Ralph Bakshi quotes

Ralph Bakshi is an American director, animator, and producer known for his groundbreaking work in adult animation. His films, such as "Fritz the Cat" and "Heavy Traffic," pushed the boundaries of animation with mature themes and bold visual styles. He has had a major influence on the animation industry and inspired generations of filmmakers. Here are 34 of his quotes:

Cartooning at its best is a fine art. I'm a cartoonist who works in the medium of animation, which also allows me to paint my cartoons.

Ralph Bakshi

Wizards was my homage to Tolkien in the American idiom. I had read Tolkien, understood Tolkien, and wanted to do a sort of fantasy for American kids, and that was Wizards.

Ralph Bakshi

I had the X rating on my films. Now they do as much on The Simpsons as I got an X rating for Fritz the Cat.

Ralph Bakshi

What's most important in animation is the emotions and the ideas being portrayed. I'm a great believer of energy and emotion.

Ralph Bakshi

Animation is tremendously resilient. Animation will recover, as art always recovers. There's always cycles of good art.

Ralph Bakshi

Did I have a responsibility to discuss issues? Absolutely. Bobby Dylan was discussing issues – Disney wasn't.

Ralph Bakshi

When I had my own company on Traffic and Coonskin, all metaphors were able to get to the screen clearly. In Cool World, with the producer and Paramount watching me carefully to make sure I was in good taste, I instinctively poured stuff into the picture that I wanted to talk about. But when you force stuff, it's not really very clear. But, I have a great love for Max Fleischer, especially some of his Black & White Betty Boops with their strange Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong black folk tale jazz hipness that part of Cool World was a homage in style to those films and that style of cartooning. The Grim Reaper is right out of a Max Fleischer cartoon or old Terrytoons, which is why I hired and love Milton Knight the artist. He understands totally the Uncle Remus fable like qualities behind Fleischer and Terrytoons. Milton Knight is probably the purest artist of that style in the business. He has a hard time because studios think he is old fashioned...but that's the point.

Ralph Bakshi

Wizards was about the creation of the state of Israel and the Holocaust, about the Jews looking for a homeland, and about the fact that fascism was on the rise again, I thought. That was way before the Right Wing made their appearance again, and I felt that things were shifting back. So on that level, Wizards was a very personal film.

Ralph Bakshi

I am not interested in slickness for the sake of slickness.

Ralph Bakshi

I'm the first to admit that I can't be as good as Tolkien, and a movie can never be as good as Tolkien.

Ralph Bakshi

Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.

Ralph Bakshi

One of the best animated films I've seen come out of Disney was the Tarzan movie. I wasn't crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan's face, but the traditional animation was spectacular.

Ralph Bakshi

My good films were independent and my bad films were not.

Ralph Bakshi

I would like to have the original ending to my Lord of the Rings instead of the one they released. In my original cut I had the victory at Helm's Deep as the final sequence.

Ralph Bakshi

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

Ralph Bakshi

I draw what I feel, which is no more than doing my job.

Ralph Bakshi

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings - not run across the street and ask what my mother thinks.

Ralph Bakshi

Too many of Disney animators, and a lot try to emulate Disney, are trying to hit what they call quality levels. They're boring mannerisms.

Ralph Bakshi

I miss animation very passionately. Not continuously, but every once in a while I would die to do another film.

Ralph Bakshi

I animated 20 years at Terry Toons. It's important to know that animators like pizza and a raise once in a while, and you've got to treat them with love.

Ralph Bakshi

All the old great companies were run by guys who knew what an animator meant, and guys who knew how to draw. All the companies today are run by executives.

Ralph Bakshi

Four guys could get together and make their own movie, in a year, but nobody does it 'cause they got bills to pay. What I'm saying is, that's what I would do, if I was young. I wouldn't even get a job. I'd get a couple of computers and a bunch of guys, we'd eat crap for a year, millionaires the next year if we did a good film. It's so extraordinary. Instead of crying about getting a job at Disney or "things are falling apart", things the old animators were doing when I was a kid, "it's all crumbling!" It's not crumbling, you're crumbling! You got these computers that could do this stuff for nothing! What do you do with it? You try to get a job for some asshole studio. It's so dumb.

Ralph Bakshi