Newsday (Nassau Edition) from Hempstead, New York • 91

he ion to real life- -style By Joseph Gelmis Contemporary animation's most outrageous provocateur, Ralph Bakshi, is back doing what he likes best--using feature-length cartoons to comment on the quality of American life. Bakshi's "American Pop" is a 95-minute capsule history of 20th-Century America, told through the experiences of four generations of an immigrant family's men. His two most recent films were fantasies, "Wizards" and Lord of the Rings." "I only want to do films about American life," said the 42-year-old Bakshi during a recent visit to New York. "Animation has been dominated for too long by the fantasy Bakshi claims he made his two fantasies from dire necessity, not from choice. "I'd had two of my movies stopped dead, dumped," he recalled.

"It looked as if I was through making my kind of movies I had to make fantasies, movies that somebody would buy, to pull my company out of bankruptcy. What I learned was that filmmakers shouldn't do material they aren't really sympathetic to." "Wizards" and Bakshi's version of the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's cult classic "The Lord of the Rings" drew mixed reviews. "I've been told that 'Lord of the Rings' was a huge moneymaker worldwide," said Bakshi. "But I won't be doing the second installment of the picture.

I never should have gotten involved with it." Bakshi's raunchy, abrasive, innovative animation of the hippie cult comic strip "Fritz the Cat" and his existential urban nightmare feature "Heavy Traffic" made him the most acclaimed and notorious X-rated cartoonist in America. His career and self-confidence, however, were shattered, temporarily it turned out, by the furor over "Coonskin." That funky position report on black Americans was denounced as racist by some vocal black activist groups. And Paramount Pictures, the distributor, jettisoned it as more trouble than it was worth. "Some blacks, not all that many blacks, called it racist," said Bakshi. "I've got a letter from the NAACP in which they describe 'Coonskin' as vulgar but not racist." "Coonskin" finally did find a distributor, a small company specializing in exploitation flicks.

It was shown at far fewer theaters than if Paramount had distributed it. "And," recalled Bakshi ruefully, "the controversy over 'Coonskin' caused the financing to be pulled on my next film, 'Hey Good which was already 85 per cent finished at the time." Bakshi's talent for provoking extreme reactions is almost as impressive as his gifts as a graphic artist. His "American Pop" has, not unexpectedly, polarized critics- some finding it brilliant, others seeing it as muddled and negative. The volatile elements in his films the an- IN SHORT Zoetrope filming on cost an extra Coppola and costs reportedly Francis Ford Coppola, who ran so of his own far over budget making the $32 yet to pay million Now" that he $3 million had to put up his own San Francis- about $1 co real estate holdings, including to eight his home and office building, as col- ing. Paramount, lateral for a bank loan, is doing ex- the two actly the same thing again, for his him through new movie, "One from the Heart." million--a The budget has already escalated to share in a the $23 million range and Coppola being developed can't meet the payroll.

To cut costs, $500,000 Coppola has been laying off person- "Heaven's nel at Zoetrope Studios, which he western, was purchased last year for $6.5 million, a week after and reducing salaries of those re- re-edited, maining by 50 per cent. "I'm always are frightened in financial trouble," Coppola told Ironically, reporters. The problems began Heart," when Coppola decided to recreate a fantasy about surrealistic Las Vegas on the eight isy and sex," grignia a alla nonw vlito Bakshi and Tony, his 'American Pop' star ger, crude humor, rebelliousness, ethnic insights-are projections from Bakshi's own Born in Palestine of Russian-Jewish parents, raised in the Brownsville ghetto of Brooklyn, Bakshi sees himself as a street philosopher, critic and commentator for the common man. He was devastated by the response of blacks and the industry to "Coonskin" because, as he professed at the time, he considered himself a soul brother to blacks and thought he, more than most whites, understood what it meant to be black in America. Pop" is about the experiences of an immigrant family not totally dissimilar from Bakshi's own.

It is a sort of genealogy of a rock star. Beginning in 1900 with the arrival in New York of his great-grandfather, a refugee from a Russian pogrom, the film follows the lives and times of the male line through 1980. "American Pop" is Bakshi's abridged version of the key historical events of 80 years, set to the music and prevalent illustrator's style of each era. The songs are jumbled, not really in strict chronological order. By dramatizing 80 years of history in 95 minutes, the film skims, is a superficial, as well as simplistic survey.

"I'm always trying to press animation to its limits," Bakshi replied. "I was interested in the sound stages, instead of location. The decision $6 million. Coppola has a total of $4 million in the picture and has himself $2 million of his director's fee. It will cost million a week for the five weeks remaining of filmfor whom he made "Godfather" pictures, got a recent week with $1 $500,000 advance for its sci-fi project, "Interface," at Zoetrope, and a personal loan.

Since Gate," a $36 million blasted out of theaters it opened and is being said Coppola, "Companies by big budget films." the cast of "One from the which is described as "a romantic love, jealouare members of 21 123804 ORCERAM AU YAWGIM challenge of compressing the story of four generations into the amount of time available for an animated film- -which is about an hour and a half. And I wondered how much real emotion a cartoon figure can communicate. The answer is: Watch an audience watching 'American People who aren't aware of the animation technique I use pay more attention to the characters, believe them, believe their emotions." Bakshi's technique, perfected with "Lord of the Rings," is to film scenes with live actors and then have his animators trace the actors' outlines to produce realistic fluid motion. "Tracing live action is only the beginning," he said. "The actors are reconstituted.

The animators make a figure larger or smaller, alter the shape. It's a guide for the animator, rather than just tracing and coloring-in a real figure. "As long as audiences believe what they're looking at, I don't care how I get the effect," Bakshi said. "Technique doesn't matter. Oh, yeah, other animators complain and call this technique phony animation.

It's not in their interest to do what I'm doing. But, you know, that was the same kind of argument used by painters to put down photography 100 years ago. It just doesn't matter to For Bakshi, "American Pop," the film he talked of making years ago under the title "American Chronicles," is about the destructive aspects of pursuing the American Dream. "It's about how we mess up our lives chasing success," he said. "It's something I went through personally.

I gave Ronni the outline and she wrote the screenplay. You know, we're taught to want to be successful. And this country is different from anyplace else in the world. Because you're really free here. If you try hard enough in this country, you will make it.

Tony ends up a star, with a platinum record. Was it worth it? I don't Bakshi insists that the film wasn't meant to be a repudiation of the counterculture of the '60s and '70s, though the final third of "American Pop" is a sordid drug freak-out and the rock star is an angry, alienated kid-outlaw figure. "Hey, drugs did blow all that good stuff away," he said. "But I loved everyone in the film. I don't agree that Tony was just a negative figure.

I think he was ambitious to be a star, and he did what he had to do to make it. I don't see Tony as an unsympathetic character." "American Pop" cost $4 million, co-financed by Guinness, the British brewers, and Columbia Pictures. Bakshi Productions has a three-picture deal with Richard St. Johns, who heads Aspen Productions. Bakshi's next project is to finish "Hey Good a nostalgic animated film about another era of American life that has special significance for him, the era of greasers in black leather jackets, the 1950s.

'AVOSMEN SUNDAY, la's repertory company, a concept that was intended to keep costs under control. They include Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Raul Julia, Nastassia Kinski and Lainie Kazan. Huston on Hemingway John Huston, 74, the most active septuagenarian filmmaker, is currently in post-production on "Escape to Victory," the story of a grudge soccer match between Allied prisoners and their German captors during World War II. Speaking of his old drinking and fishing buddy Ernest Hemingway in the Feb. 19 issue of Rolling Stone, Huston replied that he wasn't surprised when Hemingway shot himself.

"It was exactly what I would have expected him to do under the circumstances. And I say this with profound admiration for both him and the act. He was on his way out mentally, 123804 YAWGIM AULD and he knew it and didn't want that to' happen. Who the hell would? ing else. I mean, Hemingway would wouldn't If be I out have didn't of done cowardice it the had and it noth- been it FEBRUARY cancer.

But he was on his way to A3 imbecility I like to live. But in a situation like Hemingway's, -I 1861 hope I would pull the trigger. I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't." Role for Steiger Rod Steiger will play a starring role in Magic Mountain," based on the book by Thomas Mann. The movie also stars Charles Aznavour and Marie-France Pisier. man Mynher Pepperkorn, who is a Steiger portrays the role of Dutch- Part patient in a sanitarium that offers an analogy to the 'decay of Europe- 5 an countries just prior to World War I.

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