Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an American animator and filmmaker, known for his fantastical animated films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1994, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, predominantly urban dramas and fantasy films, five of which he wrote. He has also been involved in numerous television projects as director, writer, producer and animator.
Beginning his career at the Terrytoons television cartoon studio as a cel polisher, Bakshi was eventually promoted to animator and then director. He moved to the animation division of Paramount Pictures in 1967 and started his own studio, Bakshi Productions, in 1968. Through producer Steve Krantz, Bakshi made his debut feature film, Fritz the Cat, released in 1972. It was based on the comic strip by Robert Crumb, was the first animated film to receive an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and remains the most successful independent animated feature of all time.
Over the next 11 years, Bakshi directed seven additional animated features. He is well known for such films as Wizards, The Lord of the Rings, American Pop, and Fire and Ice. In 1987, Bakshi returned to television work, producing the series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which ran for two years. After a nine-year hiatus from feature films, he directed Cool World, which was largely rewritten during production and received poor reviews, consequently being his last theatrical feature-length film to date. Bakshi returned to television with the live-action film Cool and the Crazy and the anthology series Spicy City.
During the 2000s, he focused largely on fine art and painting, and in 2003, co-founded the Bakshi School of Animation with his son Eddie and Jess Gorell. Bakshi has received several awards for his work, including the 1980 Golden Gryphon for The Lord of the Rings at the Giffoni Film Festival, the 1988 Annie Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Animation, and the 2003 Maverick Tribute Award at the Cinequest Film Festival.
Early life
Ralph Bakshi was born on October 29, 1938, in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine, to a Krymchak Jewish family. In 1939, his family migrated to the United States, and he grew up in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. The family lived in a low-rent apartment, where Bakshi became fascinated with the urban milieu. As a child, he enjoyed comic books, and he often dug through trash cans to find them.According to an interview in 2009, Bakshi said he was very poor and the walls of his apartment building were constantly repainted. He liked the feeling when he looked out the window and saw the sun as a little boy, and whenever he would walk out in the streets, someone would break open the wooden crates in the push-carts that were filled with food, stating as such: "And the push carts were wood, and most of the buildings were made out of old wood, going back to the turn of the century, and they were repainted a lot but the paint was faded by, you know the hundred years of snow and rain, repainted and faded again." Bakshi loved the faded colors, the nails, the wooden crates, and he would build his own toys from the wood. He recalled having "a great feeling with wood, cement, and nails".
In the spring of 1947, Bakshi's father and uncle traveled to Washington, D.C., in search of business opportunities, and soon moved the family to the Black neighborhood of Foggy Bottom. Bakshi recalled, "All my friends were black, everyone we did business with was black, the school across the street was black. It was segregated, so everything was black. I went to see black movies; black girls sat on my lap. I went to black parties. I was another black kid on the block. No problem!"
The racial segregation of local schools meant that the nearest white school was several miles away; Bakshi obtained his mother's permission to attend the nearby Black school with his friends. Most of the students had no problem with Bakshi's presence, but a teacher sought advice from the principal, who called the police. Fearing that segregated whites would riot if they learned that a white, let alone Jewish, student was attending a Black school, the police removed Bakshi from his classroom. Meanwhile, his father had been suffering from anxiety attacks. Within a few months, the family moved back to Brownsville, where they rarely spoke of these events.
At the age of fifteen, after discovering Gene Byrnes' Complete Guide to Cartooning at the public library, Bakshi took up cartooning to document his experiences and create fantasy-influenced art. He stole a copy of the book and learned every lesson in it. During his teenaged years, Bakshi took up boxing. While attending Thomas Jefferson High School, he took little interest in academics, spending most of his time focusing on "broads, mouthing off, and doodling". After participating in a food fight and being caught smoking, Bakshi was sent to the principal's office. Believing Bakshi was unlikely to prosper at Thomas Jefferson, the principal transferred him to Manhattan's School of Industrial Art. At the school, he was taught by African-American cartoonist Charles Allen. In June 1956, Bakshi graduated from the school with an award in cartooning. He attended and graduated from the School of Industrial Art in 1956.
Career
Early career (1956–1967)
When Bakshi was 18, his friend Cosmo Anzilotti was hired by the cartoon studio Terrytoons; Anzilotti recommended Bakshi to the studio's production manager, Frank Schudde. Bakshi was hired as a cel polisher and commuted four hours each day to the studio, based in suburban New Rochelle. His low-level position required Bakshi to carefully remove dirt and dust from animation cels.After a few months, Schudde was surprised that Bakshi was still showing up to work, so he promoted him to cel painter. Bakshi began to practice animating; to give himself more time, at one point he slipped 10 cels that he was supposed to work on into the "to-do" pile of a fellow painter, Leo Giuliani. Bakshi's deception was not noticed until two days later, when he was called to Schudde's office because the cels had been painted on the wrong side. When Bakshi explained that Giuliani had made the mistake, an argument ensued between the three. Schudde eventually took Bakshi's side. By this point, the studio's employees were aware of Bakshi's intention to become an animator, and he received help and advice from established animators, including Connie Rasinski, Manny Davis, Jim Tyer, Larry Silverman, and Johnnie Gentilella.
Bakshi married his first wife, Elaine, when he was 21. Their son, Mark, was born when Bakshi was 22. Elaine disliked his long work hours; parodying his marital problems, Bakshi drew Dum Dum and Dee Dee, a comic strip about a man determined "to get—and keep—the girl".
As he perfected his animation style, he began to take on more jobs, including creating design tests for the studio's head director, Gene Deitch. Deitch was not convinced that Bakshi had a modern design sensibility. In response to the period's political climate and as a form of therapy, Bakshi drew the comic strips Bonefoot and Fudge, which satirized "idiots with an agenda", and Junktown, which focused on "misfit technology and discarded ideals".
Bakshi's frustrations with his failing marriage and the state of the planet further drove his need to animate. In 1959, he moved his desk to join the rest of the animators; after asking Rasinski for material to animate, he received layouts of two scenes: a hat floating on water and a running Deputy Dawg, the lead character of a Terrytoons' series then being shown on CBS. Despite threats of repercussion from the animators' union, Rasinski fought to keep Bakshi as a layout artist. Bakshi began to see Rasinski as a father figure; Rasinski, childless, was happy to serve as Bakshi's mentor.
At the age of 25, Bakshi was promoted to director. His first assignment was the series Sad Cat. Bakshi and his wife had separated by then, giving him the time to animate each short alone. Bakshi was dissatisfied with the traditional role of a Terrytoons director: "We didn't really 'direct' like you'd think. We were 'animation directors,' because the story department controlled the storyboards. We couldn't affect anything, but I still tried. I'd re-time, mix up soundtracks—I'd fuck with it so I could make it my own."
Other animation studios, such as Hanna-Barbera, were selling shows to the networks, even as the series produced by Terrytoons were declining in popularity. In 1966, Bill Weiss asked Bakshi to help him carry presentation boards to Manhattan for a meeting with CBS. The network executives rejected all of Weiss's proposals as "too sophisticated", "too corny", or "too old-timey".
As Fred Silverman, CBS's daytime programming chief, began to leave the office, an unprepared Bakshi pitched a superhero parody called The Mighty Heroes on the spot. He described the series' characters, including Strong Man, Tornado Man, Rope Man, Cuckoo Man, and Diaper Man: "They fought evil wherever they could, and the villains were stupider than they were."
The executives loved the idea, and while Silverman required a few drawings before committing, Weiss immediately put Bakshi to work on the series' development. Once Silverman saw the character designs, he confirmed that CBS would greenlight the show, on the condition that Bakshi would serve as its creative director and to oversee the entire project. It would appear as a segment of Mighty Mouse Playhouse on the network's 1966–67 Saturday-morning schedule; the series was renamed Mighty Mouse and the Mighty Heroes in recognition of the new segment.
Bakshi received a pay raise, but was not as satisfied with his career advancement as he had anticipated; Rasinski had died in 1965, Bakshi did not have creative control over The Mighty Heroes, and he was unhappy with the quality of the animation, writing, timing, and voice acting. Although the series' first 20 segments were successful, Bakshi wanted to leave Terrytoons to form his own company. In 1967, he drew up presentation pieces for a fantasy series called Tee-Witt, with help from Anzilotti, Johnnie Zago, and Bill Foucht.
On the way to the CBS offices to make his pitch, he was involved in a car accident. At the auto body shop, he met Liz, who later became his second wife. Though CBS passed on Tee-Witt, its designs served as the basis for Bakshi's 1977 film Wizards. While leaving the network offices, he learned that Paramount Pictures had recently fired Shamus Culhane, the head of its animation division. Bakshi met with Burt Hampft, a lawyer for the studio, and was hired to replace Culhane.
Bakshi enlisted comic-book and pulp-fiction artists and writers Harvey Kurtzman, Lin Carter, Gray Morrow, Archie Goodwin, Wally Wood, and Jim Steranko to work at the studio. After finishing Culhane's uncompleted shorts, he directed, produced, wrote, and designed four short films at Paramount: The Fuz, Mini-Squirts, Marvin Digs, and Mouse Trek.
Marvin Digs, which Bakshi conceived as a "flower child picture", was not completed the way he had intended: It "was going to have curse words and sex scenes, and a lot more than that. Of course, they wouldn't let me do that." He described the disappointing result as a "typical 1967 limited-animation theatrical". Animation historian Michael Barrier called the film "an offensively bad picture, the kind that makes people who love animation get up and leave the theater in disgust". Production of Mighty Heroes ended when Bakshi left Terrytoons.
Bakshi served as head of the studio for eight months before Paramount closed its animation division on December 1, 1967. He learned that his position was always intended to be temporary and that Paramount never intended to pick up his pitches. Although Hampft was prepared to offer Bakshi a severance package, Bakshi immediately ripped up the contract.
Hampft suggested that Bakshi work with producer Steve Krantz, who had recently fired Culhane as supervising director on the Canadian science-fiction series Rocket Robin Hood. Bakshi and background artist Johnnie Vita soon headed to Toronto, planning to commute between Canada and New York, with artists such as Morrow and Wood working from the United States.
Unknown to Bakshi, Krantz and producer Al Guest were in the middle of a lawsuit. Failing to reach a settlement with Guest, Krantz told Bakshi to grab the series' model sheets and return to the United States. When the studio found out, a warrant for Bakshi's arrest was issued by the Toronto police. He narrowly avoided capture before being stopped by an American border guard, who asked him what he was doing. Bakshi responded, "All of these guys are heading into Canada to dodge the draft and I'm running back into the States. What the fuck is wrong with that!?" The guard laughed, and let Bakshi through. Vita was detained at the airport; he was searched and interrogated for six hours.