Bakshi, Ralph
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Wikipedia-Article "Ralph Bakshi"
| Ralph Bakshi | |
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| "Sweetheart, I'm the biggest ripped-off cartoonist in the history of the world, and that's all I'm going to say." | |
| Born | October 29, 1938 Haifa, Israel |
Ralph Bakshi is a director of animation and occasionally live-action films. As the American animation industry fell into decline during the 1960s and 1970s, Bakshi tried to bring change to the industry by creating and directing a number of animated feature films that were aimed at adults instead of children.
Ralph Bakshi has created controversy in all his films while continuously breaking new ground in his art form. He has encouraged the public to look at animation in a new way by creating worlds that are sometimes familiar and sometimes we are strangers in yet completely enveloped by their power and strangeness. He pioneered animation with adult themes using political commentary and satire.
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Life and Career
Early days
Ralph Bakshi was born October 29, 1938, in Haifa, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine. In 1939 his family came to New York escaping World War II. He grew up in Brooklyn. As a child, Bakshi loved comic books and art in general. When he was older, he went to the High School of Industrial Arts. Bakshi ended up graduating with an award in cartooning in 1957.
Ralph the animator
Bakshi made a name for himself in animation during the fading days of theatrical studio cartoons. At the Terrytoons studio (best known for the Mighty Mouse cartoons), he started as a cell polisher, graduating to cell painting. Practicing nights and weekends he quickly became an inker, and then directly to animator, working on characters such as Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Deputy Dawg, Foofle & Lariat Sam. By 25 he was directing these shows as well as Sad Cat, James Hound and others. At 28 he created and directed a series of superhero spoof cartoons called The Mighty Heroes.
Bakshi was introduced to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien by a director at Terrytoons in 1956. In 1957, he started trying to convince people that the Lord of the Rings books could be animated and tried to obtain the rights, but was unable to until the mid-70s.
In 1967 Bakshi had moved to Paramount Studios, where he was placed in charge of the Famous cartoon studio during its final days. Here he hired Mort Drucker, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Joe Kubert, Jim Steranko, Gray Morrow and Roy Krenkel, and produced several experimental animated short cartoons, though none of them had a major impact with audiences. Paramount closed its cartoon studio for good in 1967.
In 1968, he founded a studio, Ralph's Spot, and headed a low-budget but distinctive TV animated series based on the Spider-Man comic book; new episodes appeared up to 1970. After 1970, Bakshi went into full-length animated feature films.
Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin
In 1971, Steve Krantz tagged on as a producer on what was to be Bakshi's first feature film. He had written several scripts including projects that would later become Heavy Traffic, Wizards, and Cool and the Crazy, but Krantz told Bakshi to film an adapted film based on someone else's work.
They mulled over various projects, finally deciding on Robert Crumb's successful underground comic book Fritz the Cat. They flew out to Oakland to find Crumb and secure the rights. Dana Crumb was only too happy to join them in the venture.
Crumb saw the film as a perfect opportunity to immortalize his name in film history, and agreed to give Bakshi and Krantz the film rights to the character. When Crumb saw the final product, however, he was displeased, and eventually wound up killing off the title character in retaliation.
In April of 1972 Fritz the Cat opened in LA and New York to rave reviews and was a box office smash, taking in $90 million worldwide. It was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States, and it was unquestionably aimed primarily at adult audiences—something that had been unheard of in the years before its release.
The financial success of Fritz the Cat gave Bakshi the opportunity to produce two more adult-oriented feature films, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, which revealed Bakshi's interest in black history in America (another subject largely overlooked by Hollywood movie studios).
Coonskin was sold to Al Ruddy during a screening of The Godfather by Bakshi who told Ruddy that he wanted to make an adaptation of the storybook "Uncle Remus." Bakshi Productions was opened and they began pre-production.
Heavy Traffic was still in production at this time with Steve Krantz, who locked Bakshi out of the studio with this news of Al Ruddy and Bakshi working together.
After two weeks they asked him back to finish the picture. Live Action was shot for Heavy Traffic and was married with the animation. In 1973, Heavy Traffic, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art where it continued to shock and stun the public to a great applause.
In 1973 production of Coonskin began at Bakshi Studios on Melrose in Hollywood. Live action was also use in this film and joined alongside the animation. Coonskin opened in 1975 with a screening at Museum of Modern Art in NYC to much controversy and protests by the Congress of Racial Equality.
Paramount soon withdrew its release. Bryanston Distributing Company quickly attached itself and released to theatres to continued fevered controversy.
Wizards and The Lord of the Rings
Bakshi became a self-proclaimed spokesperson for a new direction in animation during the 1970s, and he turned to the process of rotoscoping to cut costs while still trying to produce quality animation. This sparked a new controversy over the use of traced-over live action in his films: animation scholars accused him of not producing "real" animation, but simply training artists to trace over live action.
Bakshi produced his first fantasy film, Wizards in 1976, but ran into troubles when he was unable to complete the battle sequences with the budget 20th Century Fox had given him, and the studio refused to raise his funds. So he paid for the film's completion out of his own pocket and used rotoscoping for the battle sequences, which borrowed live-action material taken directly from World War II stock footage and feature films. In 1977, the film was released and received with great acclaim.
Bakshi's most well-known work after Fritz the Cat came in 1978, when he directed an ambitious animated adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
Bakshi had originally intended the adaptation to be made in three parts. This was negotiated down to two parts, the first part adapting half the story, or three of the book's six parts (The Lord of the Rings is six small books, or one large book, released in three parts, and not a trilogy as some have claimed), the second half picking up half-way through the story, all the way up to its finish.
This first attempt to capture Tolkien's vision on screen cost $8 million to make, and grossed over $30 million at the box office, but was considered to be a flop by the film's original distributors, who opted to release the unfinished story as a standalone film (dropping "part 1" from its original title), then refused to fund a sequel, leaving Bakshi's vision for Tolkien's story forever incomplete.
Unfinished Projects
Aside from The Lord of the Rings Part 2, Bakshi had also approached various other projects which never came to pass. Among these was an animated adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's legendary novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, done in the style of Ralph Steadman's legendary illustrations. Bakshi had wanted to do an adaptation of the book, but the person holding the rights, a girlfriend of Thompson's refused because she wanted the film to be made in live action. [1]
Another unmade project from Bakshi was called Bobby's Girl, which was a screenplay he had co-written with a young and ambitious Canadian named John Kricfalusi, whom Bakshi had worked with on a series of other projects during the 1980s, and who later went on to create Ren & Stimpy. The script, an R-rated teen exploitation set in the 1950s, was greenlighted by TriStar, but cancelled after its then-current president, Jeff Siganski, got fired. Both Kricfalusi and Bakshi have stated that they doubt the project will ever be made. [2]
Later work
Bakshi directed two more animated films in the 1980s, but Hollywood had for the most part turned its back on animation at the time and Bakshi worked behind the scenes for most of the decade. His biggest success in the 1980s was a TV cartoon series aired in 1987, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Bakshi's series was widely hailed by TV critics, and it is still prized by collectors of TV series today. The series ran for two years. Complaints from viewers who believed that Mighty Mouse can be seen snorting cocaine to get his special powers led to its cancellation.
Bakshi also produced a music video for the Rolling Stones song "The Harlem Shuffle" in 1987.
Bakshi returned to the big screen with a more adult-oriented version of the "animated characters interacting with real-world people" in 1992 with Cool World. The film ended up being a very different film from Bakshi's original concept for it, and was a critical and box office disappointment.
Bakshi has not officially retired, but he has not produced animated feature films since then, having moved to southwestern New Mexico, and made a living painting. Bakshi produced a short-lived animated TV series called Spicy City in 1997. In 2003 he was the model for and the voice of the eccentric, midget-hating Fire Chief in protégé John K.'s more adult-themed, second-generation Ren and Stimpy cartoons.
A recent resurgence of interest in his work spiked by its availability over the internet resulted in a three-day retrospective at American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, California and the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, California in April, 2005, and Bakshi announced plans to produce a low budget animated feature titled Last Days of Coney Island, financed by himself. Other projects, such as American Beat [3] and sequels to Bakshi's earlier films Coonskin [4] and Wizards [5] have been reported, but neither project has been greenlighted.
Bakshi is usually caricatured on cartoons such as Tiny Toon Adventures and The Simpsons as an obese, slovenly, homely figure. He is widely believed to be the inspiration for the character of Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons and Ralph the Guard on Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs.
The Museum of Modern Art has added his films to their collection for preservation.
Filmography
As writer/director:
- Fritz the Cat (1972)
- Heavy Traffic (1973)
- Coonskin (released on video as Street Fight) (1975)
- Wizards (1977)
- Hey Good Lookin' (1982)
- Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (TV series) (1987)
- Christmas in Tattertown (TV special) (1988)
- This Ain't Bebop (live action) (1989)
- Cool and the Crazy (TV movie, live action) (1994)
- Babe, He Calls Me (1997)
- Malcom and Melvin (1997)
- Last Days of Coney Island no official release date announced, possible 2007 release
As director:
- The Lord of the Rings Part 1 (1978)
- American Pop (1981)
- Fire and Ice (1983)
- Dr. Seuss' The Butter Battle Book (1989) (TV special)
- Cool World (1992)
- Spicy City (TV series) (1997)
As actor:
- Fritz the Cat (1972) - Additional voices
- Heavy Traffic (1973) - Additional voices
- Coonskin (1975) - Additional voices
- Wizards (1977) - Additional voices
- Spicy City playing "Stevie" (voice) in episode: "Mano's Hands"
- Spicy City playing "Connelly and Goldblum" (voice) in episode: "Love Is a Download"
- Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon playing "Fire Chief" (voice) in episode: "Fire Dogs 2"
- Ralph Bakshi: The Wizard of Animation - Himself
- Frazetta: Painting with Fire (2003) - Interviewed (himself)
Miscellaneous Crew:
- Cannonball Run II (1984) - director: animation sequence
- Vanilla Sky (2001) - artwork provider: Ralph Bakshi's painting courtesy of
References
