Mr. Walt Disney

Elysian Fields

Dear Walt,

Well, old buddy, things have come to a pretty pass. A young animator named Ralph Bakshi—you might remember, he made the first two X-rated feature-length cartoons, "Fritz the Cat" and "Heavy Traffic"—anyway, he's now made "Coonskin." It's got an R rating, which must stand for Ripoff because what he's done is turn your Uncle Remus stories inside out.

The movie is about these three black characters who leave the South and come to Harlem where they try to take over the rackets. Along the way they have to knock off a corrupt detective named Mannigan who looks like a women's-lib caricature of Telly Savalas. And, Walt, Bakshi represents Miss America with a cartoon character who's nekked. Bakshi tells his story, if you want to call it a story, as he did in his earlier movies, by intercutting the fantasy...