Recess! Media

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That’s Paul McCartney describing the plot of Tuesday, the award-winning picture book by David Weisner, which McCartney has transformed into an animated film, set to his own musical score. Tuesday is part of a trilogy of animated films that McCartney has produced that are available on DVD called Paul McCartney: The Music and Animation Collection. Each is, in its own way, part of McCartney’s homage to the art of the animated film.

McCartney took an active role in the production of these films, including his doing the voices for a number of their characters. The first film in the group, Tropic Island Hum, is based on an original story by McCartney and his late wife Linda about a utopian island that gives sanctuary to animals that are preyed upon in the everyday world. It’s also a musician’s paradise where, each night, the animals, in total and complete harmony, can make music together, in a jam that’s made all the more beautiful by the elegant, traditional cell animation that McCartney and his production team employ.

The final story in the group is based on the popular Rupert the Bear series that McCartney remembers reading during his own childhood in England. He was especially taken, as a boy, by one of the complex drawings from a Rupert story about a concert of frogs, and McCartney has made this the centerpiece of the film, setting the frogs’ triumphal chorus to a new version of his own song, “We’ll All Stand Together.” What has inspired McCartney to do these films?

Brief sound clip