Jon M. Gibson and Chris McDonnell (Foreword by Quentin Tarantino, Afterward by Ralph Bakshi)New York: Universe/Rizzoli, 2008.
$40.00/Hardcover
The reputations of maverick filmmakers tend to wildly oscillate every few years. Critics, scholars, film festival programmers, and intrepid fans rescue directors whose movies have been neglected (not released on home video formats, tied up in rights issues, disappeared from course syllabi, and/or been left out of the footnotes and book indexes of film history). The taste-making establishment will dredge up lost prints, write glowing retrospectives, and offer new generations of filmgoers a chance at seeing what they missed. Many of the most prolific directors of the 1960s and 1970s have experienced this sort of revival, though an large number have been totally forgotten, lying in wait for the passionate supporter to intervene and revive their films. Better to do this while the principle parties are still alive. American originals like Hal Ashby, Samuel Fuller, and Robert Aldrich never lived to see their total reputations defended, their movies widely and wildly appreciated.
Ralph Bakshi gracefully fits this mold. An anti-authoritarian talent with an unmatched eye for urban grit, Bakshi worked hard for prestige in what was seen as a kid’s game: the constantly underestimated realm of film animation. From humble beginnings as a mouthy youth in the poor Brownsville area of New York, Bakshi caught the cartooning bug and worked his way through the ranks of Terrytoons, a once-storied animation studio that needed prolific, energetic talent. He learned most of the stages of animation production through a long, grueling apprenticeship at the lower levels of the company, but eventually designed and helmed many of his own shows. During the late 1960s he splintered from Terrytoons and a placeholder job developing shows for Paramount and started Bakshi Productions in New York, where he oversaw production on animated shows like Spider-Man. A desire to make feature-length animated films that were not beholden to the mandates and limitations of broadcast television solidified his partnership with Steve Krantz. Bakshi, Krantz and a small team of animators—with the sometimes iffy approval of underground sensation R. Crumb—were going to make a film of Fritz the Cat.
By 1972, Fritz was already established as a countercultural icon. Bakshi and co translated his picaresque world of excess to the screen. Mobsters, orgies, rollicking music, and taboo representations (interracial coupling, anti-authoritarian protest, etc) fit the era. Seen as a kindred film to Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song (1971) in genre and daring, Fritz was a massive financial success and was even given a spot in the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, thus symbolically showing the world that American-style revolution lived on in carnivalesque cartoons (80). Bakshi followed with Heavy Traffic (1973) a semi-autobiographical tale of youthful alienation and career aspiration which I consider to be his masterpiece and the most fully realized, zeitgeist-defining animated film in American history. Appreciated by critics but never the money-maker that Fritz was, it set Bakshi on a cycle of filmmaking that seemed to oscillate between the commercial and the personal, often with hybrid results that were uneasily poised for the mainstream.
Jon M. Gibson and Chris McDonnell’s Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi—assembled with the full support of Bakshi himself and the endorsement of superfan Quentin Tarantino—gushes with enthusiasm for some of the weirdest animated films in history. This is a book to help clarify (or, perhaps, enhance) the myth of Bakshi the consummate, uncompromising outsider. A mostly chronological career retrospective, the text transcribes Bakshi’s life as an abundant feast for the senses.
This is a coffee table book and thrives on images, mostly unpublished. Bakshi’s work in film, from Fritz to Cool World (1992) and the live-action The Cool and the Crazy (1994), is the book’s primary focus. Gibson and McDonnell have scoured the vaults, garages, basements, and file-drawers of Bakshi’s past, presenting gorgeously captured doodles, production stills, posters, frame enhancements, paintings, and other esoteric bits that amount to a successful, though underappreciated, career. Most lovingly defended is Coonskin (1974/1975, also known as Street Fight and originally conceived as Harlem Nights), Bakshi’s most audacious film and the artistic decision that threatened to derail his meteoric rise to fame. A contemporary re-imagining of the Uncle Remus stories, Coonskin recast the vestiges of Southern racism into mid-1970s Harlem. Interpretations were thoroughly mixed, often causing groups with little in common to come into orbit. On the one hand, CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) objected from the very beginning (though the NAACP supported Bakshi), while the KKK became a temporary supporter and wanted Ralph to become a member (119, 123)! What was meant to be multi-layered, sophisticated satire was denounced by a group that could benefit from its central message while bigoted racists found it to support their agenda. Bakshi recalls “I didn’t make Coonskin for idiots. There are very specific people that understand my films. Those are the guys that know satire. They’re smart, free-thinking folks” (123).
Following Coonskin, Bakshi shifted emphasis from the sensational but contemporary to the fantastic. Gibson and McDonnell do a good job at contextualizing the sword and sandal films, Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978), and Fire & Ice (1982), though there seem to have been some rights complications with The Lord of the Rings chapter, since all of the accompanying images are from other projects and not from the film itself. Hey Good Lookin’ and American Pop (1981) are understood in their broad, nostalgic dimensions, as showcases for Bakshi’s personal views on the 20th century American dream. The books remaining chapters discuss Bakshi’s dissatisfaction with motion pictures, including missed opportunities like Cool World (generally maligned though begging for critical re-assessment) and the revitalized but underdeveloped Mighty Mouse (1987) television series.
Unfiltered is almost definitive and gives Bakshi a personal space for defending himself against his detractors. While its extensive illustrations are its primary attraction, they also lend to the book’s principle weakness. Gibson and McDonnell simply do not have room to analyze the films whose production histories and anecdotes they lovingly present. In this way, Unfiltered is largely a celebration, but it does open up space for some actual critical writing on Bakshi. Before Unfiltered, the discourse of his life and films had been limited to the odd interview and the initial reviews that accompanied his films. Gibson and McDonnell provide a solid biographical and contextual basis that film scholars, cultural commentators, and students of subversive pop can use to begin exploring the complex, often contradictory world of Bakshi’s art and films. Though now essentially retired from filmmaking and more a practicing painter than animator, Ralph Bakshi remains prescient, and hopefully thanks to Unfiltered, ripe for rediscovery.
