Biografie

At one time wanted to make an animated feature-film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's 'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas'.

Visualizes a scene by listening to music, which usually plays over the scene in the finished film.

In the mid 1980's when Bakshi was depressed following the lack of support for his personal projects (i.e. Hey Good Lookin' (1982)) he read "Catcher in the Rye" and connected intensely with Holden Caulfield, and even figured out a way to make the narrative work cinematically by keeping the mental hospital scenes in live-action and the flashbacks animated. Bakshi wrote a letter to Salinger, a famous recluse who turned down many offers to adapt the book, where he poured out his heart about the book and his personal life. Bakshi ended up receiving a response in a letter from Salinger, where he appreciated the director's dedication and vision, but politely declined the offer since he could not see it becoming a film. Going through this process helped Bakshi get out of his creative rut, and he went on to do more work in the late 80's and early 90's before going into (semi) retirement from motion pictures.

Good friends with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese.

He left Hollywood and filmmaking to spend his remaining life painting pictures, but during the back-to-back recording for a guest appearance on Ren & Stimpy 'Adult Party Cartoon' (2003) and the DVD commentary for his 1977 film Die Welt in 10 Millionen Jahren (1977), he was bit by the animation bug again, and has recently (2005) begun work on his latest feature, currently titled Last Days of Coney Island (2015).

I think it's impossible to do [J.R.R. Tolkien]. It's impossible to get the brilliance of what he wrote about -- just the medium, the book, the novel gives you other areas of imagination [that] film can't allow. Film has to describe and show. With the brilliance of his words and his scenes, you imagine whatever you want. I'm sure various people imagine different things.

Sweetheart, I'm the biggest ripped-off cartoonist in the history of the world, and that's all I'm going to say.

John [Kricfalusci] and a bunch of guys were working for me in my studio on storyboards before Mighty Mouse. Bobby's Girl (2012) was the project, Tri-Star bought the movie. John and a bunch of other artists designed it [the same guys who went to work on Mighty Mouse]. I was the producer/director. The studio would then have sequence directors, designers etc. as usual. The president of Tri-Star, Jeff Sagansky, got fired. The project was canceled by Tri-Star. In panic I sold Mighty Mouse and decided to make John a director to train him on a TV series. Roughly speaking, after that, John really wanted his own studio to produce and direct himself and never really felt comfortable working for anyone else. Even his giant friend Ralph.

[on directing The Rolling Stones music video of "The Harlem Shuffle"] I cast everyone and hired everyone - but my main concentration was taking care of the Stones. It was a lot of work choreographing . . . it was also a blizzard in New York the night we were shooting, and after I returned that night at 4 or 5 am they thought I had checked out without paying, so I spent the night in the lobby. The rest was a blur. Oh yes, there were about 350 groupies on the sound stage and various hangers around - and someone delivered three cases of Scotch or bourbon to Keith's [Keith Richards] room. I do remember that. Never saw them again! Oh yeah, Keith Richards loved the zoot suit he wore. I had to buy the suits from the costume department because he took them back to England. I loved that. Mick [Mick Jagger] had his purple suit tailored especially for him, so he owned that.

Louise Zingarelli walked into my studio from Chicago and said to me that the guys that she worked with on the newspapers in Chicago told her that she should work for me. She was an extraordinary illustrator and a real tough lady. I thought her best work was Hey Good Lookin' (1982) and American Pop (1981).