Wizards: An Interview with Ralph Bakshi, Part Two
In celebration of the 35th anniversary of the animated classic, Wizards, FOX has released the epic fantasy film on Blu-ray, complete with a commentary by legendary filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, who was able to take the time out of his busy schedule to sit down with Geekscape. This is part two of the series, you can find part one here.
A: You don’t see anything in the world of animation right now that has some sort of real idea behind it pushing forward?
RB: Well, I don’t know everything, I don’t see everything. I see what people call adult animation, like Ren & Stimpy because of the vulgarity… but you got to tell me, I’m not out there watching it. I live on a mountain in New Mexico, I paint pictures, I dropped out. I came back because FOX was doing such a magnificent job on the Wizards Blu-ray and I do want to do Wizards II. They’re doing a fantastic job. They’ve gotten behind the film, for the first time, this new FOX and the people, they’re just taking the ball and running with it, and upper management is surprised at the great response we’re getting.
And Wizards II would have a lot of these ideas that I’ve been talking about because Wizards was about terrorists blowing up the planet and technology wiping away magic and right now, the planet is melting, the fish are dying, technology is ripping up everything. I’m not against technology, unless it’s used for greed and bad purposes. I love my cell phone, but I don’t like atom bombs. So I think there’s a lot to say in Wizards II and, of course, the religion issue is big. Everyone’s against everybody, Muslims against Christians, Christians against Hindus— it’s nuts, it’s just nuts. After all these thousands of years we’ve been on the planet, look. It’s all about religion and why? Why is this? It’s about people’s rights. So Wizards II would have those kind of issues. Now, if someone else was doing that in animation, then someone else would be doing it, but no one else is. Those are the issues that I think should be discussed in animation, because it’s perfectly aimed to discuss issues.
A: So, you’re talking about Wizards II. Is that something that’s in the works? Is it going to be the same set of characters in the same world?
RB: It always was supposed to be a trilogy. The fact that it took 35 years to get the next one started is not my fault. [laughter] I’ve always been a slow learner. Yeah, it’s the same set of characters but things have changed, you know. Blackwolf dies, to give you a rough idea, and everything collapses, but then the mutants break off into separate little units with all these guys trying to become religious leaders of each group—they’re thinking they’re the new Blackwolf. Then you have all the stuff under the ground slowly crushing together and forming this sort of internet of ideas but Blackwolf is dug up and put on a throne and wired to it. So basically you have the beginning of the internet, the clash of religions, the various factions fighting, Avatar is trying to get home with the victorious people and is having a hard time, and Weehawk probably falls in love with Eleanor which gets Avatar furious. And there’s old age. I’m an old man now, and Avatar was always old, but now he’s really going to be old. I have a hard time walking from here to my hotel and that’s affected the way I’m thinking, so I’ve been thinking about old men and young women, and I’m thinking there are some funny issues there to address.
But basically I want to discuss how the planet is dying and nobody cares and that there are certain people that say it’s not dying at all. Rush Bimbo is on the radio every day lying to the American people for the rich companies and I’ll probably have a guy on talk radio like Rush Bimbo lying, because that’s all he does. I get so mad listening to him. He’s come close to calling my president a… never mind, I think Obama is doing the best job he can under the conditions that he got and I’m going to vote for him again. Yes, so Wizards II is in the works.
A: Are you going to be using the same animation style and team, or are you going to start hiring newer animators and designers?
RB: All of the guys that did Wizards are dead.
A: All of them??
RB: All of them. My animators are dead. You have to understand that when I came into the business, I was in my twenties. The guys I hired were in their 60s and 70s.
A: I didn’t realize.
RB: That’s why I’m telling you. Some people you can’t tell this to—they don’t get it. All the guys, when I came into the business, were all the older guys. They had been laid off from Warner Brothers, MGM, and Disney. All the studios closed down their film shorts—there were no more. Animation in theaters was dead, so I hired these guys and they were unbelievably great and they understood what I was doing. They supported my ideas and they supported my adult thrust. The trouble I had was with the younger animators, believe it or not. The younger animators thought I was toying with Disney and Disney’s legacy and the fact that they all adored Disney and loved Disney and worshipped Disney, then who was I to go in there with my accent—I’m from Brooklyn—and destroy that myth? Because they all wanted to work for Disney and they all felt that they could only feel they were great if the Disney animators said they were great or if they animated like they did at Disney, so they were on the march to be another Disney. I was on the march to kick Disney in his pants. But Disney went to World War II in the studio but none of it represented the fact that Auschwitz was happening and that was nuts. There was no Auschwitz. It’s crazy. With that kind of power you’ve got to do some films that mean something.
Yeah, I would hire new animators. The technique would be the same, and the metaphor would continue to be technology versus magic, but now I think that all the technology would be computer animated. But that’s perfect because it is what it is. And all the magic would be animated just like the original Wizards but with new animators that would have to learn how to animate for real and stop using their machines.
I’ll have more money— Wizards was done on a million dollars! That was almost undoable, if it wasn’t for my professional-grade animators, I wouldn’t have made it. It was these guys that came behind me and I think that now the young kids would come behind me. They didn’t then, which is hard—no one believes that, but it was the older guys who were tired of what they were doing! They’d done all this stuff all their lives, they were grown men. They couldn’t believe it, they were so happy at my studio. They were so happy. They’d come in and say, “Ralph, do you really want me to do this?” and I’d say, “Yep!” and they’d say, “You’ll really let me do this?” and I’d say, “Go do it, Irv, and leave me alone,” and they were great animators and they did it. But they couldn’t believe that I was allowing them that kind of freedom.
So, yes, Wizards II would be done that way. Old fashioned 2D animation, all new technology, and the internet which is so important. We didn’t have the internet when Wizards was made. It’s incredible. Anything I want to find out, I push a button on Google and there it is. It is mind-boggling—I do it all the time and it’s mind-boggling! You go to the library and you spend a week trying to find the one book, and it’s such an unbelievable tool and, of course, it’s helping spread freedom in the world. The whole Arab revolution is being done through the internet except the world doesn’t want to stop Syria from destroying those poor people because Russia enjoys that pain, Russia wants the oil. It’s pretty sick. Those are all the issues that I’ll bring up in Wizards II. It wouldn’t be that blatant because the issues in Wizards were very nicely handled—you got the answers told in a magical story, so I won’t be heavy-handed, I hope, though maybe I would. I don’t know.
A magical princess shows you two doors labeled “Part One” and “Part Three”. If you choose the door labeled “Part One”, turn to page 43. If you choose the door labeled “Part Three”, turn to page 36.
