American Pop | |
---|---|
Directed by | Ralph Bakshi |
Written by | Ronni Kern |
Produced by | Ralph Bakshi Martin Ransohoff |
Starring | Ron Thompson Lisa Jane Persky Jeffrey Lippa Richard Singer Marya Small |
Edited by | David Ramirez |
Music by | Lee Holdridge |
Production company | Bakshi Productions |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 96 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $5 million [1] |
Box office | $6 million [2] |
American Pop is a 1981 American adult animated epic jukebox musical drama film starring Ron Thompson and produced and directed by Ralph Bakshi. [3] It was the fourth animated feature film to be presented in Dolby sound. The film tells the story of four generations of an immigrant family of musicians whose careers parallel the history of American popular music in the 20th century. [4]
The majority of the film's animation was completed through rotoscoping, [3] a process in which live actors are filmed and the subsequent footage is used for animators to draw over. [5] However, the film also uses a variety of other media including water-colors, live-action shots, and archival footage. [6]
In Imperial Russia during the late 1890s, a rabbi's wife and her young son Zalmie escape to America while the rabbi is killed by the Cossacks. Shortly after their arrival in New York City, Zalmie is recruited by Louie, a performer at a burlesque house, to hand out chorus slips (sheets of paper with song chorus lyrics, used to enable audience members to sing along [7] ). As Zalmie grows into adolescence, he spends more time with Louie backstage at burlesque shows. When Zalmie's mother dies in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he begins working with Louie full-time at a small theatre. Though Zalmie aspires to be a singer, he is beginning to enter puberty and his changing voice becomes a significant obstacle. When World War I strikes, Zalmie travels the globe performing for the troops as the bottom half of a pantomime horse and sustains a wound to his throat during a German air raid, which ends his singing career.
When Zalmie returns to New York, he briefly continues performing as a clown, and falls in love with a stripper named Bella, vowing to make her a famous singer and getting involved with mobsters in order to do so. After Zalmie impregnates her, he uses money from mob boss Nicky Palumbo to pay for their wedding. Bella achieves modest success, but she is killed after opening a package containing a bomb intended for Zalmie. Their son, Benny, who is already an introverted child, focuses all of his efforts into becoming a talented jazz pianist. Benny marries Palumbo's daughter at Zalmie's request and enlists to fight in World War II seeking redemption for his family, despite pleas from his father. Benny is killed in Nazi Germany when he stops to play on an abandoned piano and is caught off-guard by a Nazi soldier; Benny begins to play Lili Marleen and the Nazi closes his eyes in bliss, but when the song ends, the Nazi pauses only to thank Benny before riddling him and the piano with gunfire. Benny's wife and son, named Tony, now live in a suburban Long Island town, and they watch as Zalmie testifies against Palumbo on television, calling him a rat.
A teenage Tony steals his stepfather's car and drives across the country for four weeks, ending up in Kansas, where he spends the day washing dishes at a diner and spends the night with a waitress. In California, Tony takes another job dishwashing, but soon grows tired of it and quits. A six-piece rock group invites him to write songs for them after hearing him playing a harmonica under their doorstep. The band becomes successful but slowly starts to decompose because of the heroin addictions of female lead singer Frankie Heart and Tony himself. Tony becomes addicted to drugs after being hospitalized from falling off a stage while on acid at one of Frankie's shows. Frankie and the band's drummer, Johnny Webb, marry but divorce after two weeks, and Frankie begins an affair with Tony. In Kansas, the band is set to perform after Jimi Hendrix, but Frankie overdoses backstage. Meanwhile, Tony meets a blonde, blue-eyed boy, Little Pete, whom Tony realizes is his son, conceived the night he spent with the waitress.
Tony moves back to New York City accompanied by Pete, where he becomes heavily involved with drug dealing. Pete makes a small amount of money playing the acoustic guitar, but Tony takes any money that Pete earns to buy drugs for himself. One day, Tony and Pete argue over the latter's guitar, where Pete implies that he knows Tony is his father. After he tells the story of his own father, Tony gives Benny's harmonica to Pete, then takes Pete's guitar to pawn it, telling Pete to wait on the city bench they're at. The next morning, a man approaches Pete and gives him a small package of drugs to sell and the pawn slip for his guitar and tells Pete that Tony said goodbye to him. After years of selling drugs to rock bands, Pete refuses to sell the band members any more cocaine unless they are willing to listen to his music. Playing "Night Moves", his talent stuns both the band and the management and they agree to record and hire him on the spot. Eventually, Pete performs in concert with the band to roaring cheers from the crowd.
Following the production struggles of The Lord of the Rings , Ralph Bakshi decided that it was time to work on something more personal. [8] He pitched American Pop to Columbia Pictures president Daniel Melnick. Bakshi wanted to produce a film with an extensive soundtrack of songs which would be given an entirely new context in juxtaposition to the visuals in a film. [8] While the film does not reflect Bakshi's own experiences, its themes were strongly influenced by individuals he had encountered in Brownsville. [8] The film's crew included character layout and design artist Louise Zingarelli, Vita, Barry E. Jackson, and Marcia Adams, each of whom brought their own personal touch to the film. [8] Bakshi once again used rotoscoping, in an attempt to capture the range of emotions and movement required for the film's story. According to Bakshi, "Rotoscoping is terrible for subtleties, so it was tough to get facial performances to match the stage ones." [8]
The rock band Fear appeared in the film, Fear lead singer Lee Ving acted under the name Lee James Jude. [9]
Actor Elya Baskin performed in the film in an early role as a tuba player. [9]
The score for American Pop was composed by Lee Holdridge. As the result of his reputation as an innovator of adult animation, Bakshi was able to acquire the rights to an extensive soundtrack, including songs by Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, The Doors, George Gershwin, The Mamas & the Papas, Herbie Hancock, Lou Reed and Louis Prima, for under $1,000,000 in permissions fees. [8] Due to music clearance issues, the film was not released on home video until 1998. [11]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 65% based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 5.90/10. [12] The film was a success upon its February 12, 1981, release. [8] Writer Jerry Beck called it "one of Bakshi's best films". [11]
Slate magazine said the film was a "rock-star epic, a cartoon movie for and about grown-ups, in both style and substance." [13]
Michael Barrier, an animation historian, described American Pop as one of two films that demonstrated "that Bakshi was utterly lacking in the artistic self-discipline that might have permitted him to outgrow his limitations." [14]
In 2008, director Hype Williams and Kanye West paid tribute to the film in the music video for West's single "Heartless", which featured use of rotoscoped animation and references to scenes and backgrounds from the film. [3] [15]
Ain't It Cool News head writer Harry Knowles wrote that American Pop was his favorite Ralph Bakshi film. [16]
On January 12, 2014, at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, California, there was a special screening of American Pop with actors Ron Thompson and Mews Small in attendance, [17] it was the first time lead actor Ron Thompson had ever introduced the film before a live audience. [18]
At the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, California on March 27, 2015, there was a screening of American Pop with director Ralph Bakshi, Ron Thompson and Mews Small attending. [19]
Disney's House of Mouse is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation that originally aired on ABC and Toon Disney from January 13, 2001, to October 24, 2003, with 52 episodes and 22 newly produced cartoon shorts made for the series. The show focuses on Mickey Mouse and his friends running a cartoon theater dinner club in the fictional setting of ToonTown, catering to many characters from Disney cartoons and animated movies while showcasing a variety of their cartoon shorts. The series is named after a common nickname or epithet for the Walt Disney Company.
Ralph Bakshi is an American retired animator and filmmaker, known for his fantastical animated films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1994, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, predominantly urban dramas and fantasy films, five of which he wrote. He has also been involved in numerous television projects as director, writer, producer and animator.
The Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American independent drama film noir directed by Otto Preminger, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren. Starring Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang and Darren McGavin, it recounts the story of a drug addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. Although the addictive drug is never identified in the film, according to the American Film Institute "most contemporary and modern sources assume that it is heroin", although in Algren's book it is morphine. The film's initial release was controversial for its treatment of the then-taboo subject of drug addiction.
Visual effects is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or CGI elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX.
Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, live-action film images were projected onto a glass panel and traced onto paper. This projection equipment is referred to as a rotoscope, developed by Polish-American animator Max Fleischer. This device was eventually replaced by computers, but the process is still called rotoscoping.
The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 animated epic fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi from a screenplay by Chris Conkling and Peter S. Beagle. It is based on the novel of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien, adapting from the volumes The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. Set in Middle-earth, the film follows a group of fantasy races—Hobbits, Men, an Elf, a Dwarf and a wizard—who form a fellowship to destroy a magical ring made by the Dark Lord Sauron, the main antagonist.
Cool World is a 1992 American adult live-action/animated hybrid fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi and written by Michael Grais and Mark Victor. Starring Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt, it tells the story of a cartoonist who finds himself in a cartoon-like universe he believes he created, where he is seduced by one of the characters, a femme fatale who wants to become human.
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Cool and the Crazy is a 1994 American made-for television drama film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi and starring Jared Leto and Alicia Silverstone. The story revolves around an unhappily married couple in the late 1950s who both lead separate affairs. The film was Bakshi's first feature-length live-action film, being primarily known as a director of animated films which heavily utilize live-action sequences, such as Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Wizards, American Pop and The Lord of the Rings.
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Fire and Ice is a 1983 American animated dark fantasy adventure film directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film, a collaboration between Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, was distributed by 20th Century-Fox. The animated feature, based on characters co-created by Bakshi and Frazetta, was made using the process of rotoscoping, in which scenes were shot in live-action and then traced onto animation cels.
Hey Good Lookin' is a 1982 American adult animated coming of age comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Ralph Bakshi. The film takes place in Brooklyn during the 1950s and focuses on Vinnie, the leader of a gang named the Stompers, his friend Crazy Shapiro, and their respective girlfriends Roz and Eva. The film stars the voices of Richard Romanus, David Proval, Tina Bowman, and Jesse Welles.
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Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American adult animated black comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi in his directorial debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film focuses on its Skip Hinnant-portrayed titular character, a glib, womanizing and fraudulent cat in an anthropomorphic animal version of New York City during the mid-to-late 1960s. Fritz decides on a whim to drop out of college, interacts with inner city African American crows, unintentionally starts a race riot and becomes a leftist revolutionary. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, and the free love movement, as well as serving as a criticism of the countercultural political revolution and dishonest political activists.
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Ron Thompson was an American actor, singer-songwriter and dancer.
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