An interview with Kaj Pindal By Marc Glassman Kaj Pindal is one of those fortunate people who find their calling in life at an early age. His broad generous face, highlighted by a prominent nose and a wide mouth set off by laugh-lined cheeks, announce the features of a born animator. While still a high school student during the Second World War, Pindal worked on the first major Danish animated film before having to flee his native Copenhagen weeks before graduation as the Nazis had taken exception to the anti—Hitler cartoons he had contributed to an underground newspaper. After the war, and a belated high school graduation, Pindal embarked on a career that has taken him to Sweden, Germany, England, the United States and, of course, Canada. Though he has done brilliant commercial work for Richard Williams and contributed to the cult classic Twice Upon a Time, Pindal's reputation rests with the films he either directed or animated while at the National Film Board, most notably The Peep Show, I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and What On Earth! A natural cartoonist and artist, Pindal has the skill to make anything come alive—from cars to cows to old ladies to young chicks. Pindal is a tinkerer who loves all things mechanical, particularly trains. It is fitting that his barnyard creations, Peep, Chirp and Quack have been adapted to a variety of formats ranging from black-and-white film to CD-ROMs. This interview with Pindal concentrates on the evolution of The Peep Show through differing technologies. It was conducted in March 1997, at the NFB's Toronto office. A K E 0 N E 13 MG: Kaj, you created a group of barnyard could be looked upon as an embellished characters led by a young chick called Peep for comic strip. I once had a tiny little motor an NFB film in the early 1960s. Although you scooter and I was very proud of it because I have worked on numerous projects over the was cyclist, and to me a motor on a cycle was years, you have consistently returned to these a wonder. But someone already used to simple, timeless creations. What are the roots motorcycles would have thought of it as a of Peep and why have you continued to be terrible compromise, a comedown. There is interested in those baby animals for so many room for that middle thing. years? So your little motor scooter is not a full KP: I come from a time when there was no animated film but it is not a comic strip either. television, but there was the anticipation of e television. I grew up in Denmark and was With Peep, that idea has served me very very much taken by the cartoons in well. There is a pocket for that. In 1961, newspapers—the comic strips and the working at the Film Board close to politically satirical cartoons. As a young Norman McLaren, the whole atmosphere animator and cartoonist, I imagined that was to not look like Disney, but to try to when television came it would be used as an reinvent animation. They had calculators electronic press. All the cartoon work from in the office, and adding-machine paper the papers would move right in and figure in them. It was a lot bigger than 35mm prominently in television. Television, I film. I thought, why not put the paper on thought, was going to open up this wonderful its side, then you would have a frame like world. But when television came, two things a film reel or a comic strip. I started went wrong. First of all, with the sort of fiddling with adding-machine rolls, budgets they had for programs, there was no drawing simple creatures, ducks and way to accommodate animation, and chickens, in black and white. secondly, all the stations decided to be neutral politically. See, newspapers are wonderful Why draw birds? because they put a political spin on something. In television, you couldn't do that. It was kind of a compromise. First of all, I There seemed to be no place for a drawing knew this process had to be for children. man with a point of view. I have always been Secondly, it should be simple, and what can interested in doing things for children.I be more simple than baby birds? Thirdly, thought, well, animation for television is not because they are so small, their movements going to be like Snow White but maybe are jerky. If you watch a bird, it just goes there is room for something simpler, maybe from hole to hole. there is another way of accom- modating drawing and So Peep was a very logical character to have for Kai Pindal flo animation for tele- this kind of animation. vision. Instead of looking at it as Yes. I started very quickly to do a rough watered down storyboard with this adding-machine Disney, it paper. At the time I wasn't sure how I ......L__ was going to do the final drawings. Then I went to talk to Stanley Jackson [a veteran NFB writer, actor and voice]. 1111(44( 411111i1111 He replaced Lorne Greene as the "voice" for the Board. Yes, that's right. And he liked children. He had never had a Vie child but he had been a school teacher. So he took a liking to Peep. We discussed it and I From right: realized I had to draw the story Peep, with pen and ink if it were to be filmed It was natural in those days to Quack make it in black and white, especially for and Chirp television. Colour had come to film, but television was black and white. 14 Around that time, I found these new marker pens, with ink Scott. He called me in to discuss what we could do to create cartridges in them. I found using those I could get the animated films in Ontario [where the Board had rarely smooth, even colour I needed that would not change from produced animation]. He said video is upon us and there is drawing to drawing. With them, I could colour in the very little at the Film Board for very young children. Then I characters. I did them in colour even though they were shot told him about the old Peep Show, which he didn't know in black and white. I needed to know what tone of grey they anything about, and suggested that we could revive it. We would be. It was simple to do, and then we left the checked with NFB Distribution on how the picture had background white. Again, my reference was comic strips. fared, and it turned out that, for the year 1985, The Peep They have no movement, no colour—works fine. I have Show had more than 400 rentals a year, which was not bad. always felt that when faced with limitations, restrictions, you So that gave us a boost. I got the budget to make a have to use your ingenuity to overcome them. They often storyboard for a half-hour show, which we decided to break end up as an exploration rather than a hindrance. up into three pieces. To whom did you show your adding—machine drawings and For the first episode, we took the original story, remade that demo reel? and added two more stories. But we had some problems. First of all, this film was being made in colour and the technique I Tom Daly was the head of the studio at that time and Colin used in the black-and-white version had to change. We Low was our immediate boss. I had no problem getting it found that I could paint the programmed, and that was in 1962. characters in colour, but I couldn't paint the They both liked the idea? background without it becoming blotchy. We Yes. Of course, it was very much done in line with the wanted to use limited whole thinking of the time. It had to be done very fast animation as we had and very inexpensively. I did The Peep Show [1962] in in the original Peep about a month. I had storyboarded it but the actual and, you see, the drawings took a month. background became blotchy when it You animated it totally by yourself? was semi- animated. Totally, yes. Annie, my wife, played the music on a toy instrument, as she did on the later version in 1987, and Stanley Jackson was the storyteller. So what happened with The Peep Show? I did it very fast. When it came out, people seemed to like it. We went to Toronto, Colin Low and I, to try to sell it to the CBC. Michael Spencer was with us, but for some reason we didn't succeed. A French version was made, called Les aventures de Piou -Piou. Jacques Bobet liked it very much and saw to it that it was done in French. In the meantime, Derek Lamb and the Old Lady project came along. Derek had been developing an animated version of the song for a long time. Also, Wolf Koenig became the head of the animation department. Wolf had been a very strong supporter of Peep but he was a very practical man. Suddenly, the Old Lady became a priority, and I was asked to work on it with Derek. So Peep was put under the mat. So more than 20 years go by. I don't know, there were so many other opportunities at the Film Board that somehow I forgot about Peep...Twenty-five years went by.