Animator Ralph Bakshi (Fritz The Cat, Coonskin, Cool World) is mounting his first film project in 15 years with the help of Kickstarter and Matthew Modine. The Dark Knight Rises actor will lend his voice to Last Days Of Coney Island, an animated short written and directed by Bakshi that takes place in a 1960s Coney Island populated with “crooked cops, broken hearts, jaded strippers, and singers”. The project has raised $68,875 so far on Kickstarter but with just 14 days remaining to make its $165,000 goal, Modine has also come onboard to executive produce and help Coney Island reach its funding target.
Modine will voice the lead character, a 4-foot-tall mafia collector who “thinks he’s Elvis Presley and sings like Chet Baker”. Adam Rackoff will also executive produce for Cinco Dedos Peliculas, his production company with Modine, while Bakshi’s son Eddie Bakshi is producing. Longtime Bakshi fans Modine and Rackoff discovered the project by accident while surfing Kickstarter and reached out to offer their help. Modine hopes to tap his own network of filmmaker and name talents to fill out the cast, including Quentin Tarantino, Abel Ferrara, and Jack Nicholson. If funded Last Days Of Coney Island – Part 1 will debut in December as a 7-minute animated short, with additional shorts to follow that Bakshi & Co. hope to turn into a feature-length film. Modine is repped by APA and Untitled.
Bakshi parted ways with Hollywood after bristling against studio contraints for the last time on 1997’s Spicy City. But internet platforms like Kickstarter and YouTube, where he debuted his Bakshi’s Blues political shorts last year, have given the iconoclast animator new creative life. “When I worked in the studios I had to hide stuff or I had to change stuff, every trick in the book, there’d be screaming fights”, he told Deadline. “You’re always on edge because you don’t know when the roof’s going to come down”. With fans helping fund his latest venture and a new crew of young animators working remotely all over the country, Bakshi is high on digital age alternative financing and production methods: “It makes me feel somehow that I’m starting over in the right way”.
Here’s Bakshi’s Kickstarter video:
God bless Bakshi. One of the most underrated filmmakers alive.
This is terrific! Matthew Modine’s contribution will be a real boost and will help draw more top flight talent to the production. I’m looking forward to its release. If there’s anything I can do to help…
why does anyone need 165000 for a 7 min short? Idiotic!
Ralph Bakshi is a world class animator.
This last poster obviously knows nothing about animation and the time, effort, and cost it takes to create it.
Hey, Anonymous – Have you ever made an animated short? First of all, I think the money they’re raising will help lay the ground work for the whole CONEY ISLAND series, but even if it was just for this one short, let’s do some math. The average animated feature is about 80 minutes long. That’s about eleven 7-minute short films. If we extrapolate, $165,000 for every 7 minutes, a feature would cost him about $1,815,000. That’s right, Ralph could make a feature film for LESS than 2 million! Now, tell me how many studios can make a hand-drawn animated feature film for less than 2 million dollars?
Hot diggity! I’m crossing my fingers for this comeBakshi!
This is great news! I’ve loved Bakshi’s films for years! My favorite was American Pop!
With all of your ‘our world and lives’ films in my collection, I would love to raise you money here in Chicago by being allowed to show these on a series basis at a couple of theaters who specialize in ‘our films’. I’ll try to find a way to be in touch with you to ask for a ‘written agreement’. Shane
With all of your ‘our world and lives’ films in my DVD collection I would love to get permission to show them as a series to raise money here in Chicagoland area…I’ll find a way to get in touch with you to discuss this…Shane Truax