Executive Meddling: Ralph wanted this done as a live-action/animated movie, although it was switched to be fully animated since Warner Bros. couldn't figure out how to blend the live-action and animation together. This was BEFORE Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released.
Wanting to make a film that had a mixture of both live-action and animation, Bakshi hired various African American animators and graffiti artists to help with the film’s urban aesthetic. Unfortunately, due to the controversy over Coonskin, a lot of them left production out of embarrassment.
During shooting, Bakshi wasn’t satisfied with cinematographer William A. Fraker when filming the live-action segments, so he decided to take the camera and shoot footage himself, which ended up pissing off Fraker so much, he quit the project and was replaced with a younger cameraman who had never shot a film in his life. Otherwise, shooting went smoothly.
During post-production, Bakshi found that the cost of the optical effect required to complete live-action scenes with animated characters was larger than the film's given budget. In order to complete these scenes cost effectively, Bakshi and his cameraman Ted C. Bemiller purchased a 35 mm camera to project the footage onto the glass under the animation camera, which was reflected onto where the animation was shot.
With the film being completed in 1975, it was set for a 1976 release before being postponed indefinitely. While this was due to fears from Warner Bros. that the backlash from Coonskin would prevent people from seeing the movie, it was also because the executives thought that a movie with a combination of live-action and animation would be "unreleasable", refusing to put more money into the project, with Bakshi spending numerous years taking on various projects in order to fund the movie himself.
Bakshi almost go sued by WB president Frank Wells due to the former having used too much live-action footage, which went against contract. As a result, the majority of live-action footage was cut, with some scenes instead rotoscoped.
The second cut of the film was finally released in 1982 to select markets, where it received mixed critical reception and did little business at the box office. While the film would receive a cult following through cable airings and DVD (one of its fans being Quentin Tarantino), Bakshi himself disowned the movie (instead having more positive things to say about his original 1975 cut).
Write Who You Know: Ralph Bakshi has stated that Vinnie and Crazy were based off of people Ralph knew when he was in high school.
This was the last Ralph Bakshi work that editor Donald W. Ernst worked on prior to transferring to Disney, which had added Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Wells to their executive ranks. Ernst went on to be one of the main helmers of Aladdin and Fantasia 2000.
