Hey, there's a Ralph Bakshi Thingy

There's a neat interview with animation legend Ralph Bakshi here .

For readers not in the loop, Bakshi is probably one of the most underrated filmmakers of the 20th century.

If you ask me, without Ralph Bakshi's feature films, we would not have the Simpsons, South Park, Robert Zemekis'es creepy mo-cap flicks or even the Don Bluth film catalog .

Periodically, there's a push to formally recognize animation as an artistically legitimate film venue, usually though handling themes unexplored in the medium or through "adult content. But inevitably, public perception seems to swing back to the "children's entertainment" profiling, animation listed as a "genre" on IMDB and so forth.

But if anyone came closest to breaking that glass ceiling it was Bakshi.

Bakshi's profile, career info and influence can be summed up better at his official website or even just his wikipedia entry so I won't burn up more page space here, just check out the interview.

Oh yeah, and he directed that really weird Lord of the Rings movie every one mentions, no not that one.