Tales From Development Hell: Cool World
By Ryan Fleming.
A peculiarity about filmmaking as a collaborative process is that sometimes those involved in making the film can have conflicting visions of what sort of film they’re making. And then there’s Cool World (1992), where it seemed like any one person involved had a different idea of what they were doing than any other single person on the set.
Cool World was intended as a comeback picture for director Ralph Bakshi, who had not only last directed a film in 1983 but had also briefly retired, but instead wound up being the last feature film he would ever direct. A film advertised by a 75-foot cutout of a sultry cartoon femme fatale and schoolbook publisher conventions. A film whose concept was conceived as a horror, but whose star wanted to rewrite it so that it could be played to sick children in hospital.
How did a major studio like Paramount come to greenlight such a picture from a director that had been out of the game for nearly a decade? Especially one as ambitious as to combine live-action and animation with an originally intended audience of adults? The answer to that is easy: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Robert Zemeckis’s film was released in 1988 to massive critical acclaim for its acting, comedy, screenplay, and, most of all, its technical breakthroughs in combining live-action and animation footage allowing the titular cartoon rabbit to interact with real actors like Bob Hoskins. More importantly, for a Hollywood studio, it brought in over $350 million box office against a budget of $50 million. There was no formula for the blockbuster even that late into the 1980s. The most successful film of one year could be radically different in genre, tone, and production from the second or third most successful film that year. Or, indeed, from the highest grossing films for the years either side of that one. As such, the major studios were willing to take gambles. Maybe, just maybe, live-action and animation hybrids were about the be the next big thing in the way science fiction and fantasy films had taken off after Star Wars (1977). It was under these circumstances that Ralph Bakshi had pitched Cool World to Paramount.
Bakshi had returned from his brief retirement in 1987 to develop Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. It has been credit by some alongside Roger Rabbit in heralding the direction animated film and television would be moving during the 1990s. It certainly stood out compared with the limited animation that had been in vogue for US animated children’s television since the 1970s. Although it did generate its own controversy when a sequence in one episode was interpreted as the title character snorting cocaine, Bakshi’s infamy for directing the X-rated Fritz the Cat (1972) probably worsening said controversy. Regardless, it also marked an early opportunity for people who would go on to work behind the scenes on the likes of Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, The Powerpuff Girls, The Ren & Stimpy Show, The Simpsons, and Pixar motion pictures.
Following the brief run of Mighty Mouse, Bakshi would conceive a new motion picture in 1990 that would be a marked departure for his prior feature film work. Those had for the most part been adult comedies like Fritz the Cat, Coonskin (1975), and Hey Good Lookin’ (1982), or fantasy films like Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978), and Fire and Ice (1983).
Cool World, as originally conceived, was to involve an imprisoned cartoonist whose comic creations whilst incarcerated had turned him into an underground sensation. The comic creations, who had come to the protagonist in visions, would inhabit an alternate reality populated by animated ‘Doodles’. Foremost amongst these comic creations would be a sultry femme fatale, originally named Debbie Dallas after the pornographic picture Debbie Does Dallas. The cartoonist would cross over into the animated reality and have sexual intercourse with Debbie. Their half-human, half-Doodle offspring would grow up to resent their abandoned father, and eventually cross over into the real world, intending to find and murder their father, killing others along the way.
Paramount, where Bakshi had briefly served as head of their animation division during the late 1960s before they shuttered it, snapped the idea right up. Assigned as producer was Frank Mancuso Jr., the son of Paramount chairman and CEO Frank Mancuso Sr. The younger Mancuso’s prior producing credits included many horror pictures, amongst them the first five sequels to Friday the 13th (1980); he had also produced his fair share of comedies, and even a few dramas, but his appointment does suggest that early into production there might have still been some semblance of sticking with Bakshi’s idea for a live-action animated horror film. Bakshi had wanted to cast Brad Pitt and Drew Barrymore as the cartoonist and Debbie Dallas, respectively, but before the film could reach that stage it still needed an actual script. Michael Grais and Mark Victor, best known for writing Poltergeist (1982) and its first sequel, were contracted to write a screenplay from Bakshi’s idea. Again, hiring writers whose biggest success was a horror film is notable. They turned in a script that both Bakshi and Mancuso fils approved, and the film was off to the races.
The shenanigans began almost immediately.
Bakshi and Mancuso tried to claim Grais and Victor’s script as their own. This went to arbitration with the Writers Guild of America three times, and each time the WGA sided with Grais and Victor over Mancuso, with Bakshi not even showing up. Grais and Victor had a leg up during arbitration, being savvy enough to have evidence that they wrote the script and handed versions of it in on certain dates, registering the same. Since Bakshi and Mancuso, mainly Mancuso, fought so hard for credit, the actual screenwriters thought it must be an assured blockbuster. The question of authorship is still contested, what elements of the plot originated with Bakshi’s idea, and which originated with Grais and Victor’s screenplay. The latter even acknowledge that an uncredited Larry Gross, known for his collaborations with Walter Hill on 48 Hrs. (1982) and Streets of Fire (1984), rewrote the entire final act which they struggled to do satisfactorily.
Gross, and possibly Mancuso himself, didn’t stop there. Mancuso, fearing the commercial possibilities of the film if they proceeded with the original horror mashup, toned down those elements of the script aiming for a younger audience. Bakshi, who was also signed on to direct, was incensed to find that his idea, however much of it was his, had been rewritten behind his back. This even led to longstanding rumours that Bakshi punched Mancuso in the face as a result. Bakshi has denied these rumours and did go on to direct the picture with Mancuso producing so even if it did happen, it didn’t harm the final product. No more than everything else did, at any rate.
The filmed version of the script opened with a new character, an American World War II veteran, who finds himself transported to Cool World in 1945, there becoming a detective. This character was written especially for Brad Pitt, after the studio refused his casting of the protagonist in favour of the more bankable star Gabriel Byrne. What a difference a few years would make to that decision. Byrne plays the imprisoned cartoonist who created characters including Holli Would, as Debbie Dallas evolved into. This version of the character became the main villain of the piece, being both bad and drawn that way. Would was voiced and played in live action for the final act by Kim Basinger, again a decision to get a more bankable star than Drew Barrymore. Basinger, not thinking the screenplay had been through enough hands, offered to rewrite the script herself so that she could play the film for sick children in hospital. On children: the human-Doodle hybrid child was gone, but the cartoonist and Holli still had to copulate for the plot, since Holli needed to do so to become human.
To go into more detail on the plot would require a whiteboard and more patience than this writer can summon, but a final note on the production would be that Bakshi instructed his animators to just animate something funny without regard to the script. This only served to make the end product even more disjointed.
To market the film, Paramount had marketing at the National Scholastic Press Association’s annual convention. They had a sweepstakes tie in with a root beer company, had DC Comics publish four prequel comics to the film, and three different video game adaptations for different platforms. Its most infamous tie-in was the 75-foot corrugated metal statue of Holli Would that the studio placed atop the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. The city originally balked at the idea, but Paramount’s donation of $54k to the city, half of which was to go to clean-up after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, swayed the municipal government. Locals protested the sexualised image of Holli sitting coquettishly atop the ‘D’ in the sign, overlooking the entire city.
It might be a more well-remembered incident, had more people actually seen the film.
In its initial limited release, the plot was described as nonsensical, and many reviewers felt the live action/animation hybrid sequences paled in comparison to Roger Rabbit. It was still far too lurid for the younger audience Mancuso wanted to target, but nowhere near raunchy enough for Bakshi’s fans. Plenty of the younger fans would have appreciated a wilder, raunchier product too. Notable film critic Roger Ebert called it “surprisingly incompetent” whilst Leonard Maltin likened it to “a Roger Corman version of Roger Rabbit.” A planned wider release after its first week was cancelled, and the film wound up grossing little over $14 million, only half of its estimated $28 million budget. Basinger would be nominated for Worst Actress at the annual Golden Raspberry Wards, along with her performance in Final Analysis (1992). Her career would recover, as would Byrne’s and Pitt’s.
Ralph Bakshi would never direct another feature film; it would be three years before Frank Mancuso, Jr. produced another film; Michael Grais and Mark Victor, who had to fight so hard to retain credit for their original screenplay, never wrote another film again. Everyone always blames the writers.
What if the original screenplay had actually been filmed and Cool World retained its horror aspect as Bakshi had originally conceived and Grais and Victor scripted? Perhaps one change at Paramount in 1991 can hold the key to that version of Cool World seeing the light of day.
Frank Mancuso, Sr. left Paramount in 1991 following the arrival of Stanley Jaffe in the company as Chief Operating Officer. Mancuso would also launch a $45 million lawsuit against the company for breach of contract. Some accounts have Jaffe being the one that balked at doing an animated film aimed at adults. One wonders if the younger Mancuso acquiesced to his demands given that he no longer enjoyed a familial relationship with the studio CEO. Indeed, the first film Mancuso, Jr. produced after Cool World, Species (1995), was for MGM, where Frank Mancuso, Sr. had become chairman and CEO in 1993.
Jaffe would rise to the position of chairman of Paramount after Brandon Tartikoff, resigned to spend more time with his daughter, who was recovering from severe injuries sustained in a 1991 car crash. Jaffe would himself be forced out in 1994 after Viacom purchased Paramount, resulting in his own $20 million lawsuit against the company. He was at least there long enough to veto a replica of the USS Enterprise in Las Vegas, since he feared it being unsuccessful would be a permanent mark of failure.
What if these executive shake-ups were avoided and Mancuso, Sr. remained as CEO for even one more year? It was he who was originally sold on brining Bakshi onboard with this idea. He might be more willing to just let the dice roll rather than have his son tinker with the idea.
How does Cool World fare as a live action/animated hybrid horror film? To start bluntly, the world isn’t going to be set alight as a result. There will be no renaissance of animated or live action/animated hybrid horror films during the 1990s. It won’t break box office records, Jaffe and/or Mancuso Jr. were right that an R-rating would hinder its commercial prospects. However, a well-made version of the concept might just have enough to appeal to both fans of Bakshi’s works, animation aficionados, and horror fans, and if its raunchy enough it might just do well-enough in video rentals from the same teenage audiences they tried to appeal to historically. A cult classic is its likely ceiling, but that ceiling is well in reach from its combination of elements if nothing else. It could probably make back its budget, especially if Paramount doesn’t decide to cut their losses and scale back its release in its second week in theatres.
Cool World creating a lasting impression on a receptive segment of audiences might help its soundtrack become better remembered too. Unlike the film, Songs from Cool World, which featured original songs from the likes of David Bowie, Moby, and Thompson Twins, amongst others, received very favourable reviews and managed to crack the Billboard 200 chart. Mark Isham’s original score, bringing together several different genres, also received positive reviews when released to CD performed by the Munich Symphony Orchestra.
The most direct impact from Cool World not winding up as it did historically is that four careers aren’t derailed because of it. Three of them pretty much ended as a result! The most intriguing is Bakshi, who had already retired from filmmaking once but even a minor cult success might keep him going. He might get another studio picture out of Cool World, but something in his personality and works suggests to this reader that this might be as limit as far as mainstream Hollywood goes. Considering the slow death that traditional animation suffered as the 20th gave way to the 21st centuries, even Bakshi still making films as a notable independent is an intriguing one.
Grais and Victor might find further screenplays coming their way, or even their ideas being commissioned. They were shopping around other scripts before tainted by Cool World, including a remake of the Humphrey Bogart film noir In a Lonely Place (1950). Not saying this should have been attempted, but citing as an example since Grais mentioned it in interviews as a script he was disappointed never made it to screen.
Then there is Frank Mancuso, Jr., who alone amongst the four was able to reforge something of a career with his father flitting between chairmanship of multiple studios. There is one intriguing possibility for the younger Mancuso. Following the failure of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (not produced by Mancuso), Paramount declined to renew its ten-year lease on the rights to that series in 1990. They reverted to series creator Sean S. Cunningham, who promptly sold them to New Line Cinema, hoping to pit Friday the 13th villain Jason Voorhees against Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy. The asinine way Hollywood film rights works meant that, whilst Cunningham owned the rights to the series, Paramount still owned a trademark on the series. This would eventually result in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), an execrable entry in the series that makes this viewer long for Jason Takes Manhattan. Paramount’s trademarks to Friday the 13th lapsed in 1999 from non-use, meaning Cunningham and New Line could now use the franchise name. Would they have had non-use with the Mancuso’s still at Paramount? The younger of the two had already invoked the title separate to the film series in the straight-to-syndication Friday the 13th: The Series, which bore no resemblance to the films. It is possible that the title is invoked in an entirely unrelated film by Mancuso, Jr. during the 1990s to keep the trademarks going.
The direct impacts from Cool World being produced more akin to its original concept and script are minimal, but the indirect impacts from four careers not being derailed or even ended are intriguing ones. Bakshi and Mancuo’s next picture being another animated horror, one using the Friday the 13th name, makes for a wild prospect.
Cool World remains an obscure picture, despite featuring several marquee names in terms of actors and one of the most infamous names in traditional animation at the helm. Wherever it does warrant mention is as a punchline. However, one reason for this is that Jaffe questioned a (partly) animated picture targeted towards adults in the early 1990s. From the 2020s, where traditional animation is a format dominated by animated sitcoms targeted towards adults, it raises an eyebrow. Such was the thoughts about animated film and television back then and still is from some quarters to this day. In that regard, the original concept for Cool World was a little ahead of its time. The market might become more receptive to it over time.
Could the original concept being filmed have eventually resulted in Cool World 2 being made at some point in the 2010s, reuniting Brad Pitt as the cartoonist protagonist still on the run from his half-cartoon son conceived with Drew Barrymore's Debbie Dallas...?
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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