It's called Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi, and it's written by Jon M. Gibson of I Am 8-bit and Chris McDonnell of Tom Goes to Mayor. It even has a forward by none other than Quentin Tarantino. Some info can be found at http://www.cartoonbrew.com/books/unfiltered-the-complete-ralph-bakshi.
If any of you guys don't know who Ralph Bakshi, I'll give you a brief histroy. Bakshi hugely the animation industry, twice. In the early 1970's, he wrote and directed Fritz the Cat (based on the R. Crumb comic strip of the same name), the first adult-oriented American animated film. Fritz the Cat was very controversal (it got an X rating and some Disney animators were disgusted by its production, but that's another story), but it was also very successful. Bakshi made more personal and at times controversal films in the '70s and early '80s (his most famous is perhaps the first film version of The Lord of the Rings, which inspired Peter Jackson quite a bit...), and then briefly retired. A few years later, he produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. This watershed series was the first American animated TV series in about 2 decades that was created by cartoonists, with minimal inference from executives (Bakshi kept the network off his staff's backs). The talent behind Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures included such future cartoon bigshots as John Kricfalusi, Jim Smith, Eddie Fitzgerald, Lynne Naylor, Bruce Timm, Tom Minton, Jeff Pidgeon, Jim Reardon, Rich Moore and others. These extraordinary men and women went on to create such famous cartoons as Ren & Stimpy, the Simpsons, Batman: The Animated Series, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Futurama, Dexter's Lab, the PowerPuff Girls and more.
In short, Bakshi is a highly influencial but sadly overlooked figure in animation history, and thankfully this book will give him his due.
If any of you guys don't know who Ralph Bakshi, I'll give you a brief histroy. Bakshi hugely the animation industry, twice. In the early 1970's, he wrote and directed Fritz the Cat (based on the R. Crumb comic strip of the same name), the first adult-oriented American animated film. Fritz the Cat was very controversal (it got an X rating and some Disney animators were disgusted by its production, but that's another story), but it was also very successful. Bakshi made more personal and at times controversal films in the '70s and early '80s (his most famous is perhaps the first film version of The Lord of the Rings, which inspired Peter Jackson quite a bit...), and then briefly retired. A few years later, he produced Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. This watershed series was the first American animated TV series in about 2 decades that was created by cartoonists, with minimal inference from executives (Bakshi kept the network off his staff's backs). The talent behind Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures included such future cartoon bigshots as John Kricfalusi, Jim Smith, Eddie Fitzgerald, Lynne Naylor, Bruce Timm, Tom Minton, Jeff Pidgeon, Jim Reardon, Rich Moore and others. These extraordinary men and women went on to create such famous cartoons as Ren & Stimpy, the Simpsons, Batman: The Animated Series, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Futurama, Dexter's Lab, the PowerPuff Girls and more.
In short, Bakshi is a highly influencial but sadly overlooked figure in animation history, and thankfully this book will give him his due.
