Last year I drove from Los Angeles to Silver City, New Mexico to visit Ralph Bakshi. His wife, Liz, had gotten in touch after our Times piece came out to ask if the name of the magazine was based on Bakshi’s 1973 movie, Heavy Traffic, to which I said no. But excited by the opportunity, I lied and said that I was going to be driving from LA to New York and asked if I could stop by their house on the way. A week later she replied that, surprisingly, he said yes. Many people try to come and visit them at their compound, she said, but the still-cantankerous Ralph always declined. He had a feeling about me, and we made plans to meet a few weeks later, when I would come by in the morning for muffins and coffee.

It took me days to drive there. I went the long way, through Las Vegas, the Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, and the Apache Forest. There is always that feeling. Somewhere in the mountains. No reception, nobody on the road, not even a gas station. All day long. In one of the last towns I stopped in, Eagar, a woman at the grocery store thought that I was mentally handicapped and didn’t know how to use a debit card machine, taking my hand and using it to insert the card. She seemed surprised when I spoke, both that I could and that it was English when I did.

Eventually I got to Silver City, which is commune-like and filled with hippies that appear to be homeless people, flower children lost in time and straggling in rags down the wooden boardwalks in town past the old painted Victorian storefronts. I arrived at dusk and wandered the main street and the quarry above town before retiring to the art deco Murray Hotel, then leaving the next morning to go see the Bakshis at their adobe house that sits on the top of a hill an hour outside of town off the interstate and a dirt road.

When I arrived Liz handed me a stack of Ralph’s poems that she had printed out to be published in the magazine and led me to the kitchen where she showed me a plastic clamshell filled with not mini, but also not normal-sized blueberry muffins. She told me that they were very special muffins that a neighbor had made specifically for Ralph because he, and the muffins, were gluten-free. It was difficult to ascertain whether or not she was lying to me about the muffins, as even though they did appear to be smaller than the average-sized store-bought muffins, they did still look as though they had been purchased at a store, being as they were in a plastic clamshell, and having their bottoms covered with wax wrapping.

She told me why they had moved there, that they had wanted to leave LA and Liz was at a party talking to a man in a cowboy hat whom she did not know. She told him that they did not want to live in the high desert, nor the low desert, and he told them they should move to Silver City, so they did.

We were interrupted by Ralph yelling my name from across the house in his thick Brooklynese lisp. I could not see him, only hear him, and the sound of metal hitting the stone ground and reverberating through the house. Patrick, Patrick... what are you doing here, Patrick? he yelled, and continued to yell for a full minute before becoming visible, hanging onto a steel walker covered with colored bands and ribbons. He was wearing a black-and-gray long-sleeve shirt and a kind of skull cap that he took off as he sat down, reaching for a muffin while asking me if I was aware of how special they were.

I thought that meeting Ralph might be an interesting novelty, a good story for later. But as we spoke, I became aware of a potentially greater, unspoken purpose to our meeting. We realized that we’d come upon the name in the same way and both viewed heavy traffic more as a worldview, that he and I and others are born with or develop, and ultimately one that becomes a kind of curse. The conversation, when combined with just how isolated we were in the desert, was uncanny. It felt something like destiny, and towards the end of the conversation, Ralph told me he loved me, stood up, and said he must be making it back to his studio.

Patrick

How did you come up with the name Heavy Traffic?

Ralph

It just popped into my head. I was writing this film about Michael and the city, and there was so much stuff coming through. I said, “Well, it’s a lot of heavy traffic.” It came out that way. That’s all.

Patrick

What kind of things?

Ralph

People, their lives, their relationships, their race, their gender, white versus black, Italians, the mafia, bugs in the street, guys in the garment center, you know? On and on and on… That’s a lot of traffic. It has to do with the amount of emotions and people passing through your life. It’s an emotional traffic jam. I had already written the script and was looking for a name.

Patrick

You were working in Hollywood at the time?

Ralph

I was in LA. I wrote Heavy Traffic in a hotel room. I couldn’t work in the animation studio. There were too many people running around. I did Fritz the Cat there too.

Patrick

You wrote Heavy Traffic in a hotel room?

Ralph

Yeah, on Hollywood Boulevard. I wrote it in three days because I couldn’t stand the room service.

Patrick

Did you have an apartment and then get a hotel just to write it in?

Ralph

I worked in the studio and I was living in a house with my wife, but I needed somewhere to write it. You have to pull yourself out of a normal world. I had to get back to where I was before I was a big shot, or whatever the fuck I was. I had to live in this room myself so I could do what I do. Otherwise, I would be distracted by a dog barking or someone trying to feed me, asking if I’d had lunch already. It didn’t fit. I try to get into a certain emotional state when I’m writing.

Patrick

In one sense, Heavy Traffic conveys real life, and it’s very documentarian, but in another sense it’s completely its own world. When you’re writing these abject things or trying to convey what real life is like, it’s almost as if you have to make it plastic as well.

Ralph

You’re 100% right. I wrote Wizards in the forest. I went to the Grand Tetons. You have to put yourself in an environment so you can think, so you can feel what you’re talking about. I can’t explain it… the loneliness and the emptiness of the cheap hotel. It really helped me feel the isolation of the people I was writing about.

Patrick

Do you remember what the cross street was?

Ralph

It was Hollywood and Highland.

Patrick

Heavy Traffic was a clear break from the work that you were doing before. Fritz the Cat is similar, but Heavy Traffic was a real step in a different direction. You and Johnny Vita took real pictures of the city and used real audio from the city. It almost isn’t a cartoon.

Ralph

That’s the real me. Fritz the Cat was a property I bought from Robert Crumb. I loved it, but it was lighthearted. Really, I’m a very somber guy. The city is very important to me. I grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which was a terrible place to grow up. In a way, it was great, but it was very dangerous. That’s really who I am. Those people, those things. I’ve always wanted to mix styles and to be able to use live action. Your mouth would drop if you saw what Manhattan used to look like.

Patrick

Why didn’t you just do live action?

Ralph

I had options to go into live action. Stallone brought me the first script for Rocky. He wanted me to direct it because he saw the fight scene in Coonskin, which was live action. A brilliant guy too. I turned him down for $50 million.

I’ve always been an artist, a cartoonist, and I love to draw and paint. There was something about what I was doing that was very exciting to me. I was close with lots of directors. Martin Scorsese was a friend of mine. But I wasn’t that interested in talking to actors. You go live action, you’ve got to deal with actors and producers and studios. I was a free bird. I was flying. I was doing whatever I wanted to, and always breaking new ground for myself. So I was very, very happy. I could have made more money had I moved on, but I loved what I was doing, and I knew there wasn’t much time for me to do more. I knew they were going to catch up to me, which they eventually did.

Patrick

Did success matter to you at all?

Ralph

Just the work, though I think success is important. Fritz the Cat was a success. Financially, it allowed me to do the work. But I was never about success. No one ever invited me to a Hollywood party. While we were shooting Cool World, Kim Basinger had parties every Friday night. I said, “Kim, you’ve never invited me to one of your parties.” She says, “Ralph, no one knows what you eat,” and she’s right. I remember once I got invited to a Marty Scorsese party up in the Hollywood Hills, and everyone’s running around doing coke. I went because I wanted to talk to him about the ending of Mean Streets, but they were too busy to talk about art. They wanted to do something else. So to me, it was always the doing that was the important thing. Success, I didn’t know what that meant. I wouldn’t have known what to do with success. I wasn’t the guy that wanted a Corvette. It’s embarrassing to be successful.

Patrick

I think there’s a ceiling on the amount of success that you can have while doing this type of work. Last Exit to Brooklyn is another example.

Ralph

Cubby [Hubert Selby Jr.] was a friend of mine. I wanted to do a live action version of that book but I couldn’t, thank God. People think success is a certain thing but it isn’t. I am extraordinarily successful. My films are still playing. I live on a mountaintop in New Mexico and I paint and draw every day. You can’t get more successful than that… Apartments, girls, the pressure of being successful, what people think success is, is a death walk. They walk around Hollywood trying to be successful, but they’re terrified of their picture not making any money, or falling out of favor, or girls, or getting older. Success is the doing of something, not what you get from it, and I have spent my whole life doing exactly as I want. All my friends in Hollywood went bankrupt or died of depression because Hollywood didn’t hire them anymore. I didn’t get involved with any of that. I felt the same way as a kid going to high school. I hated math, English, science, all that stuff, but I was able to draw cartoons. That’s successful.

Patrick

What’s your relationship to Hollywood like now?

Ralph

I have none. I hated it. I used Hollywood to do what I wanted to do. They thought I was doing Fritz the Cat and funny cartoons. What I knew I was trying to do was stuff that said something about life. Hollywood is unenjoyable and terrible. The parties, the restaurants, the managers, the agents—all that ecosystem of bullshit. I just made my films; they thought I was doing something else. When they found out what I was really doing, they got after me and started to sue me and I left.

I disliked Hollywood enormously. I disliked LA enormously. The cultured lawns and those restaurants, or people who came to visit me because they thought I was successful; meanwhile, I’m starving. I don’t know what kind of guy I am, but I don’t enjoy those things. Joan Didion is great. I love the writing of Joan Didion. Now there’s a writer. I could have animated one of her books. I would have loved it, but I got the idea too late.

Patrick

What happened with you and the studio executives and Heavy Traffic?

Ralph

I had a lot of drama with my producer, Steve Krantz, who I love very much. We did Fritz and Heavy Traffic together. We were working on Fritz 2 and I got fired from the picture because I sold Coonskin with Al Ruddy, and the producer got very mad at me. I did nothing more than sell another film as a director. But he thought he owned me, so he threw me off. I’d never had a lawyer there, which is stupid, but I finally got one, Al Ruddy’s lawyer. He told me not to go back. And Sam Arkoff, the guy who runs AIP Productions, which is who I sold Heavy Traffic to, told Krantz that if Ralph’s not doing the picture, he’s going to shut it down, because he bought it from Ralph, not from Krantz. So Steve had to bring me back. I finished the picture under very hard duress, working in the studio with a guy that sued me.

My life has always been heavy traffic. But I care very much for Krantz. I’m sorry that it happened. I thought it was okay for me to just keep doing pictures. When I went with Al I finally got a contract. I never got a contract with Steve, so that’s why he was able to fire me. That’s all part of what they do out there. It’s a game. Everyone is nailing everyone. That’s part of what Hollywood is about. After Heavy Traffic was a success, Steve called me. He wanted us to get together, but I didn’t want to. I should have gone back and listened, I did like the guy. He taught me how to sell. Steve was one of the best salesmen in the world, but I was too hurt. My feelings were hurt.

Patrick

You said that your whole life has been heavy traffic. I feel the same way. There are times that I’ve wanted to escape it…

Ralph

It’s inescapable. I thought I could escape it with Wizards. I thought I could escape it with Cool World. It’s inescapable. If you’re doomed, you’re doomed.

Patrick

I feel like what I’m doing doesn’t have the power to affect it.

Ralph

I used to feel that—that a work of art or a great book could change something. So did everyone in the ‘60s. That the great writers or poets could do something. But we can’t.

Patrick

So you’ve come to the conclusion that you don’t think it’s possible for the work to change anything?

Ralph

It seems that way to me, unless I’m proven wrong. I thought when someone heard the truth, they might react differently. But these people look at the truth and hear the truth, and it doesn’t seem to affect them. I grew up believing, very innocently, that we can change the world. I come out of the ‘60s and ‘50s. We felt that the work and protest could change the world. But it doesn’t seem we can. The guys on top just let us shoot our mouths off and behind the scenes they do what they do, which is pretty horrific.

Very few people will go over the cliff for their ideals. Very few people believe in anything or will die for anything. There is something wrong with humanity. The slaughter that humanity has put on this planet is amazing. I think it’s ingrained in us, and most people will not die for a cause, or will flip when given the opportunity. I’ve seen it all the time.

Patrick

Humanity is incurable. But the other side of that coin is that when you get nine million people and put them on an island like Manhattan, it becomes the greatest thing in the world. And that is also humanity. So humanity is hopeless but I’m entranced by something like New York.

Ralph

Well, you’re right. What’s hard to explain is that all the humanity you walk past is interesting and fun, but they will turn on a dime. My love of the streets and heavy traffic came out of love for the buildings. I love that stuff. What I was working with was love, even though making the pictures turned out to be painful. The whole work was about love. Most people don’t work on love. They work on attitudes and what is cool. And what is cool ain’t love. So the minute what is cool ain’t cool anymore you go another way. There’s a big difference. Hemingway worked on love and then he shot himself when he didn’t have it anymore. If you love something, you can’t give up on it. If you don’t love something, then you can give up on it. And that’s what all these interesting people in Manhattan are about.

Patrick

I feel the exact same way about New York. When I was a kid, I used to have books of buildings in New York that I would obsess over before I’d even been here. When I go through Manhattan alone it’s beautiful, but I’m also not interacting with the people in a way like I’m talking to you right now. The people almost become buildings, they’re part of the urban environment.

Ralph

When I did Heavy Traffic in the Hollywood hotel, for lunch, I walked down Hollywood Boulevard. In those days it was perfect. They probably cleaned it up now like everything else. But in those days, it was a perfect place to spend lunch if you’re writing Heavy Traffic. It was so seedy, just like New York used to be. The environment was magnificently old and seedy. Look at it now. I am not in love with Manhattan today. Not since they changed everything. There is no humanity left, it’s only money.

Patrick

I think there’s still pockets of it left. I don’t think it’s anywhere close to as lively and seedy as it used to be. But there’s still some pockets that you can find in New York that are certainly unlike anywhere else.

Ralph

There could be pockets. There are some whales left. It’s not all dead. But the pockets are not the humanity that the entire city used to have. It wasn’t pockets. It was the reality of rich and poor. The romance is gone.

Patrick

Heavy Traffic, the movie and also the type of stuff that we publish is all about people. But, ultimately, when we go out into the city, I actually think it’s not about people, as in I don’t consider them to be people in that moment. They’re more like content. It’s almost anti-humanity, the way I view these people, like they’re part of a backdrop. I don’t know how to explain it…

Ralph

You just explained it very well. I think that you’re going to be very successful with your magazine. There’s going to be a great backlash against AI and people will be looking for your kind of reality again. I do think that you’re doing a very important thing, going against the wind and it’s going to be very hard. But I think you’re going to win.

I don’t believe people want the facade forever. More people are going back to religion. You’re positioned to go back to when writing was important. If not, then it’s all over. But I really think that what you’re doing is great. You should take the hits. I know you’re getting beat up, but I like what you’re doing. So you see, yes, I do have a little hope left.

Patrick

I agree that people want a different world, a different reality. I think real writing is going to be valuable. Who knows what’s going to happen.

Ralph

I’ll give you a bit of advice from an artist and a friend, okay. I think your format’s a little too slick. Start roughing it up. Get it beat up like the underground press a little more. Get a little more grit into what you’re doing. Your art director may be too cute. That British guy. I’m sorry to say that, but I had to say it.

Patrick

I remember you were telling me something similar last time I saw you.

Ralph

I’m telling you as an artist and a friend that your art director is a little too slick. Which makes him a little too bullshit and that’s not what you are. I’m very direct with you because I know you can handle it. You’re trying not to be bullshit, and yet you got this bullshit format that’s like Art Direction Annual, and that’s not what the fuck you’re doing. Put some photographs in. I was gonna tell you last time we spoke but Liz told me to stay out of it. I read it, I said I liked it, but it’s too slick. It was totally contrary to what you’re talking about and how you feel about writing and artists and people. I think people will appreciate it more. Right now it’s just another slick magazine. Be yourself. I’ll shut up now.

Patrick

Well…

Ralph

You’re not doing that. If you were doing fashion and design and, you know, it’d be OK... but you’re not doing that. This Scotch guy. That guy’s full of shit. He thinks too much of himself. All right, I’ll shut up now… It’s really important. I think the format is hurting you. It’s hard to read, too jazzy. I think you’re getting hurt. Calm it down.

Patrick

I hear what you’re saying.

Ralph

It’s too slick. It’s not real. And you’re trying to do something very real. The two things are clashing. One’s real and one’s not real and the two sides are clashing into each other. They don’t marry in a flow. That’s why the pulp magazines were great. They were all printed on this cheap paper in the ‘30s, you know. And these cheap stories read so well on this cheap paper. But you have this slick format against this reality. Be careful with that. It’s not working. It’s really hurting you. The format is overriding the material. There it is. Yeah, the format is overplaying the material. It’s hurting the material. Good, I’m glad I finally got that off my chest. I’m not gonna tell Liz I told you.

Patrick

I appreciate your honesty.

Ralph

You better hurry up. You don’t have the rest of your life.

Patrick

What happened to the Heavy Traffic cels? They got lit on fire?

Ralph

Yeah, it just goes to show you. These producers don’t give a damn about the artwork. All they care about is the box office. Once the film is over, they take all that artwork and they throw it out. Warner Brothers did it. Fleischer did it. No one loved the art enough to save it. It’s insane. All the pictures I made, all the art that I made, we still have. I could not believe what they did with Fritz and Heavy Traffic.

Patrick

Was Krantz the one that you punched?

Ralph

I think it might have been the director who took over for me. I don’t remember. After Krantz fired me, he hired this other director and he fucked up a whole sequence for me. I don’t know, I could be rough. But I only punched people who deserve it.

Patrick

Have you always been writing?

Ralph

If you look at Traffic, and at my films, there are poems in all of them. Look at Coonskin. They’re all poems that are written. I’ve been writing poems my whole life. As a matter of fact, what you should do is publish a whole book of my poems. I’m serious. It’s the best way to express yourself. I have been writing them forever. I got 10,000 poems here, but they’re tough. I point fingers a lot in my poems.

Patrick

You accuse people.

Ralph

I accuse people, I accuse societies. I write about racism, I write about the things that my films talk about but I do it in another language. I love to write. Anyhow, I appreciate anything you print for me.

Patrick

Of course.

Ralph

Print as many as you want. You’ll get a good reaction to it. Read the tough ones. The tougher ones are more proper for when you change the look of your magazine. See, we’re trying to get in line with reality here, not slickness. Back to the streets.

Patrick

So your scripts are almost like a different version of your poems?

Ralph

I love montage, I love collage. I love different mediums and different stuff in the same picture. That was one of my breakthroughs in the film. I use live action and photographs and I use music; contemporary music, as opposed to Hollywood music. I love collage. A poem is a great way to collage ideas. That’s all.

Patrick

Thank you Ralph.

Ralph

You know, you’re a good guy and I believe in your magazine. I like what you’re doing and I wish you luck. I’ll be here when you need me. Talk to Liz on anything you might want. Don’t tell her I told you about the format.

Patrick

I won’t, I promise.