Two-time Oscar nominee Bill Plympton is turning to Kickstarter to finance his eighth feature-length film. Deadline reports that the animator is looking to raise $100,000 to back Revengeance, a neo-noir styled feature influenced by films like The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, and Inherent Vice. Jim Lujan wrote the script, which follows the misadventures of “a low-rent bounty hunter named Ron Rossi, the one-man posse.” Lujan describes the story like so:
He gets entangled with this job with from an ex-biker, ex-wrestler, now U.S. Senator named Senator Deathface and he wants Ron to find something that was stolen and he needs to find the girl that stole it.
Plympton will still draw each cel by hand, then give them to his support staff to scan and color. His fellow animator Lujan will do most of the voices, with Kids In The Hall’s Dave Foley also signed on to do voice work. Adam Rackoff—known for helping bring Matthew Modine’s Full Metal Jacket Diary iPad App Project to life—will executive produce alongside Plympton and Lujan.
This is Plympton’s third time using Kickstarter to fund his films; two years ago, he raised more than $100,00 (from fans of MTV’s Liquid Television, no doubt) for Cheatin’, a film that will briefly tour around the country after a week-long run this week in New York City. Plympton says of Kickstarter:
Before [Kickstarter], I’d have to go out to Hollywood and do pitch sessions. That’s very frustrating. They don’t get it. I just said ‘Why don’t I go to my fans? They’re the proper place to go (to raise money).’ I really think it’s the wave of the future. In the past, I’ve financed myself but this project is going so fast that I don’t think I can do that in time.
One of the cooler bonuses being offered to backers is the opportunity to be an extra in a Bill Plympton film; for $1,500, Plympton will animate the donor’s likeness into the film. More information is available on the Revengeance website.