RALPH BAKSHI INTERVIEW FROM PORK MAGAZINE 6

“Ralph Bakshi is a force of nature. He saved the TV animation industry - the creative part of it - by giving back the art to the artists.” ~John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy

“As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings – not run across the street and ask what my mother thinks.” ~Ralph Bakshi

This is my interview with Ralph Bakshi from PORK magazine #6. It was about this time that I realized that I could interview anyone for the magazine & the only person who said no was John Blanche because he was contractually obligated to do no interviews because of Games Workshop. Let's get on with this.

Ralph Bakshi was the first cartoon director who I became obsessed with as a kid. My mom rented Wizards from the funky rental spot at Lincoln Square right by Sparky’s Giant Burgers & my mind was blown. The cartoon was way more cartoony than so many other animated movies, but it was also full of stuff I had never seen in a cartoon before, stuff like assassinations, prostitution, Nazi war propaganda, a mix of styles, unconventional rotoscoping not designed to make the cartoon more realistic, but used just for the style & thrift of it & elements by one of my favorite artists, Ian Miller. The whole thing reeked of the work of Vaughn Bode as well & it was just like, “Oh! this is an important, amazing cartoon!” So I figured out who made it: Ralph Bakshi. Oh, Ralph Bakshi also did that crazy Lord of the Rings cartoon that we watched over & over again. Oh, he also did Fritz the Cat, the first X-rated cartoon that I saw when I was like seven or something. 

SEAN: You hustled your way through the bureaucracy of Terry Toons to become a director & continued to break the rules in your cartoons throughout your whole career, making cartoons that pertain to bigger things than cats chasing mice, to me this is the most American thing possible, but there are a lot of people who like to follow the rules & make other people follow the rules in the land of opportunity. What gives?

RALPH: Well what gives is something in me that goes back... Let me give an example: in Jr. High School in Brooklyn 1950 I somehow got a job as reporter on a three page newspaper (mimeographed), the Lew Wallace Press. Now I had no idea what to do. I was supposed to interview anyone I wanted. Now this is an all boys school with lots of bad guys everywhere and the teachers were WWII soldiers. They were funny, one French teacher, Mr. Peck, called me “Bakshit”. The class liked that I was failing French, big deal. Well one day, bored, I got the idea in English class to get out of there, so I raised my hand and told the teacher I had to do an interview with the Health Ed teacher and needed my friend Norman Darrer to take notes. She said to bring a note back from the Health Ed teacher. Well me and Norm ran the halls, played basketball,  bought hot dogs outside, and smoked. Next day, I told the English teacher I could not find the teacher to interview. She had checked with the school paper and yes, I was a reporter. I learned to go with my gut. I wasn't breaking rules so much as doing what I wanted to do, having fun and using an instinct on how to get it done. The situation was the same many years later when I just got tired of being part of the crowd that juuuuuustttt loved Disney and God and all those good things in life and thought I was nuts for thinking that Disney was boring and tired. The 60s were breaking and Bobby Dylan was blowing in the wind, they were still singing “it's a happy happy day.”

SEAN: Your movies operate in worlds of overt realism, the grimy streets of New York City full of all the grit & grease & sleaze & then there are the fantasy worlds of swords & sorcery. Sometimes they are distinct from each other like in Fritz the Cat, Coonskin, Fire & Ice & the Lord of the Rings, but in Wizards they are mixed. Seeing those worlds mixed in Wizards was a revelation for me & really spoke to something profound. I tend to associate fantasy with escapism, but Wizards is not an escapist fantasy, it's all there. When you came up with Wizards, which you said is your "children's movie" what was going on for you?

RALPH: Well, kids can think. They really know more then we think they know. I had done ideas in film that I believed in, right or wrong, and it came natural to me just to proceed in that vein after all. That was my disgust with Disney. He treated the HOLOCAUST LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED. Fantasy is perfect for ideas, because it’s wide open.

SEAN: Which one of your movies is your favorite & why?

RALPH: Coonskin and Traffic, because they weren't cut to shreds by the distributors and I was just working free as a bird.

SEAN: Will we ever get to see Hey Good Lookin' or Coonskin officially released?

RALPH: I think Coonskin.

SEAN: In John K's Fire Dogs 2 you play yourself as the fire chief. John seems like he was traumatized by you maybe, in awe of, but also traumatized. Is this cartoon what it's like to hang out with Ralph Bakshi?

RALPH: No, John is trying to get me out of his face, but he cant! I'm too good looking, too smart, I sting like a bee! He hates father figures, but I'm always saving his ass one way or another, he's my kid.

SEAN: Your central oeuvre is very 70s, I think it has something to do with that car accident between the dream of the 60s & the reality of the 70s & the intermingling of the two. This is my favorite period of time for this very reason. The America of 2012 is so uptight compared to how things were back then. It was different back then wasn't it? Especially NYC in the 70s right?

RALPH: Well, you’re close Sean, the 60s were really the outcome of the 40s: winning the war for the right reasons, the great comic book effort that we kids loved, and what they sold: honesty, fairness, right wins, etc. Then the freedom of art in the 50s: jazz, Rock&Roll, painting (Pollock et al.), comics (MAD, EC comics), great cars, sports cars, the Beetle, great neighborhoods that you could afford to live in with great clubs, poets, writers, artists all together mixing ideas. All this done for the love of it, not just the money. That came later and ruined everything. The hustlers took it all over and have today ruined the country big time. I was a product of the 40s: we would not have sold out as fast as everyone has today.  After Kent State and Kennedy and King’s murders we lost the country. Yeah, it was different back then all right.

Now go out & watch all his movies, they're my favorites!