The Complete Ralph Bakshi Film Festival!

Bakshi's follow-up to Fritz the Cat was Heavy Traffic. (More on Fritz later.) It's a fascinating movie which uses pinball to frame the life of the main character, a man of twenty-four years named Michael. He is a cartoonist, but his work is far from commercial. We get at least two stories, one animated and a frame which is live action. In both the live action and animated parts Michael pursues Carole, a woman who like himself is trying to find a way forward. They want to leave the city and head to California and to do that they resort to crime. 

It's a difficult movie to discuss as many elements of the film are surreal. Clearly there is a autobiographical aspect to the movie, but characters are so broad it would be pointless to push that too far. This is a movie which has wonderful sections, some even calm and soothing, a rarity for a Bakshi project. Apparently, Bakshi and produce Steven Krantz fell out about the profits from Fritz the Cat and at one point Krantz locked Bakshi out and sought another creator such as Chuck Jones. 

His third movie Coonskin is a remarkable movie in many ways, and I can see why someone would be offended by it. But I wasn't and I found this oddball movie which blends live action with some compelling animation to be hard to watch and hard to stop watching at the same time. It stars Scatman Crothers and Barry White (yeah...that Barry White).

The movie is nothing less than Uncle Remus meets Mario Puzo or to put it more bluntly Bre'r Rabbit meets The Godfather. It's ripe with violence and harsh language as we follow a trio of critters (Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear and Preacher Fox) who go to the big city and try to find success in arenas of organized crime. The movie is about loyalty and about the "American Dream". You know that last bit is true because the "American Dream" is literally in the movie in all her voluptuous red, white, blue and blonde glory.

It's a movie about Harlem and black culture but of course it's written and directed by Ralph Bakshi, a white Brooklyn Jew. Bakshi spent many of his critical youthful years in a black community and went to a black school back in the bad old days of segregation. (When America was "great" according to some modern bigots.) This movie felt more like a Spike Lee joint than any film I've seen not by Spike Lee. Whatever you think of it ultimately, it's a fascinating watch and I recommend to the stout of heart.

Hey Good Lookin' was originally made in 1973-1975 or thereabout but wasn't released until 1982 by Warner Brothers. It was a personal film Bakshi paid for and revised as he worked on other projects. The movie somewhat anticipates the wave of nostalgia for the 50's which engulfed pop culture with the advent of things like American Graffiti, Grease, and Happy Days. But these were romanticized and to no small degree sanitized remembrances of a time ruled by ethnic divisions, especially in so-called melting pots like New York City. The story is set in 1953 Brooklyn and our main character of interest is Vinnie, the preening leader of a gang dubbed "The Stompers". We follow Vinnie and his sidekick Crazy Shapiro (the son of a cop). 

There is a burgeoning love affair between Vinnie and a girl named Rozzie who is just coming out of the shadow of her Jewish parents. We follow these three and several other characters as they get into trouble with local black gangs and try to have as much sex as possible. This is a very physical view of that bygone time, filled with an abundance of flesh (if not nudity) in the Bakshi style. There is less of the surreal quality that Bakshi brough to other projects, but there is some. In many ways this is the most normal story of all Bakshi's projects. 

I remember slightly when American Pop hit the market in 1981and I was not interested. I was focused on fantasy at the time and curious works of nostalgia need not apply to my attention. And likely if I'd seen it back in the day, I'd have appreciated it less than I did when I watched it for the first time a week ago. American Pop purports to tell some of the winding tale of American popular music through the lens of four generations of a single family. We follow them from Europe into the slums of New York and across the country all the while listening to parts of music which has entertained some of the masses all that time. Each generation presents us with an eager young man who seeks success in the music business whether that business is on the vaudeville stage or the rock music stage.

This is a show which appears to be done completely with rotoscope and that's not a problem for me. I know animation purists seem to regard rotoscope with disdain, but it was a technique from animation's earliest days and seems an elegant predecessor to the computer animation of our time which uses real life as the template. This movie is at times though a little too realistic, and I'd wish they push the abstraction developed over the movements just a smidge more here and there. The music though is amazing and makes this show work. There are some real surprises in this story of a music family which is mob adjacent. Crime is a part of the legacy here just as much as the music alas. I very much enjoyed it.

Cool World came out in 1992 and it's clear that the movie owes its origin to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the highly successful movie that blended live and cartoon action. But Bakshi had been doing this for years. This time though the discrete worlds were made distinctive. We follow a tragic WWII soldier named Jack (Brad Pitt) who has just returned home and is in an accident which sweeps him away to "Cool World" where cartoons live actual lives. We jump forward to 1992, the modern society where we encounter Jack Deeds (Gabriel Byrne), a cartoonist who thinks he made up Cool World. 

Jack is in romantic thrall to what he believes is his own creation a voluptuous cartoon named "Holli Would" (Kim Basinger). Holli has schemes of her own which turn out to threaten all reality. Jack has become a cop in Cool World and is bent on stopping her and Deeds. The animated creatures in the movie dubbed "Doodles" have that chaotic insanity inherent in most Bakshi projects but also seem to echo the wilder and somewhat more experimental animation of the 1930's. This is a wild one, but also clearly a project minus the distinctive anarchic voice Bakshi was eager to display in his other films. 

Ralph Bashki's early reputation was first established on his compelling adaptation of Robert Crumb's comic strip Fritz the Cat. The movie is remarkable in a number of ways. I've seen it before, but on the Blu-Ray copy I just acquired the movie was incredibly clear and the animation was fascinating, as Bashki's work often is. The movie is famous for getting an X rating when it was first released into theaters. 

The story is that Crumb was not all that pleased with the movie and felt that Bakshi had been overbearing in his discussions, making Crumb relent to circumstances he regretted. Bakshi was a powerful personality, and I can see how Crumb might've felt overwhelmed, but the movie elevated his character out of all proportion to its impact in comics. Perhaps it lost some of the purity Crumb desired, but how could he not know concessions would be made for another medium. 

Fritz the Cat from 1972 begins with Fritz as a poser of sorts, a college-aged youth who is trying to reject his own white bread upbringing by trying to identify with black culture which he deems much cooler. In the movie cats seem to represent white Americans, while crows represent black Americans. The police are represented by pigs. So, in some ways this movie becomes a self-aware "blaxploitation" flick. 

The other aspect of Fritz's personality is that he's horny and the movie famously has some scenes featuring sex and even an orgy or two. But despite the notorious "X Rating" the movie received, there's little on screen to scandalize most viewers. More is suggested about sexual activity than is shown, and whatever private parts are seen, one must remember these are cats. After Fritz ignites a race riot, he feels it's best he leaves town, and he does, heading West where he hooks up with a terrorist cell. They prove to be his undoing. There seems little chance of a sequel. But there was. 

The Nine Live of Fritz the Cat from 1974 picks up the action with Fritz having not only survived his ordeal in the first movie, but having gotten married, no doubt because he got the girl pregnant. What we get in this movie, which I hasten to point out was not directed by Ralph Bakshi. The movie was able to boast that it did have the same producer in Steve Krantz, and the same lead acting voice for Fritz in Skip Hinnant, as the first film. 

The story is really a frame story with Fritz sitting on his couch listening to his wife hector him for his lack of ambition. As he does this, he smokes a bit of weed and then we enter his inebriated mind to go on his fantastical adventures. During these interludes (or "lives") he dreams up encounters he has an affair with the sister of a friend, he encounters a drunken bum who claims to be God (and just might be), he is whisked back in time to serve as a Nazi alongside the likes of Hitler and his cronies, he has another affair, he travels to the Depression era, he tries to cash a check at a pawn shop, he travels to Mars aboard a rocket ship, he works in the White House where Henry Kissinger is president, and he even encounters the Devil who is not what anyone expected. 

Now of course all of these sundry characters are represented by an array of goofy looking animals such as the aforementioned crows and pigs as well as an array of others. This movie has much the same feel as its predecessor with a blend of live action and animation. The level of crudeness is maintained. Robert Crumb is not credited in any way though in this one. 

These rather entertaining movies, with much more going on than merely sexualizing animated figures. The social commentary is pretty sharp and like many movies of its era speaks to a young culture which is seeking new ways of doing things and rejecting the social expectations of the previous generation. Tragically, it's suggested these hopes for a new way are to be dashed by the fundamental weakness of human (or is it cat) nature. 

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