Ralph Bakshi has a message for all the amateur animators and cartoonists out there, and more generally, all us struggling artists. That message is:

“You guys are sitting today with the world in your hands.”

Bakshi, generally regarded as a groundbreaking animator and filmmaker, is best known for directing the film adaptation of R. Crumb’s X-rated Fritz the Cat. He struggled for much of his career against behemoth animation studios like Terrytoons and Disney, and witnessed the original death of theatrical animation in the 1950s. Bakshi discussed this on a panel at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con, and explained how he managed to beat the trend in a fading industry:

“I started to think about what I’d hated about the cartoons I’m looking at, and why the studios should close down. There’s no reason to keep stuff open that’s boring. In other words, why do you need another Terrytoons with a cat chasing a mouse in 1956?”

Soon realizing that he was in a room full of wide-eyed young geeks hanging on his every word, Bakshi took the opportunity to deliver a much-needed spanking to wannabe animators everywhere:

“You got these computers that can do this stuff for nothing! And what do you do with it? You try to get a job with some asshole studio.”

He has a point, of course, recognizable to everyone who watches original online cartoons, or even just Adult Swim. Coming from an aging animator who had to do it all the hard way, Bakshi is almost wistful when he talks about the amazing D.I.Y. possibilities available to today’s aspiring animators. If he sounds angry at all, it’s only because we’ve got it so much easier than he did (at least from a technological standpoint), and he suspects we may be wasting it.

“Four guys can get together and make their own movie in a year. But nobody does except Bill Plympton… That’s what I would do if I was young. I wouldn’t even get a job! I’d get a couple of computers and a bunch of guys. We’d eat crap for a year, and be millionaires the next year.”

I’m not sure how realistic this plan is, but it’s nice to hear a successful old pro, especially one who appears to be coherent and sober, say the sort of shit that young writers usually tell each other around beer #6. If you’re any variety of starving artist struggling to make a living, particularly in the current trainwreck economy, I recommend you watch the full clip of Ralph Bakshi’s wonderful 9-minute impromptu lecture below:

Well, you heard the man.