American Pop DVD

In AMERICAN POP, cult animator Ralph Bakshi explores the evolution of popular music in America--from ragtime and swing to jazz fusion, stadium rock, and New Wave--through the story of a musical family who shares its legacy of talent through various generations. The exhaustive soundtrack includes artists such as George Gershwin, Louis Prima, Scott Joplin, Dave Brubeck, Herbie Hancock, Bob Dylan, the Doors, the Velvet Underground, and Jimi Hendrix.

This sweeping epic of Americana follows four generations of angry young men and their music via the animation of director Ralph Bakshi. As the story begins, Russian immigrant song-and-dance man Louis fathers Benny, a jazz pianist who gets killed in WWII but not before fathering Tony, a sullen Brooklyn youth who runs off to San Francisco to write lyrics for a Jefferson Airplane-style acid rock band. Crippled by low self-esteem, Tony blows his chance at the big time and winds up a New York junkie in the 1970s, along with his illegitimate son, who later becomes a cocaine-dealing cartoon composite of Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Idol. Featuring music by everyone from Scott Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to Pat Benatar, this rambling feature is a powerfully moving experience thanks to its sheer bravado and endless supply of great music. Bakshi integrates his animation style of rotoscoping (tracing the animation from live film) with historical photos and film footage to tell the story of American popular music in a unique way that sets this ambitious picture into a class all its own.

Though all the characters are fictitious (with the exception of certain musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix, who are not directly related to the story), most are composites of famous musicians, and the songs they "create" are all popular songs already written. The lyrics Tony writes in the 1960s, for example, are Bob Dylan's lyrics, while his girlfriend's band sings Jefferson Airplane songs, and his son later writes Bob Seger's "Night Moves."

American Pop Quotes/Excerpts:

"I'm crazy in love with your blue eyes and your cornsilk hair. I'll never eat corn again without thinking about you--can corn, candy corn, popcorn, Cracker Jack. You're the prize in my box, and my box is this country, all tinfoil on the outside, corn and sweetness on the inside."--Tony (Ron Thompson), wooing the Kansas waitress who will become the future mother of his son, Kerouac-style

American Pop Reviews:

"...This near-unique movie compels repeat viewings..." -- Mike Clark, USA Today

"...Bakshi is an undoubtedly innovative and gifted filmmaker..." -- Berg., Variety

"...A dazzling display of talent, nerve, ideas (old and new), passion and a marvelously free sensibility....[Bakshi] is a talent that won't be stopped." -- Vincent Canby, New York Times

This is the only Ben Frommer video.

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