloo’s juggler friend — to “A La Mode”, the carousel horse who bailed them out of a scary predicament — the project took an unpredictable, yet natural, shape. I originally thought it was going to be a book, but  I had written five books on various subjects, so I wanted to try a different artistic genre. That’s how VanTongerloo’s Dream went from being a book to a stop animation movie.

IAG: More specifically how did the story come about? Dream, acid trip, or some other source?

SS: I always have to be very excited by any new idea I’m considering moving forward with. Once I fall in love with a new idea,  it’s just so much fun to work on. With VanTongerloo, once I started writing the verses and putting pictures to them, it all just flowed. Hi-octane creativity is its own drug-free zone.

IAG: Have you shown this film to children? If so, what has been their reaction?

SS: I first showed it to my adult friends who are parents and they showed it to their kids. And, of course I was thrilled when they reported back how much their kids loved it and asked every night if there parents could show it to them again!

Even more fulfilling was how much the parents loved it. That’s very satisfying to me because I try to make art in whatever form — songs, movies, books or paintings — that I hope will appeal to all ages. As an example, both parents and children sing Beatles songs, right? So, I made VanTongerloo’s Dream NOT with children in mind, but for people of all ages. I don't think art should be based on demographics.

IAG: Let’s get into the technical side of the animation. To those of us who aren’t familiar with the nuts and bolts of animation, walk us through the process of creating and animating the visuals.

SS: I actually have no idea how to do animation. So after putting all the visual pieces for each sequence together, I hired a talented animator, Calla Schubert, to put my visual ideas into motion. She did the stop animation and I sent her back a ton of notes almost every day for a year and a half.  I’m highly meticulous about every detail in all my creative endeavors. Things like, how much time between sequences, exact placement of the characters, etc. It took a lot of time to get all that I envisioned just right. 

When the sequences were assembled, I then went to the recording studio and wrote and recorded the music for the movie. I had a very good time doing that. Many of my pop songs have been the themes in major motion pictures (Legally Blond, Two Weeks Notice, Big Daddy, among others) but this was the first time I had written music specifically for a movie. It was something new for me and very fun. 

I flirted with the idea of having a British voice do the narration for the movie but I decided to do it myself because I knew where I wanted all the many inflections to be.

IAG: I think this is the first time I’ve ever asked a filmmaker about the creation of their logline, but I think it’s fantastic and I’m curious about it. My personal process behind writing log lines is that I write and re-write and re-write it again about fifty times until I settle on something that feels right. Did it take you many drafts to whittle your logline down to the elegantly simple perfection that it is, or did you give birth to this version on your first try?

SS: You know, film festivals ask you to do a synopsis of your movie. I tried to do that but found I was basically giving away the entire movie! So, I told myself to STOP thinking and just talk out loud to myself and describe what the movie actually was. And out came: “VanTongerloo is a hippopotamus. He had a dream. You have to see it to believe it”. I knew that log line was correct as I heard myself say it. The trick is just trying to keep the description REAL and SIMPLE.

IAG: Lastly, what are three films or filmmakers that have strongly influenced your work?

For VanTongerloo’s Dream, only one work influenced me: The Beatles’ 1968 film Yellow Submarine.