DIRECTOR
Ralph
Bakshi
SCREENWRITER
Ronni
Kern
PRODUCERS
Ralph Bakshi
Martin Ransohoff
MUSIC
Lee Holdridge
EDITOR
David Ramirez
CAST
Jeffrey Lippa (Zalmie)
Richard Singer (Benny)
Ron Thompson (Tony/Pete)
Ben Frommer (Nicky Palumbo)
Jerry Holland (Louie)
Roz Kelly (Eva Tanguay)
Richard Moll (Poet)
Vincent Schiavelli (Theatre Owner)
Mews Small (Frankie)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 96m
U.S. release: February 1981
Video availability: VHS - DVD
|
Until
recently, the only way you could see Ralph Bakshi's 1980 animated
feature American Pop was on cable, if Cinemax bothered
to show it. Heavy
Metal was in the same limbo for years until its 15th-anniversary
theatrical re-issue and subsequent video release in 1996. In
both cases, the expense of securing music rights was what kept
these modern classics of animation out of your hands. But then
Columbia, noting the success of its Heavy Metal as a sell-through
title, ponied up for the music rights and uncorked American
Pop on VHS, laser, and DVD. It's been out on home video since
April [1998], but I haven't seen anybody jumping to let you know
about it. So I'll just fix that. If you missed it in 1980 and
never caught it on cable, now's your chance to see the most ambitious
work of America's most ambitious animator.
There are essentially two Ralph Bakshis: the sleazo mack daddy
who loves to draw bouncy tits (Fritz the Cat, Hey Good
Lookin', Cool World, the awful and short-lived HBO
series Spicy City), and the serious artist who strives
to render complete and complex worlds in purely iconographic
terms (Fritz the Cat again, Coonskin, his disappointing
but conscientious fantasy projects Lord of the Rings and
Wizards). What surprised me about American Pop,
seeing it again after about fifteen years, was how raunchy it
isn't, given Bakshi's rep as an X-rated Disney. When a
bashful young man visits a demurely half-dressed stripper in
her dressing room, Bakshi is just as bashful and demure about
cutting away from what happens between them.
In a whiplash 96 minutes, American Pop spans from turn-of-the-century
Russia to late-1970s America. Bakshi's conceit is that we're
following four generations of musicians, and though this results
in some simplistic character development (the script, prepared
by Ronni Kern, is a tad clichéd at times), it functions
well and unobtrusively as a basic narrative spine for Bakshi's
real project: a visual and musical survey of a century of pop
culture. The opening scenes, for example, are done in the style
of silent films, complete with title cards. And the film's title,
of course, has a double meaning: It's about fathers and sons.
Each of the four main characters resembles the cultural icons
of his period. Zalmie, the Russian immigrant (he's like young
Vito Corleone in Godfather II), becomes a kind of Milton
Berle-esque figure (pun intended) until a wound incurred in WWI
ends his singing career. His son Benny is a lackadaisical piano
man who pauses to father a son before getting killed in WWII.
Benny's son Tony, the character who gets the most screen time
(perhaps because his time frame mirrors Bakshi's coming of age),
begins as a Brando clone in the '50s, falls in with Allen Ginsberg-type
hipsters in the early '60s, and becomes a drug-addled hippie
(Jim Morrison?) writing songs for a Grace Slick/Janis Joplin-type
singer in the late '60s. While passing through Kansas ("Kansas
is corny!" he screams), Tony has a one-night stand with
a waitress, unwittingly siring the fourth and last musician --
Pete, who has more talent than any of his ancestors and looks
like a cross between Johnny Rotten and Elvis Costello (and a
touch of Lou Reed).
American Pop isn't perfect. I'm still not sure how to
feel about Bakshi's controversial rotoscoping technique (i.e.,
tracing live-action figures), which he started with Lord of
the Rings. Sometimes it looks kind of weird. And the movie
isn't as ballsy as Coonskin (stupidly given the PC title
Streetfight for video), a powerful examination of racism
that used stereotypes in order to explode them. Coonskin
is, I think, Bakshi's masterpiece; American Pop is his
epic, a sprawling and messy work whose flaws are inextricable
from its brilliance. Bakshi was limited to music he could afford
-- you won't hear Elvis or the Beatles in this history of pop
music -- but the movie is still richly textured with the music
he could use, from vaudeville-era tunes to Pat Benatar's
"Hell Is for Children." (I never think of that song
as being about child abuse. I associate it with Pete getting
up off the bus-stop bench.)
The film is frequently moving as only a messy, imperfect film
can be. The mood is heavy with regret over wasted talent, wasted
lives. There are wonderful, understated bits, like an anguished
Tony in his dark, squalid apartment calling a "friend"
to see if he can score some smack. Or a group of people just
standing around shooting the shit (Bakshi's signature visual).
In quiet moments like these, Bakshi's rotoscoping makes sense:
the people onscreen move -- and stay still -- like real people,
instead of being ridiculously overarticulated. (For a laughable
example of the latter, check out the little girl near the beginning
of Heavy Metal; she looks like Elaine Benes doing her
full-body dry heave.)
One musical quibble, though: Leonard Maltin's review goofs on
the movie because it "culminates in the creation of punk
rock." It'd be nice if that were true, but it isn't. The
culmination of four generations of failed musicians is actually
Bob Seger. Pete, who works as a coke dealer to rock stars, talks
a band into playing one of his songs, and it's that tedious perennial
"Night Moves." (Apologies to Seger fans, but the guy's
music just never did it for me.) Then we see Pete onstage --
the musician in the family who finally made it -- and he's playing
a medley of songs including "Blue Suede Shoes" and
"Devil with a Blue Dress." And the song under the closing
credits? Lynyrd Skynyrd's bloated "Free Bird," beloved
by DJs who have to go take a shit. (An orchestral arrangement
of the song also adorns the opening credits.) Is Bakshi saying
that the future of pop is either pretentious arena rock or endless
rehashes of golden oldies? If so, his movie is even more depressing
than I gave it credit for. And more accurate, too. Either way,
though, American Pop transcends its flaws and pays homage
to the evolution of two great art forms -- pop music and animation.
There hasn't been an American animated film since that has approached
or even attempted this movie's ambition and reach; there may
well never be again. |
