(Excerpt from Unfiltered - The Complete Ralph Bakshi )
......the information that I read, and looked at, and researched over the years that I needed for my animation ended up in other areas eventually.”
It’s all over his pictures, too. Fast forward to the Harlem junkyard sequence in his very first feature, Fritz the Cat, for evidence of just how much of an artistic, personal collage his films are. Amid rusted cars and puddles of oil, Fritz is in heat — stoned out of his mind, full-mast, totally nude, and comfortably face-planted between black crow Bertha’s enormous breasts. Then, the young cat has an epiphany. His expression shifts harder than a Mustang; he stomps down his horniness. He’s had it! “Suddenly it’s all very clear. I must tell people about the revolution. Revolt! Revolt!” screams the once-chill feline, but it was really Ralph saying it. All that sex, all those drugs, the slacker shenanigans, the general content with cruising aimlessly through life — that was Ralph eating well on a steady diet of daily cartooning.
He needed to stir up a revolution, at least for his own sake. The humdrum of weekly deadlines for soulless projects was killing him softly, gently — like a headache that never actually goes away. All he had were the beginnings of Heavy Traffic — half in his head, half on paper — the story of an artist seeking some sort of purpose, and maybe a little love along the way. Still, Krantz knew it would be a hard sell. “He was like a father figure to me. He let me do my art. He let me build the studio. He let me do whatever pictures I wanted to make. And he trusted me. Steve knew that I could pull off what I said I could pull off and let me do it.” But before freedom, comes financing — and Krantz knew any studio executive hearing the pitch for Traffic would push it right back out the door. Ralph had no features under his belt, let alone something that defied the G-rated pursuits of Disney.
During this funk, he would wander the streets — and it was on one of those walks in 1969 that Ralph became acquainted with the East Side Book Store on St. Marks Place. He kept going back to raid its weathered, cluttered shelves for new arrivals, eventually finding the brand-new
Fritz the Cat collection by Robert Crumb. Previously only fodder for underground rags like Help!, Cavalier, and Crumb’s own Head Comix, this was Fritz’s solo debut. Despite being a fairly trendy read on the indie circuit, Crumb wasn’t a superstar; he was only cool amongst the real cool, which wasn’t saying much.
But Ralph could care less; Fritz was unhinged and certainly not shy — a solid foundation for how the 31-year-old wanted to violate the outlook of animation being just kiddie schlock. “I bought the book, put it on Krantz’s desk, and said let’s do this. They were animals fucking. And that, to me, was like the best of Terrytoons and the best of what I wanted to do. Steve looked at it and read it, came back in a week and said it is a good idea.” Until Crumb, Ralph thought “underground” meant Harvey
Kurtzman, Bill Mauldin, Don Martin — the MAD Magazine, Playboy, and political cartoonists of the era who used parody and pun as playful, yet dull, weapons. Fritz was polished and sharp; it could cut deep, if done right.
Ralph was jazzed.
It wasn’t long before Krantz arranged a meeting with Crumb, who just happened to be in New York on other business. It was casual — grub, drinks, bullshitting. Ralph shared a pile of drawings with his new pal, the product of some sleepless nights spent learning Crumb’s distinctive style, training his hand and proving, at least to himself, that he could transition the look to animation. Crumb, impressed by young Ralph’s tenacity
(or “energetic, neurotic and high strung,” as he put it in The R. Crumb Handbook), even lent him one of his cherished sketchbooks as reference, something he wouldn’t ask for back until close to a year later.
As Ralph let the fervor swell, Krantz involved the lawyers to get paperwork underway. Ralph was driven, keeping with the after-hours development, gradually honing in on Fritz’s trademark look. Prep began on the pitch presentation, which included a poster-sized, painted cel setup featuring the comic’s ensemble cast against a traced, photo background, just like Ralph intended the feature to appear. It was relatively sedate, predominately absent of the book’s sex and seediness — hell, there was no reason to scare the studio away before the first check was cut.
But he was jumping the gun. Crumb was unsure, refusing to sign the contract, which boggled Ralph the most. One of Ralph’s friends, artist Vaughn Bodé, warned him of Crumb’s sticky reputation, calling him “slick.” “He was right,” says Ralph. “Crumb is one of the slickest hustlers you’ll ever see in your life. He yelled at me for doing his picture, he called Steve Krantz a sleaze, but when push came to shove and he wanted to get famous, he let someone bring a camera right into his bedroom where his brother was eating rope and vomiting, where his mother was outta her mind. Would I do that to my family? Would I let the world see that?”
Blinded by sheer will to get the feature made, Ralph was off to San Francisco for another round of convincing, prepared for anything. “Krantz sent me out ’cause I was running the animation company. I was more than happy, ’cause I wanted to do the picture, so I went to talk to him about the rights. I met with Crumb and hiswife, Dana. I hung out with Crumb for a week. Crumb then said, ‘I can’t take this anymore!’ He split! I thought it was all over. I went back to the East Coast. Then Steve Krantz comes into my office about two weeks after and says, ‘Congratulations, you got the rights!’ I said, ‘But Crumb split!’ He said, ‘No, Dana, his wife, has some sort of power of attorney and signed the deal.We can make the picture!’”