The Best Cigarette by Billy Collins
One of the 11 Billy Collins animations produced by New York TV station JWT in 2007. This one was directed by Will Hyde with animation by David Vaio.
One of the 11 Billy Collins animations produced by New York TV station JWT in 2007. This one was directed by Will Hyde with animation by David Vaio.
A new film by Brandon Dziokonski blends animation with recycled footage from old Smokey the Bear public service anouncements.
A three-year-old recites Billy Collins — another reminder that YouTube is still a vast repository of wonderfulness if you can only find it among all the dross. Fortunately, this one has gone viral. The mother says in a comment,
Billy Collins did see this and wrote a letter to my son and I. We feel very honored.
Thank you all for your kind comments. We are working on a few new poems I hope to have up very soon. If there are any suggestions as to poems you think might be good ones for him to memorize, let me know! I will consider them, if he likes them too.
Here’s Collins himself introducing and reading the poem, in a selection from Fora.TV:
Lindsey Butler directed, with narration by Nicholas Chichirda. Nice to see such a fine videopoem of Collins’ work that isn’t one of the canonical (and authorized) animations.
Lauren Adolfsen spliced together some footage from old McDonald’s commercials to make a new video for Billy Collins’ poem. This uses the same audio as the animation by Juan Delcan, which was one of the 11 videopoems authorized by the poet. I am not sure he’d approve of this one, but it definitely changes the way I think of the poem.
Another in the popular series of animated Billy Collins poems produced by JWT-NY. This one’s by Brady Baltezore. Purely as a cartoon, I think it might be the most satisfying of the lot.