Coonskin (film)
Encyclopedia
Coonskin is a 1975 American animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...

, about an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 rabbit, fox, and bear who rise to the top of the organized crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...

 racket in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

, encountering corrupt law enforcement
Police corruption
Police corruption is a specific form of police misconduct designed to obtain financial benefits, other personal gain, or career advancement for a police officer or officers in exchange for not pursuing, or selectively pursuing, an investigation or arrest....

, con artists and the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

. The film, which combines live-action with animation
Live-action/animated film
A live-action/animated film is a motion picture that features a combination of real actors or elements: live-action and animated elements, typically interacting.-History:...

, stars Philip Thomas
Philip Michael Thomas
Philip Michael Thomas is an American actor. Thomas's most famous role is that of detective Ricardo Tubbs on the hit 1980s TV series Miami Vice. His first notable roles were in Coonskin and opposite Irene Cara in the 1976 film Sparkle...

, Charles Gordone
Charles Gordone
Charles Edward Gordone was an American playwright, actor, director, and educator. He was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and devoted much of his professional life to the pursuit of multi-racial American theater and racial unity.-Early years:Born Charles Edward...

, Barry White
Barry White
Barry White, born Barry Eugene Carter , was an American composer and singer-songwriter.A five-time Grammy Award-winner known for his distinctive bass voice and romantic image, White's greatest success came in the 1970s as a solo singer and with the Love Unlimited Orchestra, crafting many enduring...

 and Scat Man Crothers
Scatman Crothers
Benjamin Sherman "Scatman" Crothers was an American actor, singer, dancer and musician known for his work as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man, and as Dick Hallorann in The Shining in 1980...

, all of whom appear in both live-action and animated sequences. Coonskin utilizes a number of references to various elements from African American culture
African American culture
African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of Americans of African descent to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in...

, ranging from African folk tales to the work of cartoonist George Herriman
George Herriman
George Joseph Herriman was an American cartoonist, best known for his classic comic strip Krazy Kat.-Early life:...

, and satirizes
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

 and other stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

s, as well as the blaxploitation
Blaxploitation
Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is a film genre which emerged in the United States circa 1970. It is considered an ethnic sub-genre of the general category of exploitation films. Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban black audience, although the genre's audience...

 genre, Song of the South
Song of the South
Song of the South is a 1946 American musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the...

, and The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...

.

Originally produced under the titles Harlem Nights and Coonskin No More..., Coonskin encountered extreme controversy before its original theatrical release when the Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...

 strongly criticized the content as being racist, although none of the group's members had seen the film. When the film was finally released, Bryanston
Bryanston Distributing Company
Bryanston Distributing Company is an American film distribution company that was very active during the early 1970s and was left dormant for almost thirty years...

 gave it limited distribution and initially received negative reviews. Later re-released under the titles Bustin' Out and Street Fight, Coonskin has since been reappraised, with many considering it to be one of Bakshi's finest works.

Plot

In the South, Sampson and the local Preacherman plan to bust out their friend Randy from prison. As they rush to the prison, the two are stopped by a roadblock and wind up in a shootout with the police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

. Meanwhile, Randy and another cellmate named Pappy manage to escape from inside the prison and wait for Sampson and the Preacherman to help them get out. While waiting for them, Randy unwillingly listens to Pappy tell a story about three guys that resemble and Randy and his friends. Pappy's story is told in animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 set against live-action background photos and footage.

Brother Rabbit
Br'er Rabbit
Br'er Rabbit is a central figure in the Uncle Remus stories of the Southern United States. He is a trickster character who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn, tweaking authority figures and bending social mores as he sees fit...

, Brother Bear, and Preacher Fox are forced to pack up and leave their Southern settings after the bank mortgages their home and sells it to a man who turns it into a brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

. The trio move to Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

, "home to every black man". When they arrive, Rabbit, Bear, and Fox find that it isn't all that it's made out to be. They encounter a con man
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...

 named Simple Savior, a phony revolutionary leader who purports to be the "cousin" of Black Jesus, and that he gives his followers "the strength to kill white
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...

s". In a flashy stage performance in his "church", Savior acts out being brutalized by symbols of black oppression—represented by images of John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...

, Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 and Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

, before asking his parishioners for "donations". When Rabbit attempts to turn the crowd, Savior tries to have him killed. After Rabbit tricks his would-be murderers (in a paraphrase of the story of Br'er Rabbit and the briar patch), he and Bear kill Savior. This allows Rabbit to take over Savior's racket, putting him in line to become the head of all organized crime in Harlem. But first, he has to get rid of a few other opponents. Savior's former partners tell Rabbit that if he can't kill his opponents, then they'll kill him instead.

Rabbit first goes up against Madigan, a virulently racist and homophobic
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...

 white police officer
Police officer
A police officer is a warranted employee of a police force...

 and bagman for the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

, who demonstrates his contempt for African Americans in various ways, including a refusal to bathe before an anticipated encounter with them (he believes they're not worth it). When Madigan finds out that Rabbit has been taking his payoffs, he and his cohorts, Ruby and Bobby, are led to a nightclub called "The Cottontail". A black stripper
Stripper
A stripper is a professional erotic dancer who performs a contemporary form of striptease at strip club establishments, public exhibitions, and private engagements. Unlike in burlesque, the performer in the modern Americanized form of stripping minimizes the interaction of customer and dancer,...

 distracts him while an LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...

 sugar cube is dropped into his drink. Madigan, while under the influence of his spiked drink, is then maneuvered into a sexual liaison with a stereotypically effeminate gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 man, and then shoved into women's clothing representative of the mammy archetype
Mammy archetype
The mammy archetype is perhaps one of the best-known archetypes of African American women. She is often portrayed within a narrative framework or other imagery as a domestic servant of African descent, generally good-natured, often overweight, very dark skinned, middle aged, and loud...

, adorned in blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

, and finally shoved out the back of the club where he discovers that Ruby and Bobby are dead. Then, while recovering from his delirium of being drugged, shoots his gun around randomly, and is shot to death by the police after shooting one of them.

Rabbit's final targets are the Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...

 who lives in the subway with his wife and gay sons. The contract
Contract killing
Contract killing is a form of murder, in which one party hires another party to kill a target individual or group of people. It involves an illegal agreement between two parties in which one party agrees to kill the target in exchange for consideration, monetary, or otherwise. The hiring party may...

 for killing Rabbit is given to his only straight son Sonny. Showing up outside Rabbit's nightclub in blackface and clothing representative of minstrel show
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

 stereotypes, Sonny winds up shot multiple times by Rabbit before dying in an explosion caused by a car crash. His body is cremated and taken back home, where his mother weeps over his ashes. Bear becomes torn between staying with Rabbit, or starting a new, crime-free life. Bear decides to look for Fox in order to seek his advice. Upon arriving at Fox's newly acquired brothel, Bear is "married" to a girl he, Fox, and Rabbit met during the fight with Savior's men. Under the advisement of Fox, Bear becomes a boxer for the Mafia. During one of Bear's fights, Rabbit sets up a melting imitation of himself made out of tar
Tar
Tar is modified pitch produced primarily from the wood and roots of pine by destructive distillation under pyrolysis. Production and trade in tar was a major contributor in the economies of Northern Europe and Colonial America. Its main use was in preserving wooden vessels against rot. The largest...

. As the Mafiosos take turns stabbing at the "tar rabbit
Tar baby
The Tar-Baby is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes...

", they become stuck together. Rabbit, Bear, Fox and the opponent boxer rush out of the boxing arena as it blows up. The live-action story ends with Randy and Pappy escaping from the prison while being shot at by various white cops, but managing to make it out alive.

Cast

  • Phillip Michael Thomas - Randy / Brother Rabbit
  • Barry White
    Barry White
    Barry White, born Barry Eugene Carter , was an American composer and singer-songwriter.A five-time Grammy Award-winner known for his distinctive bass voice and romantic image, White's greatest success came in the 1970s as a solo singer and with the Love Unlimited Orchestra, crafting many enduring...

     - Sampson / Brother Bear
  • Charles Gordone
    Charles Gordone
    Charles Edward Gordone was an American playwright, actor, director, and educator. He was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and devoted much of his professional life to the pursuit of multi-racial American theater and racial unity.-Early years:Born Charles Edward...

     - Preacherman / Preacher Fox
  • Scatman Crothers
    Scatman Crothers
    Benjamin Sherman "Scatman" Crothers was an American actor, singer, dancer and musician known for his work as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man, and as Dick Hallorann in The Shining in 1980...

     - Pappy / Old Man Bane / Additional Voices
  • Danny Rees - Clown
  • Buddy Douglas - Refree
  • Jim Moore - Mime

Uncredited Roles

  • Al Lewis - The Godfather
  • Richard Paul
    Richard Paul
    Richard Paul was an American actor.He was born in Los Angeles, California. He was able to imitate most American and many foreign dialects. He had a tenor voice and trained with Lee Sweetland....

     - Sonny
  • Frank DeKova
    Frank Dekova
    Frank Dekova was an Italian-American character actor.-Biography:Dekova was born in New York City and taught at a school in New York before joining a Shakespeare repertory group...

     - Madigan
  • Ben Gage
    Ben Gage
    Ben Gage was a radio singer and announcer, occasional off-screen film singer dubbing the voice of non-singing actors, and American television actor active from 1959 to 1975....

     - Brother Bear (additional dialogue)
  • Ralph Bakshi - Cop With Megaphone

Production history

Not long after Ralph was born in Haifa
Haifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...

, Palestine, the Bakshis shifted to a mostly African-American and Jewish neighborhood in the Brownsville
Brownsville, Brooklyn
Brownsville is a residential neighborhood located in eastern Brooklyn, New York City.The total land area is one square mile, and the ZIP code for the neighborhood is 11212....

 section of Brooklyn, US-NY. Around April 1947 though, Ralph's father and uncle then traveled to Washington D.C. in search of new business opportunities, moving the family into a building in the entirely black neighborhood of Foggy Bottom. Ralph recalls that "All my friends were black, everyone we did business with was black, the school across the street was black. It was segregated, so everything was black. I went to see black movies; black girls sat on my lap. I went to black parties. I was another black kid on the block. No problem!"

Because Bakshi felt that it was not fair for him to walk several miles every day to attend Greenleaf Elementary School while all of his friends attended segregated schools, he asked his mother if he could attend school with his friends in the fall, and she agreed. Bakshi was the only white student in the classroom. While most of the students had no problem with Bakshi attending the school, the teacher sought advice from the principal, who called the police. Suspecting that segregated whites would riot if they learned that a white student was attending a black school, the police dragged Bakshi out of the classroom. Meanwhile, Ralph's father had been experiencing anxiety attacks and stress. Within a few months, Ralph's mother sold their store, and the family moved back to Brownsville, where they rarely spoke of these events.

These experiences had a strong impact on Bakshi, and led him to develop Harlem Nights, a satirical film loosely based upon the Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus
Uncle Remus is a fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881...

storybooks. During the production of Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic
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...

, filmmaker Ralph Bakshi met and developed an instant friendship with producer Albert S. Ruddy during a screening of The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...

, and pitched Harlem Nights to Ruddy. When Steve Krantz
Steve Krantz
Stephen Falk Krantz was a film producer and writer who was most active from 1966 to 1996.- Career :Born in Brooklyn, New York, Steve Krantz graduated from Columbia University and went on to serve in the U.S. Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II as a second lieutenant.He worked as a...

, the producer of both Heavy Traffic and Bakshi's debut feature, Fritz the Cat
Fritz the Cat (film)
Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American animated comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi as his feature film debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States...

, learned that Bakshi would work with Ruddy, Krantz locked Bakshi out of the studio. After two weeks, Krantz asked Bakshi back to finish the picture. In 1973, production of Harlem Nights began, with Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 (where Bakshi once worked as the head of its cartoon studio
Famous Studios
Famous Studios was the animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was founded as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount acquired the aforementioned studio and ousted its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1941...

) originally attached to distribute the film. Bakshi hired several black animators to work on Harlem Nights, including graffiti artists, at a time when black animators were not widely employed by major animation studios. Production concluded in the same year.

Paramount Pictures hired an African American representative to oversee production. During production, the film underwent a number of title changes, including Harlem Days and Coonskin No More... The title Coonskin was chosen by Ruddy, who felt that it would be a great title. However, Bakshi was nervous about the title. At a production meeting, the representative proposed a title change, which Bakshi was in favor of the decision because he wanted the film to be reverted back to its original title; however, Ruddy insisted on his preferred title and told the representative to get out of his office.

Style and subject matter

Coonskin uses a variety of racist caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...

s from blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

 minstrelsy
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

 and darky iconography, including stereotypes featured in Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...

 films and cartoons, presented in a manner that was intended to satirize the racism of the material and images rather than reinforce it. Bakshi intended to attack stereotypes by portraying them directly, and rejected early designs in which Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear and Preacher Fox resembled designs from The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...

storybook for this reason. In the book That's Blaxploitation! Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude (Rated X by an All-Whyte Jury), Darius James
Darius James
Darius James is the black American author of That's Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss 'Tude , an unorthodox, semi-autobiographical history of the blaxploitation film genre, and Negrophobia: An Urban Parable, a satiric novel written in screenplay form. His work is influenced by the Voodoo...

 writes that "Bakshi pukes the iconographic bile of a racist culture back in its stupid, bloated face, wipes his chin and smiles Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....

style. [...] He subverts the context of Hollywood's entire catalogue of racist black iconography through a series of swift cross-edits of original and appropriated footage." The film also features a number of equally exaggerated portrayals of white Southerner
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

s, Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

s and homosexuals, also presented in a satirical context. The depiction of Jewish characters stems from stereotypes portrayed in Nazi propaganda, including The Eternal Jew
The Eternal Jew
The Eternal Jew is an antisemitic German Nazi propaganda film, presented as a documentary. Its title in German is Der ewige Jude, the German term for the character of the "Wandering Jew" in medieval folklore. At the insistence of Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the film was...

. According to Bakshi, although producer Albert S. Ruddy was "fine" with the satire, it seemed that no one really knew what Bakshi was up to as he worked on the film. "Every one thought the picture was going to be anti-black. I intended it to be anti-idiot."

In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, Arthur Knight wrote "Coonskin is not anti-black. Nor is it anti-Jewish, anti-Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...

, or anti-American, all of whom fall prey to Bakshi's wicked caricaturist's pen as intensely as any of the blacks in his movie. What Bakshi is against, as this film makes abundantly clear, is the cheats, the rip-off artists, the hypocrites, the phonies, the con men and the organized criminals of this world, regardless of race, color, or creed." The film is most critical in its portrayal of the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

. According to Bakshi, "I was incensed at all the hero worship of those guys in The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...

; Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...

 and Caan did such a great job of making you like them. [...] One thing that stunned me about The Godfather movie: here's a mother who gives birth to children, and her husband essentially gets all her sons killed. In Coonskin, she gets her revenge, but also gets shot. She turns into a butterfly and gets crushed. [...] These guys don't give you any room."

Casting

The live-action sequences feature singers Barry White
Barry White
Barry White, born Barry Eugene Carter , was an American composer and singer-songwriter.A five-time Grammy Award-winner known for his distinctive bass voice and romantic image, White's greatest success came in the 1970s as a solo singer and with the Love Unlimited Orchestra, crafting many enduring...

 and Scatman Crothers
Scatman Crothers
Benjamin Sherman "Scatman" Crothers was an American actor, singer, dancer and musician known for his work as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man, and as Dick Hallorann in The Shining in 1980...

, actor and playwright Charles Gordone
Charles Gordone
Charles Edward Gordone was an American playwright, actor, director, and educator. He was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and devoted much of his professional life to the pursuit of multi-racial American theater and racial unity.-Early years:Born Charles Edward...

, and actors Philip Michael Thomas
Philip Michael Thomas
Philip Michael Thomas is an American actor. Thomas's most famous role is that of detective Ricardo Tubbs on the hit 1980s TV series Miami Vice. His first notable roles were in Coonskin and opposite Irene Cara in the 1976 film Sparkle...

, Danny Rees and Buddy Douglas. Thomas, Gordone and White also provide the voices of the film's main animated characters. In the film's ending credits, the actors were only credited for their live-action roles, and all voice actors who did not appear in the live-action sequences were left entirely uncredited. Among the voices featured in the film was Al Lewis, best known for appearing as Grandpa on The Munsters
The Munsters
The Munsters is a 1960s American family television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. It starred Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster and Yvonne De Carlo as his wife, Lily Munster. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era,...

. According to Bakshi, the entire cast "[was] all a little nervous, except for Charles Gordone, who plays Preacher/Brother Fox. [...] He was ecstatic about the chance to do this. Whenever I had doubts, he'd reassure me, 'Rait on, motherfucker!' [...] Barry and Charles were behind it 1,000 percent." Bakshi also worked with Gordone on the film Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic
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...

, and worked with Thomas again on the film Hey Good Lookin'.

Directing

The experience of living in both Brownsville and Foggy Bottom was a major influence on his work. While designing the look of Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, Bakshi emphasized an intentionally crude quality in the animation. He is quoted as saying "What I was trying to do was relate to the person in the street. I was looking for a sort of Graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 Art feel—the colors, the structure, a certain crudeness of backgrounds. I even used grainy films at times. The important thing to me was to relate to a certain type of person that I grew up with. To do what I call an art of the street, a 'Ghetto Art.' It's my form of expression." Bakshi has also stated "The art of cartooning is vulgarity. The only reason for cartooning to exist is to be on the edge. If you only take apart what they allow you to take apart, you're Disney. Cartooning is a low-class, for-the-public art, just like graffiti art and rap music
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

. Vulgar but believable, that's the line I kept walking."

Coonskin uses a variety of different styles of artwork, filmmaking and storytelling techniques. Film critic Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...

 wrote that Coonskin "remains one of [Bakshi's] most exciting films, both visually and conceptually." The use of a live-action frame story is a satirical reference to Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

's Song of the South
Song of the South
Song of the South is a 1946 American musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the...

. These sequences were shot in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

. The El Reno state prison was one of the locations used during filming. A week after Bakshi and his crew left, the prison was burned during a riot. The film also uses live-action photographs and footage as backdrops for animated sequences, a filmmaking technique Bakshi previously employed in Heavy Traffic. The filming of live-action footage also helped contribute elements to the film's story. According to Bakshi, while shooting live-action background footage on Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...

 at 4 A.M., a group of prostitutes came out and waved towards the camera before being chased off by the police. "That happened by accident, but we put it in the film. I never could have written anything that real in the script."

Writing

Darius James writes that Coonskin "reads like an Uncle Remus folktale rewritten by Chester Himes
Chester Himes
Chester Bomar Himes was an American writer. His works include If He Hollers Let Him Go and a series of Harlem Detective novels...

 with all the Yoruba
Yoruba people
The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...

-based surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 of Nigerian-author Amos Tutuola
Amos Tutuola
Amos Tutuola was a Nigerian writer famous for his books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales.- Early history :Tutuola was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1920, where his parents Charles and Esther were Yoruba Christian cocoa farmers. When about 7 years old, he became a servant for F.O...

." The film directly references the original African folk tales that the Uncle Remus storybooks were based on in two scenes that are directly reminiscent of the stories The Briar Patch and The Tar Baby. Writer and former pimp
Pimp
A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...

 Iceberg Slim
Iceberg Slim
Iceberg Slim aka Robert Beck was a reformed pimp and American author of urban fiction.-Early life:Born Robert Lee Maupin, in Chicago on August 4, 1918, he spent his childhood in Milwaukee and Rockford, Illinois until he returned to Chicago...

 is briefly referenced in the dialogue of Preacher Fox, and the Liston-Ali fights are referenced in the film's final act, in which Brother Bear, like Sonny Liston
Sonny Liston
Charles L. "Sonny" Liston was a professional boxer and ex-convict known for his toughness, punching power, and intimidating appearance who became world heavyweight champion in 1962 by knocking out Floyd Patterson in the first round...

, is sold out to the Mafia. The film also features a pastiche of cartoonist George Herriman
George Herriman
George Joseph Herriman was an American cartoonist, best known for his classic comic strip Krazy Kat.-Early life:...

 and columnist Don Marquis
Don Marquis
Donald Robert Perry Marquis was a humorist, journalist, and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He is remembered best for creating the characters "Archy" and "Mehitabel", supposed authors of humorous verse.-Life:...

' "archy and mehitabel
Archy and mehitabel
Archy and Mehitabel is the title of a series of newspaper columns written by Don Marquis beginning in 1916. Written as fictional social commentary and intended as a space-filler to allow Marquis to meet the challenge of writing a daily newspaper column six days a week, archy and mehitabel is...

", in a monologue about a cockroach that leaves the woman who loves him. Bakshi has stated that Herriman, a light-skinned African American Creole
Louisiana Creole people
Louisiana Creole people refers to those who are descended from the colonial settlers in Louisiana, especially those of French and Spanish descent. The term was first used during colonial times by the settlers to refer to those who were born in the colony, as opposed to those born in the Old World...

, is his favorite cartoonist. According to Bakshi, the scene "is based on personal experiences of black men I knew who couldn't afford to feed their families, so they left because they couldn't stand to see them suffer."

Of the writing process, Bakshi stated "The way I worked was that everyone recorded the script. But then I would change my opinion over the course of the year I made the film. I read every black culture book I could get a hand on. Then my opinion on these matters would change. I ran my own studio—I had no boss. I was the director and the writer. I would write and rewrite and record all year. I was always in a state of flux in my films; the process was as important as a finished project." In another interview, Bakshi stated "In Coonskin, I was able to stop an entire movie and integrate Miss America poems. I would do two or three movies within a movie. I would use subtext of ideas and go with it wherever I felt it should go. That, to me, is extremely exciting – improvisational almost poetry, in a sense. I love Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...

."

Music

The film's musical score was written and performed by jazz drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...

mer and bandleader
Bandleader
A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....

 Chico Hamilton
Chico Hamilton
Chico Hamilton , is an American jazz drummer and bandleader.-Early life through 1960s:Hamilton was born in Los Angeles, California. He had a fast-track musical education in a band with Charles Mingus, Illinois Jacquet, Ernie Royal, Dexter Gordon, Buddy Collette and Jack Kelso...

. The film's opening credits feature Scatman Crothers performing a song called "Ah'm a Nigger Man." Crothers wrote the music, and its lyrics were written by Bakshi himself, containing the lines "Ah'm the minstrel man/Ah'm the cleaning man/Ah'm the poor man/Ah'm the shoe shine man/Ah'm a Nigger Man/Watch me dance!" The song's structure was rooted in the history of plantations, when slaves would "shout" lines from poems and stories great distances across fields in unison, creating a natural beat, and its fast guitar licks and rhymes feature what Bakshi described as "an early version of rap
Rapping
Rapping refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics". The art form can be broken down into different components, as in the book How to Rap where it is separated into “content”, “flow” , and “delivery”...

". There has been no soundtrack album
Soundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...

 released to date. In 1989, Crothers' spoken reprise of "Ah'm a Nigger Man" was sampled in the track "Hit The Deck", from Ice-T
ICE-T
* Ice-T, an American rapper and actor* ICE T , a tilting model of the German InterCityExpress series of high-speed trains...

's album The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say
The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say
The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say is the third album by Ice-T.Released in 1989, the album has an uncharacteristically gritty sound, featuring some of the darkest musical scores Ice-T has ever released.-History:...

. A boxing scene features "Baby Needs A New Pair of Shoes" by Charlie Brown, from the latter's Up From Georgia album.

Controversy

When the film was finished, a showing was planned at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

. In a 1980 interview, Bakshi stated, "the museum had seen the film and loved it, a breakthrough in animation. They set up a very special night to screen it for film people." The Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...

 (CORE) surrounded the building before anyone had seen it yet, in a protest led by Al Sharpton
Al Sharpton
Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton, Jr. is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election...

. According to Bakshi, "The room was filled, although there weren't many protesters from CORE there, eight or nine. Screaming, 'You can't watch this film!' People pulling people out of their seats. It was that kind of night. The audience was very frightened. They were being attacked verbally throughout the movie. People kept running up and down the aisles in pitch blackness."

In a 1982 interview, Bakshi stated "I had finished the film on a Friday, I screened it in California for the museum on a Monday, and on Wednesday when I came to New York to screen it there were pickets there. I brought the film on the plane with me, and no one had seen it but my animators and two guys from the museum. But there were pickets there, shouting that the film was racist. I never saw anything so set up in my life, but the press never picked up on that."

Bakshi asked Sharpton why he didn't come in and see the movie. In response, Sharpton announced, "I don't got to see shit; I can smell shit!" In a 2008 interview, Bakshi stated that "I called Sharpton a black middle-class fucking sell-out, and I’ll say it to his face. Al Sharpton is one of those guys who abused the revolution to support whatever it was he wanted." According to Bakshi, "[Sharpton] brought in some bruisers, and I could hear them asking, 'Should we beat him up or cool it?' 'Ah, let's watch the film.'" "They were geared to dislike it" says Bakshi. "They were booing at the titles! I guess it was an easy target. Or they were paid to do it. I don't know. It was very unusual. They were booing at something they hadn't even seen. This was interesting to me." After the screening, Bakshi states that Sharpton charged up to the screen, but "people didn’t want to follow Sharpton up the aisle. His own men! He was screaming to me on the podium and turning around to them, saying, 'Are you guys coming up?' But they didn’t want to, because they loved the movie."

Gregg Kilday of The Los Angeles Times interviewed Larry Kardish, a museum staff member, and Kardish recalled that "About halfway into the film about ten members of CORE showed up. They walked up and down the aisles and were very belligerent. In my estimation they were determined not to like the film. Apparently some of their friends had read the script of the movie and in their belief it was detrimental to the image of blacks [...] The question-and-answer session with Bakshi that followed quickly collapsed into the chaos of a shouting match."

According to animation historian Jerry Beck
Jerry Beck
Jerry Beck is a well-known animation historian, with ten books and numerous articles to his credit. He is also an animation producer, an industry consultant to Warner Bros., and has been an executive with Nickelodeon and Disney....

, he did not recall any disturbance during the screening, but there were racist catcalls during the question-and-answer session, and Bakshi's talk was cut short. "It wasn't much of a madhouse, but it was kind of wild for the Museum of Modern Art." According to Bakshi, "there were five people who were very angry at me and were very vocal. There were two hundred people sitting in their seats that applauded the film tremendously. It's always the five people in a room that want to scream, and those are the ones that are going to be heard. That's what really happened. I laughed at the controversy." According to Ruddy, he had been told that "there were about four hundred people there. I think ten or fifteen blacks took objection to some of the things, and they had somewhat of a scream-out with Ralph at the end [...] It was also for the board of the museum. They loved it. They thought it was a classic."

Following the showing, the Paramount Building in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 was picketed by CORE. Elaine Parker, chairman of the Harlem chapter of CORE, had spoken out against the film in January 1975. She told Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

that the film "depicts us as slaves, hustlers and whores. It's a racist film to me, and very insulting [...] If it is released, there's no telling what we might do." The Los Angeles chapter of CORE demanded that Paramount not release the film, claiming that it was "highly objectionable to the black community." The NAACP had written a letter describing the film as a difficult satire, but supported it. Bakshi has stated, "The film was positive black in a huge way. It shows what white people think of blacks. I'm not a racist. I couldn't understand it and I still can't. If I were a racist for the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

, I could understand it. But how could I understand the booing?"

With Paramount's permission, Bakshi and Ruddy got contractually released, and the Bryanston Distributing Company was assigned the rights to the film. Two weeks after the film opened, the distributor went bankrupt. According to a May 1975 issue of The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

, Ben Gage
Ben Gage
Ben Gage was a radio singer and announcer, occasional off-screen film singer dubbing the voice of non-singing actors, and American television actor active from 1959 to 1975....

 was hired to rerecord Barry White's voice track, in order to remove "racist references and vulgarity." Coonskin was given limited distribution, advertised as a blaxploitation film. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 wrote in his review of the film:

Coonskin is said by its director to be about blacks and for whites, and by its ads to be for blacks and against whites. Its title was originally intended to break through racial stereotypes by its bluntness, but now the ads say the hero and his pals are out "to get the Man
The Man
"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise....

 to stop calling them coonskin." The movie's original distributor, Paramount, dropped it after pressure from black groups. Now it's being sold by Bryanston as an attack on the system. [...] Coonskin is provocative, original and deserves better than being sold as the very thing it's not.


According to Bakshi, when Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

 was filming second-unit material for Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver is a 1976 American drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The film is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, and Cybill Shepherd. The film was nominated for four Academy...

near Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...

, a smoke bomb
Smoke bomb
A smoke bomb is a firework designed to produce smoke upon ignition. Smoke bombs are useful to military units, airsoft games, paintball games, self defense and pranks...

 was thrown into a theater showing Coonskin, and Scorsese sent Bakshi footage of audience members running out of the theater. "I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but it's okay now."

In a 1982 article published in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

, Carol Cooper wrote "Coonskin was driven out of theaters by a misguided minority, most of whom had never seen the film. CORE's pickets at Paramount's Gulf + Western
Gulf+Western
Gulf and Western Industries, Inc., for a number of years known as Gulf+Western, was an American conglomerate.- History :Gulf and Western's prosaic origins date to a manufacturer named Michigan Bumper Co. founded in 1934, though Charles Bluhdorn treated his 1958 takeover of what was then Michigan...

 headquarters and, later, a few smoke bombs lobbed into packed Broadway theaters were enough; theater owners were intimidated, and the auxiliary distributor, Bryanston, couldn't book the film. Bye-Bye Coonskin."

Critical response

Initial reviews of the film were negative. Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...

said of the film, "Bakshi seems to throw in a little of everything and he can't quite pull it together." A review published in The Village Voice called the film "the product of a crippled hand and a paralyzed mind." Arthur Cooper wrote in Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

, "[Bakshi] doesn't have much affection for man or woman kind—black or white." Eventually, positive reviews appeared in the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, the Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...

, the New York Amsterdam News
The New York Amsterdam News
The New York Amsterdam News is a American black nationalist weekly newspaper geared to the African-American community of New York City, New York.It has published columns by notables including W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr...

(an African American newspaper), and elsewhere, but the film died at the box office. Richard Eder of The New York Times wrote, "[Coonskin] could be his masterpiece [...] a shattering successful effort to use an uncommon form—cartoons and live action combined—to convey the hallucinatory violence and frustration of American city life, specifically black city life [...] lyrically violent, yet in no way [does it] exploit violence." Variety called the film a "brutal satire from the streets. Not for all tastes [...] not avant-garde. [...] The target audience is youth who read comics in the undergrounds." A reviewer for The Los Angeles Herald Examiner wrote "Certainly, it will outrage some and indeed it's not Disney. I liked it. The dialogue it has obviously generated—if not the box office obstacles—seems jotingly healthy."

Legacy

Coonskin was later re-released under the title Bustin' Out, but it was not a success. The film developed a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...

 through home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...

 releases and film festivals. According to Bakshi, "The film was very popular with black audiences. Let 'em laugh at what they always laugh at, then catch them off guard, which is what I do in all my films." Fans of the film include film directors Spike Lee
Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983....

, and Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...

, who spoke about the film for thirty minutes at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival
2004 Cannes Film Festival
The 2004 Cannes Film Festival started on May 12 and ran until May 23. The Palme d'Or went to the American film Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore.-Jury:* Quentin Tarantino, President * Emmanuelle Béart * Edwidge Danticat * Tilda Swinton...

. The Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan
The Wu-Tang Clan is a hip-hop group from Staten Island that consists of RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard. They are frequently joined by fellow childhood friend Cappadonna, a quasi member of the group...

 have expressed interest in producing a sequel. According to Bakshi, Richard Pryor
Richard Pryor
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer and MC. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets...

 was also a supporter of the film. Darius James quotes Bakshi as saying "Pryor loves it! He thinks it's great!" James' book also states that Bakshi wanted to work with Pryor on a live-action/animated film based on Pryor's stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...

. Bakshi is quoted as saying "I get emails from new fans all the time on it. Some can't believe I'm white." In 2003, the Online Film Critics Society
Online Film Critics Society
The Online Film Critics Society is a professional association for film critics who publish their reviews, interviews, and essays on the Internet.The OFCS was founded in 1997...

 ranked the film as the 97th greatest animated film of all time. Bakshi has stated that he considers Coonskin to be his best film. Coonskin was released on VHS by Academy Entertainment in late 1987, and later by Xenon Entertainment Group
Xenon Entertainment Group
Xenon Entertainment Group is a film distribution company partly owned by director and actor Melvin Van Peebles. It specializes in releasing urban themed movies and documentaries....

 in the 1990s, both under the re-release title, Street Fight. The 1987 edition carried the disclaimer, "Warning: This film offends everybody". Home video releases in the United Kingdom, however, used the original theatrical release title. In 2010, Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an entertainment company founded in 2003 that was started by Richard Foos , Bob Emmer and Garson Foos initially as a specialty music label...

 announced that Coonskin would be released on DVD in November 2010, intending to release it with a reversible cover with both titles of the film; however, the release was cancelled due to a legal issue involving ownership of the rights to the film.

According to Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

, Xenon Entertainment Group
Xenon Entertainment Group
Xenon Entertainment Group is a film distribution company partly owned by director and actor Melvin Van Peebles. It specializes in releasing urban themed movies and documentaries....

 will release the film in its original widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

 format on DVD sometime on 2012.

External links

  • Coonskin at the official Ralph Bakshi
    Ralph Bakshi
    Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...

    website
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