Hey Good Lookin' (film)

In Long Island, a mysterious man shows a heavyset, middle-aged woman the remains of a leather jacket, which is of great sentimental value to the woman, and the man tells the story of the jacket's owner. In 1953 Brooklyn, New York, Italian-American rebel, Vinnie Genzianna, is the leader of a greaser gang named "The Stompers". His best friend, Crazy Shapiro, is subject to multiple murder attempts by Crazy's detective father, Solly. While in an old basketball court, Vinnie reunites with an old flame Roslyn "Rozzie" Featherschneid, but their reunion is abruptly interrupted by Rozzie's protective Jewish father, who chains her to her bed to prevent her from seeing Vinnie again. Vinnie and Crazy steal a car and spend the evening drinking, playing pool, playing pranks on others and seeing the entire town. They arrive at a bar where they encounter two prostitutes and rest on the beach, waking up to find themselves close to a group of showering women and their mobster husbands. While Crazy inches over to the ladies, Vinnie finds a dead body buried in the sand. The horrified screams of Vinnie and the women alert the mobsters, who beat up Crazy. Vinnie runs off and finds himself on the black area of the beach where he bumps into rival gang leader, Boogaloo Jones, and his gang: "The Chaplains". Boogaloo sets up a rumble between his gang and the Stompers. Vinnie later meets up with Rozzie and Crazy's date, Eva. The four head out to a party, where Vinnie tells the Stompers that they are going to fight with the Chaplains, to which the gang responds negatively. Much of the gang and their girlfriends head out to a rock and roll show. Vinnie is horrified at the idea of Crazy and himself having to fight the Chaplains alone. One of the Stompers, Sal, has a run-in with Boogaloo while driving and winds up in a car crash. Vinnie finally persuades the Stompers to rumble with the Chaplains through a passionate speech. At a drive-in restaurant, Vinnie and Crazy both make out with their dates. When Rozzie spots a car that she thinks Boogaloo is in, Crazy is quick to drive off after it. Crazy ends up shooting two of the black gang members in an alley dead, which scares Vinnie into ditching town, Rozzie, and the rumble. Disgusted with Vinnie's cowardice, Rozzie allows Crazy to make love to her in an abandoned warehouse. Solly, who had been investigating the gang members' deaths, interrupts their time together and fights with Crazy to get him to talk. As he is losing, Crazy falsely claims that Vinnie killed the gang members. During his departure, Vinnie bumps into the Stompers and in time for the rumble. As the two gangs wait for Boogaloo to show up, Solly drives up, ready to arrest Vinnie. On the rooftop of a nearby building, Crazy begins hallucinating and shoots randomly towards the street, causing both gangs to begin shooting at each other. Boogaloo is seen on the same rooftop as Crazy, hiding out from the rumble. Sal steps out of protection and is killed by a stray bullet, causing both gangs to cease fire and back away. Vinnie tries to flee and is shot at by Solly. Vinnie pretends to be hit, falls and plays dead. Crazy jumps off the rooftop and lands on Solly, killing them both. As Rozzie calls up a radio station to make a memorial request in honor of Vinnie, he stands up and walks away, unseen by anyone else. After seeing the town as he did before without Crazy, he finally leaves Brooklyn. In a bar back in the present day, the mysterious middle-aged man finishes his tale by explaining that Vinnie left due to the heartbreak he felt at Crazy's death. The woman determines the mysterious man to be Vinnie and reveals herself to be Rozzie. She calls him out for his cowardice and bluffs that her husband will be arriving shortly and that he'll have to fight him for her, fully expecting him to avoid another fight and leave again. However, defying her expectation, Vinnie does not leave Rozzie and instead embraces her without hesitation and the two lovers joyfully reunite. ==Cast==

• Richard Romanus as Vinnie Genzianna • Frank de Kova as Old Vinnie • David Proval as Crazy Shapiro • Tina Bowman as Rozzie Featherschneid • Jesse Welles as Eva • Shirley Jo Finney as Chaplin • Philip Michael Thomas as Boogaloo and Chaplin • Angelo Grisanti as Solly • Candy Candido as Sal ==Production==

After production concluded on Coonskin, Bakshi wanted to distinguish himself artistically by producing a film in which live action and animated characters would interact. Bakshi began writing the screenplay for Hey Good Lookin' while editing Coonskin and storyboarding a proposed series for ABC. Warner Bros. Pictures had previously agreed to distribute Fritz the Cat before pulling their funding from that film, but they were eager to option the screenplay for Hey Good Lookin' and greenlit the film in 1973. Much of the film was shot at night, because Bakshi felt that the daylight made the scenes less believable. A three-minute promo of the live-action version of Hey Good Lookin' was screened at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival; a print of this promo is owned by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The film was initially scheduled for a Christmas 1975 release, but was moved to the summers of 1976 and later 1977, before ultimately being postponed indefinitely. Warner Bros. was concerned about any controversy the film would encounter as a result of the backlash over the film Coonskin, despite the fact that Hey Good Lookin' did not contain any political content. The studio also felt that the film was "unreleasable" because of its combination of live-action and animation, but would not spend further money on the project. Bakshi financed the film's completion himself out of the director's fees for other projects he headed from 1976 until 1982, including Wizards, The Lord of the Rings, and American Pop. Warner Bros. president Frank Wells told film trades that Hey Good Lookin' needed to be "fine-tuned", claiming that Bakshi needed to revamp the dialogue and reshoot some scenes because they had not tested well with market research audiences. During production meetings, Wells told Bakshi that he had not fulfilled his contractual obligations and had used more live-action than he said he would; Bakshi's lawyer was able to convince the studio not to sue him. The majority of the live action footage was deleted; because Bakshi wanted to keep the breakdancing sequences, he used rotoscoping to animate the footage, but did not animate all of the movements for budgetary reasons. Little dialogue from the 1974 cut of the film was retained in the animated version, which instead featured newly recorded dialogue by Proval, Romanus, and Philip Michael Thomas, who had starred in Coonskin. == Release ==

Following the success of Heavy Traffic and American Pop, Warner Bros. became excited about the second version of Hey Good Lookin', forming a specialty division for the film's distribution. Leonard Maltin wrote that the film is "more interesting visually than Bakshi's other later films, [...] but as entertainment it's vulgar and pointless." Animation historian Jerry Beck wrote that "the beginning of the film is quite promising, with a garbage can discussing life on the streets with some garbage. This is an example of what Bakshi did best—using the medium of animation to comment on society. Unfortunately, he doesn't do it enough in this film. There is a wildly imaginative fantasy sequence during the climax, when the character named Crazy starts hallucinating during a rooftop shooting spree. This scene almost justifies the whole film. But otherwise, this is a rehash of ideas better explored in Coonskin, Heavy Traffic, and Fritz the Cat." ==References==