Bill Plympton’s Cheatin’ opened theatrically Friday in NYC and I thought it would be fun to explore one of my favorite scenes: the hit man getting ready to the beat of Bolero. Cheatin’ represents a sizable investment of around $400,000 and yet Plympton still required $100,000 from a successful Kickstarter campaign to finish the digital watercolor work that was essential to the aesthetic. But this colorful and hyper-real depiction of hardboiled lust and violence represents Plympton’s masterpiece. Recalling James M. Cain with plenty of shadows and sleaze, it’s also very operatic and even balletic. Plympton admits that it took him to a whole new artistic place and it shows. Like Idiots and Angels, there’s no dialogue, but this is a much more ambitious panto with flashbacks and fantasies that seamlessly meld together like a surreal dream. Read more
