Ralph Bakshi is probably most famous for earning the first-ever X rating for an animated film, 1972's Fritz The Cat. In the four decades since, Bakshi has continued to push the boundaries of what is considered appropriate material for a "cartoon." Coonskin (1975) was a hugely provocative film about race and class that appropriated lurid stereotypes like Brother Rabbit and Preacher Fox. Wizards (1977) explored the role of technology in modern life -- and included fairies who were strippers and gremlins who were fascists, and somehow still got a PG rating.

Bakshi was an innovator in technique, as well. He was among the pioneers of rotoscope, a process in which live-action sequences are painted over in part or in full to create a hallucinogenic visual effect. Bakshi frequently recorded conversations with friends and family, and used the resulting tapes as audio beds for bizarre asides in his films.

Bakshi's work is the subject of an ongoing retrospective at BAM Cinematék, and he attended a few of the screenings last week.

"What stunned me when I went to the theater," he tells Soundcheck host John Schaefer, "was that the entire audience is young. I figured it was going to be full of nostalgic fat overweight guys like me, but they were all kids, standing-room only, and they knew all my films. That's kind of stunning. My time is about over and I think it's great that people are still watching my movies."  

In 1981, Bakshi took on the particularly ambitious project of telling the history of American pop music, from its beginnings in Eastern European shtetls to vaudeville to Haight Ashbury to New York's Lower East Side in the 1970s. The film was called, appropriately, American Pop, and tells the story of four generations of the musically-aspirational Belinsky family.

"What I wanted to do was explore music," says Bakshi. "Music creates images. I used to drive around New York in my car at night; there's nothing more beautiful than crossing the Brooklyn Bridge at two in the morning. It's magical if you got Tito Puente on, or Miles Davis, Coltrane. It's just beautiful -- the whole thing melts. I've always used every image I could to produce an emotional feeling."

Bakshi tells Soundcheck about the future of animation, his love of 1960s jazz, and American Pop.  

Check out the full lineup for BAM Cinematék's "Cool Worlds: The Animation of Ralph Bakshi," running through May 20.

Watch the original trailer for Ralph Bakshi's 1981 film American Pop:

And then see if you can spot the influence on the video for Kanye West's 2008 song "Heartless":