Ralph Bakshi is one of those rare artists who possesses a personality ever bit as colorful as the characters he creates. It’s no surprise then, that the man fit in perfectly amongst the Ren & Stimpy cast, when John Kricfalusi asked him to voice a part in his 2003 sequel to Fire Dogs.

That inspired partnership was also a happy reminder of the fact that, in spite of the animator’s remarkable ability to maintain a four-decade old grudge with a certain prominent underground cartoonist, Bakshi has long been a supporter of many of his talented peers.

In this final part of our hour-long interview with Bakshi, we discuss the artist’s favorite contemporary cartoonists and animator, and let him get off a few more shots against that aforementioned fellow counter-cultural icon.

[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three]
Have you kept up with the contemporary comics scene at all?

There are so many great, strange comics out there. I went to the comic convention—I wish I could remember their names—they’re brilliant, and the drawing is awkward now and weird, and very wonderful. Everyone draws so well. I love [Julius] Knipl, you know, the real estate guy. I can never remember the names, but I think they’re sensation, especially the new underground, with the lines and the distortion. I see a renaissance there. It’s all tremendous. And Juxtapoz is wonderful—the best magazine around. Those guys are wonderful. I love James Jean. A wonderful artist. I think the new kids—I don’t know what kind of drawing they’re doing, but it’s marvelous.

Is there any kind of similar revolution happening in animation? Or has it stagnated?

That’s a good question. I think, believe it or not, with Nickelodeon, some of the shows that they’re doing are amazing. I think what kids are doing on their computers at home—what I catch on YouTube and what I see in schools—is amazing. I see spurts of great stuff all over the place. I’m not talking about the Pixars, where what they do is overwhelmingly beautiful. What they do is incredible, but the kind of stuff that I’m talking about, I see it everywhere. I see young kids really working with computers and doing wonderful stuff. I feel that there’s a huge renaissance and I thought the kids at SVA that I visited—I told them that I’m not coming through again.

The only reason everyone wants to talk to me again isn’t because I did so well. It’s because everyone did so poorly. No else has done anything since Traffic and Coonskin. I must drive my contemporaries crazy, because every time they fucking want to do something, here I come. It’s only because you guys have done nothing, not because I’ve done anything.

What I’m saying is I’m very optimistic. Kyle Baker is incredible. Unbelievable. I can go on and on about the talent. I went to the comic convention and walked down the aisles, and I bought thousands of books, because I just love the new art.

You love the art, but do you feel that there’s something lacking in the message in the books?

No. Here they come. It’s brilliant stuff.

Is there still a subversive quality present, like there used to be?

I’m not an authority on this stuff, like I used to be. I’ve seen some stuff—I think the subversive quality is there. It’s as much there as the underground ever had it. I don’t know about across the board—I haven’t read DC in a long time, and I haven’t read Marvel. I don’t like what they’re doing.

So it’s there, but it has a hard time bubbling up to the surface.

Yeah. Yes. It’s there, oh it’s there. Let me put it this way. If I had money, there are hundreds of things that I would buy, as compared to walking into a store and there’s only Fritz. The other guy I’m sorry I didn’t make a movie with is Spain Rodriguez. I love Spain. Spain is absolutely brilliant with his layouts. He’s such a good artist. I used him in Cool World to paint the walls. I was going work with him in my next project, but Crumb got me so disgusted and angry

I wanted to be friends with those guys. I still think what they’re doing is great. And all of those guys wanted to work with me. The only guy that screwed it all up is Robert Crumb. He said, “if you work with Bakshi, you’re not my friend.” I’m serious, and they needed him, because Crumb sold comics. In the old days, all of these guys would be able to make bread because Crumb would be a part of Zap and stuff. They’d all hand him their pages. He really hurt the others, as far as I’m concerned. I was dying to make a movie with Spain. I spoke to him six or eight months ago, just to touch base. Everything he did on Cool World, I have a drawer.

But the guys today are just as good. Meathaus is good. In fact, the Meauthaus guy did the book [Unfiltered],. John Gibson and Chris McDonnell are brilliant. Chris McDonnell did some of the greatest layout I’ve seen, and I love the way that John Gibson wrote it. He had the hard job of 40 years of a man’s life. It’s not easy to do in less than a year. I thought they did a wonderful job.

You ask me if there’s good stuff in comics? Yeah, it’s all around us. Maybe other people don’t see it. One of the things about me is that I’m a great fan of cartoonists. I’m a cartoonist who loves cartoonists. And one of the mistakes that all producers of animation make with young cartoonists is they don’t love cartoonists. They pass up a lot of stuff. That’s why so much of the stuff that you see isn’t animated. I wasn’t afraid of making Crumb world famous. When I picked him, nobody knew him.

–Brian Heater

Ralph Bakshi has never been one for self-censorship, a fact that has readily manifest itself his work, resulting in some of the most ground-breaking and uncompromising films of the 20th century, animated or otherwise. As we discovered in our face-to-face conversation with the 69-year-old Brooklynite, such unfettered expression has a tendency to manifest itself in some of Bakshi’s professional relationships, as well.

The mention of underground cartoonist, Robert Crumb, for example, who created the title character for Bakshi’s 1972 film Fritz the Cat, was more than enough to launch the animator into a bare-knuckled diatribe against the artist—one which carriers over well into the third part of this interview.

It’s this same lack of creative compromise that has lead, for better or worse, to Bakshi’s inability to recapture the scale of success that defined Fritz, largely relegating the animator to the status of cult hero.

In this third part, Bakshi happily explains why he initially abandoned the mainstream and never looked back.

[Part One]
[Part Two]

Did Crumb have a similarly negative reaction to The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat? [Neither Bakshi nor Crumb were involved in this 1974 sequel]

He didn’t bother to discuss the Nine Live of Fritz the Cat. He would have to say, “well, Ralph did do a better picture than Nine Lives.” So to Robert Crumb, there is no Nine Lives. It doesn’t exist. The only Fritz the Cat he’s mad at is the one I did, because if he discussed Nine Lives, he’d have to say, “well, you know, for all of my bullshitting about Ralph, Nine Lives is even worse than what he did.”

What were you own impressions of the film?

I never looked at it.

You weren’t curious?

No. I went on to do something far greater. Heavy Traffic is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. And Coonskin is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. And American Pop is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. And Wizards is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. Fritz the Cat is the least great of my movies.

Do you have any regrets about having made it? Do you feel like it still stands up?

Yeah, I regret having made Crumb all of that money.

But in terms of the artistic—

No, I didn’t need that film to be—I don’t know. Heavy Traffic was my next film. Why did I need Fritz the Cat?

Well, you said that it was the success of that film that propelled you onto bigger and better things.

Yeah, that’s right.

Does it stand up, artistically?

Of course it stands up artistically. I made it.

It’s just a lesser film than your later films…

Easily. But it stands up artistically—it was all Bakshi. Tell that to Mr. Crumb! [Pauses] I’m just growling at Crumb…

Do you consider how audiences might receive film, when you begin production?

No, when I’ve done films, I try to do the film that I love and hope audiences will receive it. And when they receive it well, and the producer takes all the money, I get mad.

Are you affected by criticism, at all?

[Shakes head].

So you’re essentially just making a film that you want to see.

That’s exactly right. I believe it’s hard to spend a year and a half in animation on a film if you’re not really behind it. I don’t know how some of those guys do it. But they all work on little sections of the film, at Pixar and Disney. I’m such a personal director that I write and direct most of this stuff. It makes me invest a lot of me in what I’m working on. It would be impossible to spend that kind of time on something that I think is just too commercial, because I really don’t have the slightest idea about what is commercial.

That has to make it difficult to get projects off the ground.

I can’t get projects off the ground anymore.

Because the audience has changed? Because the studio has changed?

Well, the studios have changed—the budgets have gotten bigger, but as the budgets have gotten bigger, and the advertisers have gotten bigger, they need bigger box office results. They need more people in the theaters. They want something that the whole family can go to, because it means more money for them. So they work very hard on something that a 14-year-old boy would like, and an eight-year-old boy would like, and the parents would like. These things have a range that will bring more people in. The Bakshi films bring would bring less people in—or so they think. I think a Bakshi film could bring lots of people in, but that’s what they arrived at. That I was too dangerous.

You’ve never had that drive to create something more universally appealing?

[Shakes his head.] I think people are idiots. Look, why do you want to make a movie that’s universally appealing? What do you get out of it? I have an opportunity to scream about things I hate, or things I don’t like, or point fingers at things. That’s what a cartoonist should be about. That’s what the cartoons that I love are about. That’s what I love about cartooning. You can scream, and yell, and point fingers.

I don’t want to make a family film, because I can always paint a picture and sell it at a show. I sold eight paintings at the gallery at Broome st. not bad. No one tells me what to paint. That doen’t mean, for a second that I don’t like money, but there’s no reason to make something that appeals to people, only to appeal to them. I did that for 12 years at TerryToons. It bored the hell out of me I’m not that kind of artist. I don’t like to collaborate and have people tell me what to do. I don’t want to work in the story department. It just doesn’t pay to spend that kind of time working well with other people. It’s boring. I don’t want his idea, I want my idea. Not that my idea is better, it’s just that it’s my idea. I can’t make films that way.

[Continued in Part Four]

–Brian Heater

Released in 1972, Ralph Bakshi still considers Fritz the Cat to be the major turning point in his career, the breakthrough film that helped the animator make the blind leap from the Heckle and Jeckle cartoons of his early career at TerryToons to gritty urban underground work like Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, which, to this day, are largely considered Bakshi’s masterpieces.

Adapted from a series of Robert Crumb strips, Fritz the Cat became the first animated film to be tagged with an X Rating, courtesy of the MPAA. Despite, or more likely because of this, the film also did gangbusters, becoming the first animated film to rack up more than $100 million at the box office.

In the wake of the film’s release, Crumb made public his aggressive disdain for the adaptation well-known, going so far as to file a suit to have his name removed from its credits and later killing off his reluctant Hollywood star in a subsequent strip.

Bakshi, for the record, would like it known that the feeling is mutual. As our conversation transitions from questions about his own jump from kids cartoons to the topic of Fritz’s subversive nature (or, to a degree, he might argue, lack thereof), Bakshi’s own feelings about Crumb quickly take the reigns of the conversation, along with a commentary how the press has long opted to report Crumb’s feelings on the matter while neglecting his own. And while, despite a bit of finger pointing at me on Bakshi’s part (referring to said press as a collective “you”), I can’t honestly take an credit for this perceived lopsided account (though, for the record, at the top of the interview I did mention Crumb’s name amongst a list of cartoonists whose work I admire).

That said, it’s hard to argue with Bakshi’s assessment that the press have been far more eager to print Crumb’s opinions on the subject than his own. The matter is certainly not due to a lack of passion on Bakshi’s part. A few months shy of 70, the animator is still more than happy to let his feelings be known, with a force that, to be totally honest, is a little frightening when sitting a few feet away.

I agree to print his opinions on the matter during the conversation, and to break some of the tension, I make some off-handed joke about having momentarily lost control of my bladder in the face of the fury that’s still alive and well in the heart of the Brooklyn animator,

Bakshi pauses for a moment and then smiles, “I like him.”

[Part One].

How large a role did the works of 60s underground comic artists like Crumb play in your transition to more adult cartoons?

Not as much as you might think—a lot, but not as much as you might think. Right before then, there were bigger transitions than Crumb. That was Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, Naked Lunch, On the Road by Kerouac, John Coltrane—there were literary sources that had broken through that probably caused the underground to come alive. What were the underground’s influences? Those were more important. The underground didn’t come out of nothing.

I remember read those and saying, “oh my god.” The Naked and the Dead by Mailer was very important. There were certain literary things that blew me away. Of course the underground helped, but it was those things that influenced me much more clearly. There was a lot of agitation in the streets those days, before the underground blossomed. Dylan started to sing—it was very exciting. I would more attribute it to that.

It seems like less of a leap to make the transition in what is already considered an adult medium, rather than in something like comics or cartoons.

Well, funny you should say that, because you weren’t there, and that’s the impression.

Fair enough.

You weren’t there before comics were on television and in video games. If you were around then, comics had a massive influence—you wouldn’t even recognize it now. You can’t imagine what Captain America looked like in a drawing, if you took away all of the shit that you have now. It was massively exciting. Or Superman flying. Why did Superman go through the roof the way he did? Because there wasn’t anything else like it. In novels, to your amazement, there were codes, there were lawsuits. You couldn’t write these things, you couldn’t print these things.

Henry Miller—

Oh! Henry Miller! So this thing about being more of an adult medium—it was more adult by really small degrees. When Selby did Last Exit to Brooklyn, with pimps and prosistutes and homosexuals, it blew everyone away! It was huge! It had never happened before! When John Rechy wrote City of Night, about the homosexual scene in LA, they finally got past Miller’s lawsuits. You read Naked and the Dead and big Mailer writing an adult book couldn’t say “fuck!” There isn’t a “fuck” in the entire book. These soldiers are saying “Fug you,” F-u-g you. You die laughing at how antiquated. Go read it! He was afraid to use the word! He didn’t use the word “bitch” in The Naked and the Dead. What was so adult about that? Novels were also slow in getting to the point. When they could do what they wanted, without being afraid, finally it broke. Everything was very proper in those days. Yeah there was some sex and some unbuttoned shirts, but there wasn’t screaming.

Was your own transition slow into more adult works or did you get to do what you wanted to do, right out of the gate when you did your own stuff?

Fritz freed me. Crumb’s Fritz the Cat, which is brilliant—though I dislike Crumb—because it was fun, it was satirical, it was delightfully drawn. It made so much money that I jumped into Traffic with both feet, which no one had ever done in animation—I did Heavy Traffic and Coonskin. I had the muscle from Fritz the Cat. In that respect, if I didn’t have a hit, would I be able to do Traffic? No way. If Fritz bombed, there’d be no Heavy Traffic.

Were you more reserved in the making of Fritz than Heavy Traffic?

Yeah, Crumb—yes. That’s a very good question. When I did the Dr. Suess’s Butter Battle, I respected Suess—Ted Geisel. There wasn’t that material in Fritz—in other words, Fritz didn’t have that depth. It was cute, it was sweet, but there was nowhere to put it. That’s why Crumb hates the picture, because I slipped a couple of things in there that he despises, like the rabbis—the pure Jewish stuff. Fritz can’t hold that kind of commentary. Winston is “just a typical Jewish broad from Brooklyn.” There was nothing—it was cute and well-done, but there was nothing that had that much depth. With Traffic, Michael who had never gotten laid and was going out with a black girl, and his father’s an Italian racist, and his mother’s Jewish—we set up a situation that’s vibrating with undertones. Fritz didn’t have that. And they’re animals. They’re cut little animals. There wasn’t the depth to Fritz. I couldn’t get there if I wanted to.

Did that fact that they were cute little animals make it somehow more subversive on some level? That juxtaposition of image and content?

No. Not at all. I think it made it more palatable. I think, had it been adults, I think I would have been blown out of the water.

[Pauses] You’re a Crumb fan, which is fine with me. Let me tell you what he did. Crumb railed against me for Fritz the Cat. He killed off Fritz to get back at me, and we all read how I’m a hustler and I have a big mouth and I can’t draw, and all that shit that Crumb said. Meanwhile, he brought a camera into his house when he wanted to become famous again. He allowed a movie to be made where he shot his mother crazy and his brother eating rope—and his brother committed suicide, after the movie was finished. What kind of guy is that? Is that the kind of guy who has a right to scream at me? Is that a guy who really cares about people? Is that a guy who you should love?

You believe everything Crumb says, after he does that, and he yells at me for doing Fritz? He made millions of dollars from Fritz. He did his book. He made millions of dollars from the cat, but he still calls me a schmuck! He took the money. See, he let me make the picture for a year and a half. He took $60,000. That’s a lot of money in the 60s. That’s upfront money. He took that for the rights. And when he realized that I was going to become as famous as him, he got mad at me. He thought I was going to make him famous. He thought I was going to spend a year of work on Fritz the Cat and make him the greatest cartoonist in the world! Well, he got very angry at me, when the director got some credit. Directors always get credit. That’s my point of view on it. You guys who love Crumb don’t understand how slick he can be.

You were a fan of his work before.

Of course! That’s why I bought the book!

And you’re still a fan of his work?

Of course! I don’t like him as a person.

I’m a fan his work as well. I don’t know him as a person.

I don’t like to see guys let him off the hook. Just because I’m a fan of his work, doesn’t mean I’m going to let him off the hook. If he’s going to point a finger at me, I’m going to point a finger at him. I’d never bring a camera into my house and allow anyone to shoot my family, the way he did. You let that kind of stuff slide. That’s not fair. I don’t see anyone write that in the paper! They always write about how he dislikes my Fritz and what a hustler I am and how unartistic I am. Did anyone ever write what I just told you? No! He’s in a chateau in France, drinking wine! “Mr. Underground.” You buy that! Do I think he’s a good artist? Absolutely. Do I think he has a right to yell at me? Not a chance. Do I think he’s a son of a bitch? Oh Yeah… But you guys sit panting at everything he does. But that’s the difference with my films. I’m not afraid to speak the truth the way I see it.

[Continued in Part Three].

–Brian Heater