11/7/2023 0 Comments Robert crumb comics online![]() Because of this, as well as disagreements with the New York animators' union, by the spring of 1971 Bakshi was having trouble hiring animators in New York, so he and Krantz moved production to L.A. Ralph Bakshi had notoriously high standards and was known to check over his animators' work daily, a level of micromanagement they weren't accustomed to. Fritz was also never storyboarded Bakshi instead preferred to keep the storyboards "in his head," and then described and even acted out the scenes for his layout artists and animators. For both Fritz and his next film, Heavy Traffic (considered by critics to be a more mature effort than Fritz), Bakshi recorded real conversations around New York City and in Harlem bars and integrated them into his scenes, lending authenticity to the dialogue that would be hard to replicate any other way. Later in 1970, Bakshi was able to secure financing from Cinemation Industries, producers of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, and Fantasy Records, distributor for Creedence Clearwater Revival.īakshi's artistic methods were at times innovative but always unconventional. funding was forced to cut his crew down to just five people. Later the same year, Bakshi pulled out over creative differences specifically, he claimed, Warner wanted celebrities to do the voice acting and asked Bakshi to remove at least one of the more graphic sex scenes between Fritz and a crow named Bertha. ![]() In early 1970, they signed with Warner Bros., but the deal wouldn't last. One way or another, Bakshi and Krantz got the rights to Fritz and began looking for a studio and distributor. Krantz claimed that, after Crumb's New York trip, he received a signed contract from Crumb in the mail and sent him a check for $12,500 compensation (a little over $100,000 today) with profit sharing to follow, while Crumb says his wife signed the contract on his behalf for $10,000 at a later point when Bakshi visited Crumb in San Francisco. ![]() Whether Crumb ever actually signed a contract giving Bakshi and Krantz the rights to Fritz is also a point of contention. After the division was closed at the end of 1967, Bakshi formed his own animation studio, Bakshi Productions, which gained a reputation for promoting women and people of color who, at the time, found little room for advancement in the field elsewhere. Although Bakshi made a name for himself and rose through the ranks quickly at Terrytoons, he was unsatisfied with the lack of creative control over his own projects, and eventually moved to Paramount Pictures to head their animation division. He got his start in animation with the New York studio Terrytoons, creators of Mighty Mouse, and a considerable number of less memorable kid-friendly characters. Bakshi was a Jewish immigrant, born in Palestine in 1938 and raised in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn. In 1969, animator Ralph Bakshi was on the lookout for an adult-themed cartoon that would be suitable for a feature-length film. Fritz was variously a con artist, a hippie poet, a college student, and a CIA agent he smoked, did drugs, swore, and had sex with a range of female animals of various species he got involved in politics, talked openly about race, and preached free love, and he soon became a darling of the underground comics scene. Throughout his life, the foul-mouthed cat got into all kinds of shenanigans in his fictional "supercity" populated by anthropomorphized animals.
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