Heavy Traffic
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| Heavy Traffic | |
|---|---|
 Style "A" theatrical release poster. |
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| Directed by | Ralph Bakshi |
| Produced by | Samuel Z. Arkoff Steve Krantz |
| Written by | Ralph Bakshi |
| Starring | Joseph Kaufmann Beverly Hope Atkinson Frank DeKova Terri Haven Mary Dean Lauria |
| Music by | Ed Bogas Ray Shanklin |
| Cinematography | Ted C. Bemiller Gregg Heschong |
| Editing by | Donald W. Ernst |
| Distributed by | American International Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 8, 1973 |
| Running time | 76 minutes |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$950,000[1] |
Heavy Traffic is a 1973 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film, which begins, ends, and occasionally combines with live-action, explores the often surreal fantasies of a young New York cartoonist named Michael Corleone, using pinball imagery as a metaphor for inner-city life. Heavy Traffic was Bakshi and producer Steve Krantz's follow-up to the successful but controversial film Fritz the Cat, the first animated feature to receive an X rating. Though producer Krantz made varied attempts to produce an R-rated film, Heavy Traffic was given an X by the MPAA. The film received positive reviews and is widely considered to be Bakshi's biggest critical success.
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[edit] Plot
Michael Corleone (Joseph Kaufmann) is introduced as a 24-year-old virgin playing pinball in New York City, in live action. This scene is then thrown into animation. New York has a diseased, rotten, tough and violent atmosphere. Michael's Italian father, Angelo "Angie" Corleone, is a struggling mafioso who frequently cheats on Michael's Jewish mother, Ida. The couple constantly bickers and try to kill each other. Michael ambles through a catalog of freaks, greasers, and dopers. Unemployed, he dabbles with cartoons, artistically feeding off the grubbiness of his environment. He regularly hangs out at a local bar where he gets free drinks from the female black bartender, Carole (Beverly Hope Atkinson), in exchange for the sketches from the somewhat annoying Shorty, Carole's violent, legless barfly devotee. One of the regular customers at the bar, Snowflake, a nymphomaniac transvestite, who gets beat up by a tough drunk who has only just realized that Snowflake is a man in drag and not a beautiful woman. Shorty throws the drunk out and the bar's white manager abusively confronts Carole over this and she left. Michael begins to fall down and kills the manager.
Shorty offers to let Carole stay at his place, but not wanting to get involved with him, Carole tells Shorty that she's staying with Michael, and that they've been "secretly tight for a long time." Michael is turned on by her no-nonsense attitude and strong sense of self-reliance. This relationship arouses his father's racist fury as well as the jealousy of Shorty. Michael moves out of his parents' house and tries to make a living, often failing. He gets a chance to pitch a film idea to an old movie mogul lying on his death bed, who seems enthusiastic enough to listen:
In a distant future following a nuclear war, the world is covered with garbage. Most of humanity has been either destroyed or mutated, though the men are still horny, and apparently horny enough that they don't care what they hump. A pile of garbage comes to life, as a result of a man humping it, and is worshipped as a religious figure, becoming known as "Mother Pile." The last living human female, Wanda The Last becomes a sort of sideshow attraction and tours the land with her duckbilled mutant manager, Warren. One night, God speaks to Warren, asking Warren to let Him have sex with Wanda. Warren obliges, and Wanda gives birth to the new messiah. Throughout His son's life Mother Pile searches for him, and although she crucified many men, not one of them gave her his location. Meanwhile, God gives His son lessons of "The Truth." The story ends after the son spends roughly three months meditating in a cave. After a shout of "I've got the Truth, Pop!" he shoots God in the head, who in turn topples over and crushes Mother Pile. The messiah then comes out of the cave, looks over at God's corpse, and says that the truth he received was that God had been conning them the whole time.
Michael's story is too much for the mogul, and gives him a heart attack. Carole tries to work as a taxi dancer. Michael acting as her manager, tries to pass her off as "the fourth Andrews Sister" ("'cause she was black, they kept her in the background"). A quick flash of her panties gives an old man a heart attack, and Carole gets fired. Meanwhile, Angie tries to use his Mafia connections to put a murder contract out on his son for "disgracing the family" by dating a black woman, but it seems that nobody wants to be a part of this until a jealous Shorty tells Angie that he'll take the contract. Michael and Carole turn to crime as a means of getting by, with Carole taking the role of a prostitute and Michael posing as her pimp, potential customers are set up, killed and robbed. Carole flirts with a businessman, and brings him to a hotel room, where Michael beats him to death with a lead pipe. The two walk out into the street with his cash, and Michael is shot in the head by Shorty. The bullet is seen going through his skull in slow motion. We see a kaleidoscope of shocking images and horrifying events before throwing back to the live action story. The "real" Michael destroys a pinball machine after it tilts, and walks out onto the street, bumps into the "real" Carole, and follows her into the park. The two are seen briefly arguing before they finally take each others hands and begin dancing in the park.
[edit] Production
In 1969, Ralph's Spot was founded as a division of Bakshi Productions to produce commercials for Coca-Cola and Max, the 2000-Year-Old Mouse, a series of educational shorts paid for by Encyclopædia Britannica.[2][3] However, Bakshi was uninterested in the kind of animation he was producing, and wanted to produce something personal. Bakshi soon developed Heavy Traffic, a tale of inner-city street life. Steve Krantz told Bakshi that studio executives would be unwilling to fund Heavy Traffic because of its content and Bakshi's lack of film experience.[3] Bakshi later directed Fritz the Cat, an adaptation of Robert Crumb's comic strip of the same name. The financial success of Fritz the Cat allowed Bakshi to produce the film he had always intended to produce, and to focus on human characters rather than anthropomorphic animals.[4] Bakshi pitched Heavy Traffic to Samuel Z. Arkoff, who took an interest in Bakshi's take on the "tortured underground cartoonist", and agreed to fund the film.[4]
Production began in 1972. However, Steve Krantz had not yet paid Bakshi for his work on Fritz the Cat. Halfway through the production of Heavy Traffic, Bakshi asked Krantz outright when he would be paid, and Krantz responded that "The picture didn't make any money, Ralph. It's just a lot of noise."[4] Bakshi found Krantz's claims to be dubious, as the producer had recently purchased a new BMW and a mansion in Beverly Hills. Because Bakshi did not have a lawyer, he sought advice from directors he had become friends with, including Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg, asking them how much they made on their films. Bakshi soon accused Krantz of ripping him off, which the producer denied.[4] Bakshi began pitching his next project, Harlem Nights, a film loosely based on the Uncle Remus story books. The idea interested producer Albert S. Ruddy during a screening of The Godfather.[5][6]
While working on Heavy Traffic, Bakshi received a call from Krantz, who questioned him about Harlem Nights. Bakshi told Krantz: "I can't talk about that" and hung up. The next day, Krantz locked Bakshi out of the studio, reportably tapping Bakshi's phone because he was wary of his loyalty as an employee.[4] After Krantz fired Bakshi, he began to seek a replacement director for Heavy Traffic, calling several directors, including Chuck Jones.[4] Arkoff threatened to pull the film's budget unless Krantz rehired Bakshi, who returned a week later.[4] During the film's production, Krantz attempted to maintain some level of control by issuing memos to Bakshi and other artists requesting various changes. John Sparey remembers being issued a memo asking Sparey to stop posting caricatures of Krantz on the middle of his door.[4]
Ed Bogas and Ray Shanklin returned to write and perform the film's score, as they had done for Bakshi's previous feature, Fritz the Cat. Other music featured in the film included the songs "Twist and Shout," performed by The Isley Brothers, "Take Five," as performed by the Dave Brubeck quartet, and Chuck Berry's "Maybellene." "Scarborough Fair" is used as a recurring musical motif, first heard in the film's opening credits and later reappearing during the end of the film as performed by Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66. Bogas also created several other arrangements of the song that appear throughout the film. A soundtrack album was released in 1973.[7]
[edit] Directing
Inspiration for the film came from penny arcades, where Bakshi would often spend his time playing pinball, sometimes bringing his 12-year-old son Mark. Bakshi wanted to use pinball as a metaphor to examine the ways of the world.[4] Heavy Traffic began a tradition in which Bakshi would write poems before beginning production on each of his films, starting with Street Arabs.[4] According to Bakshi, "My background was in Brooklyn—my Jewishness, my family life, my father coming from Russia. All these things had to be somehow represented on film."[1]
Because Bakshi wanted the voices to sound organic, he experimented with improvisation, allowing his actors to ad lib during the recording sessions.[4] According to James Bates, the voice of Snowflake, "I said, 'How about a little Wolfman Jack, Charles Nelson Reilly, Pearl Bailey and a little Truman Capote]?' Ralph couldn't believe it. We ad-libbed a lot, and he usually got what he wanted in three or four takes. We worked hard and not for much coin, but it was a blast."[4]
As with Fritz the Cat, Bakshi and Johnnie Vita took location photographs for the film's backgrounds. Instead of tracing the photographs onto backgrounds, as they had done in Fritz the Cat, the film uses actual photographs and live-action stock footage as backgrounds for much of the film.[4] Bakshi and Vita were also experimental in their photography: Bakshi requested that the lab technicians produce several prints for every photo, each print increasingly out of focus, giving the backgrounds a fuzzy quality. Bakshi states that "We didn't want to risk shooting [out of focus] on the spot. That could have meant making some expensive mistakes."[4]
[edit] Animation
According to animator Mark Kausler, Krantz was so nervous about showing too much nudity and sexual activities that he had several versions of some sequences animated, for instance, in the "Maybellene" animation sequence. Kausler says that a sequence was animated in which the viewer sees "the key in the ignition metamorphose into a penis entering Maybelline's vagina."[8] This sequence was deleted from Heavy Traffic, but the same action appeared in the film Down and Dirty Duck.[8] Kausler also states:
"I covered this scene with another one of the key changing into the fat black guy, and the ignition slot turning into Maybellene. I covered a lot more cartoony foreplay scenes with a simple close-up of the fat black man's face with his hand covering his eyes. You can get a sense of how many scenes had to be altered, by how many times this close-up drawing was used. It got used a lot! At one point the original version "A" of Maybellene existed. Ralph had a print of it, but I have not seen it since I worked on it. We did versions "A," B" and "C," with "C" being the tamest and that is what got into the so-called "X" version of Heavy Traffic. Another scene I can recall doing multiple versions of was the guy in the racing cap, pissing on the fat black guy's ass. This was completely eliminated, causing a jump in the action."[8]
Edward Hopper's painting Nighthawks was used as a background in one of the film's sequences.[4] Several animation sequences appear as rough sketchbook pages,[4] including a dream sequence influenced by the work of Otto Messmer,[4] and a George Herriman-influenced sequence set to Chuck Berry's "Maybellene".[9]
[edit] Response
Although Heavy Traffic received an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, more theaters were willing to screen adult-oriented animated features because of the success of Fritz the Cat, and Heavy Traffic was a box office success.[4] Ralph Bakshi was the first person in the animation industry since Walt Disney to have two financially successful films back-to-back.[1] The film is considered to be Bakshi's biggest critical success. Newsweek wrote that the film contained "black humor, powerful grotesquerie and peculiar raw beauty. Episodes of violence and sexuality are both explicit and parodies of flesh-and-blood porn [...] a celebration of urban decay."[8] Charles Champlin wrote in The New York Times that the film was "furious energy, uncomfortable to watch as often as it is hilarious."[8] The Hollywood Reporter called it "shocking, outrageous, offensive, sometimes incoherent, occasionally unintelligent. However, it is also an authentic work of movie art and Bakshi is certainly the most creative American animator since Disney."[8] Film website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 91%.[10] Vincent Canby ranked it among his "Ten Best Films of 1973".[4] The film was banned by the film censorship board in the province of Alberta, Canada when it was originally released.[8]
Michael Barrier, an animation historian, described Heavy Traffic and Fritz the Cat as "not merely provocative, but highly ambitious." Barrier described the films as an effort "to push beyond what was done in the old cartoons, even while building on their strengths."[11]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Solomon, Charles (1989), p. 275. Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation. ISBN 0-394-54684-9. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf. Accessed March 17, 2008.
- ^ Television/radio Age. Television Editorial Corp. 1969. p. 13.
- ^ a b Gibson, Jon M.; McDonnell, Chris (2008). "Fritz the Cat". Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi. Universe Publishing. pp. 58; 62. ISBN 0789316846.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Gibson, Jon M.; McDonnell, Chris (2008). "Heavy Traffic". Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi. Universe Publishing. pp. 84-85; 87; 89; 91; 96; 97-98; 100. ISBN 0789316846.
- ^ Gibson, Jon M.; McDonnell, Chris (2008). "Coonskin". Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi. Universe Publishing. pp. 106; 108-109; 114;. ISBN 0789316846.
- ^ Kanfer, Stefan (2001). Serious Business: The Art and Commerce of Animation in America from Betty Boop to Toy Story. Da Capo. p. 205. ISBN 9780306809187.
- ^ "Heavy Traffic soundtrack details". SoundtrackCollector. http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/catalog/soundtrackdetail.php?movieid=23466. Retrieved 2007-05-17.
- ^ a b c d e f g Cohen, Karl F (1997). "Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat and Heavy Traffic". Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.. pp. 83-84. ISBN 0-7864-0395-0.
- ^ Tarantino, Quentin (2008). "Foreword". Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi. Universe Publishing. p. 11. ISBN 0789316846.
- ^ "Heavy Traffic". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/heavy_traffic/. Retrieved 2007-01-02.
- ^ Barrier, Michael (2003). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford University Press US. p. 572. ISBN 0195167295.
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Heavy Traffic |
- Heavy Traffic at the Internet Movie Database
- Heavy Traffic at Allmovie
- Heavy Traffic at Rotten Tomatoes
- Heavy Traffic at the official Ralph Bakshi website
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