![]() ![]() His first was the second film he pitched to producer Steve Krantz, a crazy idea very loosely based on a 1969 collection of the Fritz the Cat comic strips by Robert Crumb. ![]() They passed on the film which would become his second cult classic. He pitched Warner Brothers an inner-city street life script called Heavy Traffic. Bakshi had just come off drawing Heckle and Jeckle and other early morning classics for Terrytoons and was looking to direct his first feature. No joke, Fritz the Cat was made for $850,000 and bagged $90 million.įritz the Cat was written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. But Fritz the Cat from 1972 was the first commercially animated feature film to capitalize on the X rating it snagged from the Motion Picture Association of America to sell tickets. Heavy Metal from 1981, South Park: Bigger, Louder, and Uncut from 1999 and A Scanner Darkly from 2006 had R-ratings. Recently, Sausage Party was touted for its R rating but, aside from the CGI tech, this is nothing new. Fritz tasted life to the fullest and, at the end of that picture Fritz the Cat, his heart cries out in this hungry, tortured, wrecked quest for more. This cat had riches and fame and adventure. He fought many a good man and laid many a good woman. ![]() He’d been up and down the four corners of this big old world, seen it all and done it all. Fritz was a cat whose soul was tormented. And still telling the truth.Hey, you fucking intellectuals and geeks, you think you’re so where it’s at? Hey, yeah, the movie was set in the 1960s. “I know the bastards are out to get me because I bring you the truth! And the truth is the one thing these bastards can’t tolerate! I only hope to God I am able to complete my mission on this planet before they succeed in exterminating me!”įortunately, the great Crumbum is still working. You might say I’m a mad scientist, for my plans have all been worked out quite methodically…logically…but the ends justify the means, heh heh. I’ve been called an evil genius by cities of assholes, but I know who these people are, and they’re on my list. And, of course, every performance remains outrageously funny.Ĭrumb once said, “From the bedroom closet I operate a huge network of radios, sending out incantations, curses, voodoo hoodoo. Now Crumb publishes only rarely, yet he has become an American Dostoevsky, whose every statement commands spellbound attention. As the intensity of his work has grown, he has published fewer strips and devoted more time to his band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders. In recent years, Crumb’s work has become more dense and psychological than ever before, exorcising the demons of his bitter childhood, failed marriage and private life for an audience that sees itself in Crumb’s most painful and personal visions. He became America’s last living celebrity who wouldn’t sell out. He created a uniquely recognizable visual style in modern art and put it in the service of the revolution. He wrote the Great American Novel in comic-book format a dozen times and made us realize that our lives were controlled by talking toilet bowls and black blues singers who died 30 years ago. Snoid, Honeybunch Kaminski, Lenore Goldberg, Fritz the Cat, “Stoned Again” and “Keep On Truckin’” and a host of other characters more real to many people than they are to themselves. Natural, Angelfood McSpade, Flakey Foont, Mr. He charted the hallucinations and revelations of a million acid trips. ![]() He and his underground cartoonist colleagues transformed a minor medium into a major art form. Crumb rendered for us in the form of-what else?-a comic strip. To celebrate, we’ve dug up this rare, exclusive interview with the famous artist from the November, 1977 issue of High Times, which R. ![]()
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