“American Pop” Q&A

Ralph Bakshi is probably best known as the animation auteur behind the infamous X-rated “Fritz the Cat” and the 1978 “Lord of the Rings” adaptation. But one of his boldest & most unique films is “American Pop,” his lavish decades-spanning portrait of early 20th Century America through the eyes of a Jewish Immigrant family of musicians. Using rotoscoping, he assembled a cast of actors, shot the film on a soundstage, then traced their performances into animation & brought the story to life with vivid backgrounds and psychedelic colors. Unfortunately, due to the music rights for the incredible rock & roll soundtrack — including Lou Reed, Pat Benatar, Bob Seger & Lynyrd Skynyrd — the film took many years to make it to VHS and DVD, and has only just now gotten a BluRay release.

Earlier this year, on March 14th, a special 35mm screening was held at the Braindead Studios cinema in Los Angeles, hosted by Surf Curse. Afterwards, members of the cast and crew took the stage for a Q&A, recalling the film’s production over 40 years ago. Here are some excerpts from that Q&A, edited for clarity.

Ron Thompson, “Tony” and “Pete”

All of us shot the film on a sound stage. We had our costumes, our makeup, and a very minimal set. If we had to go through a door, there was a door, but there was no wall. If you had to be in a cornfield while Jan Joplin was singing, it was just a bare stage. There was nothing there, but me and Janice <laugh> and they filmed this movie in black and white, they edited it, and then once it was finished, there are 24 frames per second, and each frame is blown up into a photograph. And our animators, this is back when we had animators, not computers, took that photograph and traced the actor, and then Barry would draw the background in. And then they colored it. And that’s the way the movie was made. It’s not a voiceover, it’s an exact tracing of the emotional and physical performance of the actor.

Mark Bakshi, Music Coordinator & son of Ralph Bakshi

When the film was rotoscoped in its early 1980s, there’s a lot of criticism. A lot of the purists really criticized the movie as a cheat, an animation cheat. And that’s exactly the opposite. And it wasn’t done for financial reasons. It wasn’t any cheaper to make the movie, cause you have to shoot both a live action movie and animate that movie. But what my father wanted to do is his vision, he wanted to hope that animation could be on equal footing with live action. And he felt that the nuance of a performance shooting it on the stage was able to capture an essence of live action and give the film that feel, emotionally and visually. And I think it was an obviously an incredibly successful thing, but I just wanted you guys to have some context of why he made the choice to rotoscope. It was really to try to put the movie on equal footing as with live action. He always felt film was collage in the truest sense. And art should create a sense of a visual collage that took you on an emotional journey throughout the movie as well as the storytelling. So it was both, something he tried to achieve.

Lee Holdridge, Music

[For the opening scene] Ralph said to me, you know, we should have a real singing leader, a real Cantor. So I asked him about it, and he said it should be Ukrainian. And I said, oh boy, <laugh>. So I started calling a lot of friends and they said, there’s this cantor in Canoga Park. I love it, the Canter are from Canoga Park. It sounds like a play, doesn’t it? <laugh> He said, he’s an expert on Ukrainian singing. So I went to see him and he had brought me into his home. We sat down at a nice table and I listened to an hour of different Ukrainian hymns that he sang. He sang beautifully. And I really love that one, I thought that was particularly beautiful. And I said, there’s something about that.

I made a recording of it. I took it to Ralph, I played it for you guys, and Ralph loved it. He said, that’s great, that’s great. So I asked him the cantor, how should we do this? He said, the normal way to do it is I would sing a phrase and there would be a group of men’s choir that would answer. So it would be a statement and answer, statement and answer. So I wrote out the arrangement with all that in mind. And if I can bore you with a funny little studio story, the day we were gonna record at Warner Brothers on the sound stage, the Cantor was coming in to sing, and I had hired 20 men singers to be the chorus. And before he arrived, I said to everybody, I said to Danny Wallin, who was the engineer, I said, now listen you guys, this man is a gentleman. You gotta watch your mouth. I don’t want any strange language <laugh>. Danny was notorious for saying whatever was on his mind. I said, please show respect. Let’s be considerate of who he is and what he is. Okay, fine, we all agree.

The Cantor comes in, he’s impeccably dressed, he has a tie, a beautiful pin striped suit. He looks incredible. We had him set up in the middle of the studio with the men around him. I asked Danny, I said, it should be a live recording. It should be real. It shouldn’t be faked. So he had set it all up with the room and we rehearsed it and it was gorgeous. The cantor did the solo part and the chorus answered. And Ralph was thrilled, you know, it was great. And we started to make recordings of it, you know, it’s live, so we have to do complete takes. So we start the first take and the Cantor makes a slight mistake. It’s okay, don’t worry about it. It’s all right, you got plenty of time. We started again. He makes another little mistake. I said, it’s okay, we’ll do it again. And the Cantor looks at me, saying, can’t we punch it in from there? <laugh>

Mews Small, “Frankie”

I’ve never had so much fun making a movie. Your dad [Ralph Bakshi] was just a complete joy. Every step of making the movie, he just like, just go and do this and do this. And it was nothing, just the white backdrop. I think he gave me a pillow once. I said, maybe we could put a couple for the couch, a couple of those Apple boxes and a couple pillows on it. And that was it. And the film just made me cry over and over again because I just remembered the joy of making it. And then at the end of it, he showed us the black and white film, which is pretty neat. <laugh>. I mean, it’s a lot different than this, but it was good. It was good just as a black and white film. And working with Ron, you can’t get anybody better than that. But the whole thing was just a complete and total joy. You don’t say that about every movie you make, but Ralph, nothing but just the best heart in the world and appreciation of actors and what we are doing. Just great, and I love him.

Rick Singer, “Benny”

I was just leaving UCLA at the time. My very first recollection really is just sitting in the offices with Ralph here on Sunset when I was getting cast in the film. And it became a love affair sort of immediately with the guy as it wasn’t just young actor meeting director, it was meeting an artist, and treating me like an artist. And I guarantee you guys went through the same process. And Louise Zingarelli [character designer] was in the room at the time. While I’m relating with Ralph, Louise is just like checking out every section of my face, <laugh>, everything was about a certain look with Louise. You told me this, I think years later, I’m sure there’s a lot of Iron Giant fans in here, right? Louise had consulted or something on it, and I was always like, why does that beatnik character kind of look a little like me? And found out later that Louise had taken some of the look of my character and moved it into that, which was a great honor.

The other thing that I loved, which was great, dealing with the artist Ralph for this one thing, and again, I’m 21, 22 years old at the time, and we’re on the set shooting the scene where the Nazi kills me and the piano, like Ron said, the scenery was scant, it was just a piano. A couple chairs in the room, me and the Nazi, and Ralph is talking with the cinematographer at the time, wondering how are we gonna shoot this? Then I’m standing there, I’m in costume, ready to go, and they’re discussing different ways they want to do it. And I just said, you know Ralph, this is how I saw it when I read the script. And he goes, let’s hear it. And I recited it and said it, let’s do it. It was like the greatest honor for a young actor at the time and literally set up the sequence, and Ralph let me do it. Like these guys have said, it was an amazing experience.

Barry Jackson, Background Designer

There’s one thing we haven’t talked about. Ralph chose to do “American Pop” in the 9000 building on Sunset Boulevard. Some of you may know it’s right across from the Roxy Theater and just down the street from the Whiskey a Go Go. There was also Gazzarri’s, that was a club. So it gave the crew who was working on this movie a chance to do some research, after we were at work. And we would get prepared, if you know what I mean <laugh>. And then we might go to Gazzarri’s and see Van Halen as the house band or go see X at the Whiskey, and Fear played at the Roxy at the time. That location really helped the artists in a lot of ways to give some authenticity to those images that you see in the punk rock sequence. We researched it <laugh>.

Recently, Ralph was a guest in my online art class. We had the biggest crowd we’ve ever had for that particular thing. He’s got so many fans. His social media is crazy. And he said the thing that I knew he would say, let the artist be the artist <laugh>. Don’t get the artist in there and ask him to be something else. So that was the thing that I was probably too young to appreciate when I was actually working on American Pop, because I thought all the animation companies were gonna be that way. And actually most of them tried to turn you into a trained seal. But Ralph really wanted you to be you. And you can see it in Louise’s work. You can see it in my work. And, there was Marcia Adams, there was Gary Eggleston, a bunch of ’em. And I think he was probably like that with you actors as well. And I think that’s why he remains a monument in animation.