EP063 - The Edge of Psychosis w/ Hisko Hulsing

07/30/26 - Season 1 Episode 63

SYNOPSIS:

When Hisko Hulsing is in town, you grab your camera & mic, and hit the trail, ready to court controversy with the best oil-painting animator this side of the Netherlands. Hisko is the wild artist that doc-maker Brett Morgen trusted to paint the inside of Kurt Cobain’s head for MONTAGE OF HECK. He’s a director who’s marshalled the talents of dozens of artists over multiple years to bring HARRY RENTS A ROOM (1999), SEVENTEEN (2003), and JUNKYARD (2012) to life. He’s known for his uniform black shirts, his loose brush strokes, and his penchant to speak his mind…

Keith and Hisko are two of the only roto-animation directors working in docs and that’s not all they share: they’ve both collab’d with Austin-animation studio Minnow Mountain, and both have TV projects with BOJACK HORSEMAN producers Tornante. It’s through Tornante that Hisko and Keith met, years ago, on the set of Amazon’s UNDONE. Back when Hisko was —his words— in a panic. Flying between LA and Amsterdam and back again, directing Rosa Salazar and Bob Odenkirk live on a green screen taped-off like Lars Von Trier’s DOGVILLE, then going home to tirelessly train ten painters to work in oil, in his personal style, Hisko’s UNDONE was almost his own undoing. Three cities, a 17th-century atelier, and a show built on interdimensionality and ambiguity — he pitched the showrunners the dream sequences from ROSEMARY’S BABY and lived up to the premise.

He takes us back to his own relationship to art and psychosis: in Amsterdam, taking-up weed at age twelve, a grow operation at fifteen, skipping every class except philosophy and drawing, and hallucinating the world “in an oil painted manner.” A journeyman animator/filmmaker, everything changed when JUNKYARD went viral and a cold email arrived from Brett Morgen. Suddenly he had four months to make what had taken him nearly six years. Sixty oil paintings, a team of collaborators, and a house of cards that crashed around him before finally winning-over Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain with his hand-painted efforts to bring an icon into sharp, re-imagined relief.

And now, today. In the face of conflict and controversy: DANSE MACABRE (2026), his new short that just premiered at Annecy to… protests, walk-outs and a vocal minority boo-ing. Hisko tells his side of the story—how DANSE MACABRE came to life and how a guild-led protest over his use of a self-trained AI shader sparked an international dialogue about AI tools that is still unfolding. When they announced his name, lost in the cacophony of boos and loud walk-outs, Hisko said, “thank you and fuck you,” offering his dissenters his middle finger.

This one’s complicated. Hisko thinks he’s gotten a bum deal from out of touch "purists" who don’t know the difference between AI, machine learning, and indie filmmakers making their best work in new ways. He also believes that OpenAI should be forced to fund every artist it scraped. This is new territory… and the conversation is just beginning—Hisko wants your honest review. Plus: why animation is an opportunity to dream, not a way to cover the bald spots in your doc, and shoutouts to animator Craig Staggs (TOWER & UNDONE), Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Peter Bogdanovich, and Pink Floyd.

DISCUSSION LINKS

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Start with a snap, end with a bang (thanks, Peter Bogdanovich)
00:40 Hisko Hulsing, ladies and gentlemen — on your left
00:58 Not Amsterdam, not Annecy: a footbridge over Lady Bird Lake
01:19 Twenty identical black shirts and the Steve Jobs theory
02:07 We’ve met before — on the set of Undone
03:23 Minnow Mountain, Craig Staggs and Steph Swope
04:30 Rotoscope over oil on canvas, and a 17th-century atelier in Amsterdam
05:56 Explain it like we’re a room full of kindergarteners
06:40 A green screen taped out like Dogville
07:19 Alma, Bob Odenkirk, and staying ambiguous on purpose
08:13 What he showed the showrunners: the dreams from Rosemary’s Baby
09:55 Waking Life, and the first modern rotoscoped feature
10:49 Four blind teenagers, and why dreams live where vision lives
12:46 Amsterdam, weed at twelve, and seeing the world in oil paint
13:49 Kurt Cobain was in the same place at the same age
14:19 Animation as a way to show the inner world
16:32 Directing Rosa Salazar, and being intimidated by actors
20:44 The Tenant, twenty-six times
21:07 Scoring his own films for an 18-piece orchestra
21:48 The cold email from Brett Morgen
22:22 Last Hijack, Tommy Pallotta, and a Vimeo upload that went viral
24:00 Brett Morgen’s animated docs: The Kid Stays in the Picture, Chicago 10
25:06 Four months, sixty oil paintings, and a house of cards
27:17 The edge of psychosis (yes, that’s the name of the episode)
27:40 Courtney Love, Frances Bean, and the test screening that turned it
28:31 The sequence everyone remembers
29:20 The cassette tape actually called Montage of Heck
30:08 Cutting to black after MTV Unplugged
31:17 Where each of us was the day Cobain died
32:07 Emotional truth, and animating what he didn’t quite say
34:27 Waltz with Bashir, and real footage landing like a hammer
36:08 Animation admits it’s a point of view from frame one
37:24 Danse Macabre, and what Annecy actually is
38:32 Eleven years, Shostakovich’s Tenth, and the resurrection of fascism
40:34 Seventy-nine oil paintings, four countries, eighty people
43:24 What the AI actually did — a shader trained on his own paintings
44:24 Four million views, and then “AI slop”
45:35 Meanwhile, Netflix admits AI in 300 productions
46:10 The protest: stickers, walkouts, and booing before the film starts
47:14 “Thank you and fuck you”
47:44 Isaac Gale’s private model, and where the line actually is
48:42 Stable Diffusion, scraped data, and who should be paying
50:28 Generative AI versus AI tools
51:31 “I fucking hate it. I should get a medal.”
52:07 His mother’s review
52:57 The Google Drive synopsis that took an intern’s job
54:03 Students, entry-level jobs, and protesting the rain
56:15 Water, electricity, and the cost nobody solved
56:34 Animation is an opportunity to dream — not a way to cover bald spots
57:18 Lightning round: Pink Floyd The Wall, stoned at fifteen
58:35 Fantasia, Goya’s war drawings, and Keith’s Bergman project
59:01 Dream collaborator: Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy, and PTA
59:56 Sasha Pieterse, Boogie Nights, and learning from audio commentaries
61:06 Widen your horizon: a rich life that isn’t about money
62:32 Go watch Danse Macabre, and review it honestly
63:18 Plato’s cave, the Sandman, and “geez, I’m the caveman”