Cool World

Cool World (1992)

Holli Would if she could ...and she will

While incarcerated for murder, cartoonist Jack Deebs found escape by creating Cool World, a series featuring a voluptuous femme fatale named Holli Would. But the artist becomes a prisoner of his own fantasies when Holli transports Jack into Cool World with a scheme to seduce him and bring herself to life. Hard-boiled detective Frank Harris – the only other human in Cool World – cautions Jack with the law: Noids (humans) don't have sex with doodles (cartoons). However, flesh proves weaker than ink as Holli takes human form in Las Vegas, staring in a trans-universal chase that threatens the destruction of both worlds.

Date of release
1992-07-10
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (838)
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Animation, Comedy, Fantasy
Director
Ralph Bakshi

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $14.1M
  • Budget: $30M
  • Earned 0.5× its budget
  • Filmed in: Las Vegas Valley

Cool World is a 1992 American live-action animated fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi and written by Michael Grais and Mark Victor. The film stars Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt. Its plot follows cartoonist Jack Deebs who finds himself in a cartoon-based universe he believes he created, where he is seduced by one of the characters, femme fatale Holli Would, who wants to become real.

Production

Following a career resurgence with Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures in the late 1980s, in 1990, Ralph Bakshi concepted a new film project involving a cartoonist who created a comic book while in prison that makes him an underground "star".

Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. – son of Paramount president Frank Mancuso Sr. – became attached as producer, leading Paramount to greenlight the film in November 1990. A long-running rumor attached to the film is that when Bakshi discovered that his original concept had been re-written behind his back without his knowledge or permission, he got into a physical altercation with Frank Mancuso Jr. that involved him punching the producer in the mouth.

Bakshi had originally intended to cast Brad Pitt and Drew Barrymore in the film's leading roles Jack Deebs and Holli Would. Instead, the studio insisted on casting bigger box office draws, leading to Kim Basinger and Gabriel Byrne being cast in late January 1991. The role of Frank Harris was created for Pitt.

The relationship between Bakshi and Paramount quickly deteriorated during production. Mancuso convinced Paramount that the film's potential R rating from the MPAA in the United States, which would restrict attendance from anyone under 17 without a parent or guardian, would be too risky. So Mancuso hired Larry Gross to revise the screenplay to target a more general PG-13 MPAA rating, and presented it on the first day of production.

Bakshi's animation was done on the Paramount lot. The film's animators were never given a screenplay, ultimately being told by Bakshi to "do a scene that's funny, whatever you want to do!"

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