After working on the project for 15 years, Genndy Tartakovsky is fully aware that his latest film, ”Fixed“Is an anomaly. Here is a raunchy, Capital R-ranked 2D-animated comedy about a dog that has a last wild night out on the city before he was castrated in the morning and loses his precious family’s jewels. Although they have several acclaimed shows and a very successful animated film trilogy in his resumeFixed“Could not have come to the screen – and it almost didn’t do it several times.
“I’ve always said this movie is a unicorn,” Tartakovsky told IndieWire before the film’s release on Annecy International Animation Film Festival. “It is a dream come true to have a 2D animated, hand-drawn, R-rated film that does not rely on pop culture humor. It is very rare.”
He is not wrong. Even on the surface, it would be easy to dismiss “fixed” as this year’s “Sausage Party”, another animated film that used the media’s endless visual opportunities to give the audience extremely graphic images. For Tartakovsky, who has mainly worked in the old-age space for the past 30 years, even when he moved to R-Classed animationHe has never written this kind of humor before. Sure, “Samurai Jack” has humor, but it’s never raunchy, and “Primal” has plenty of graphic images, but it’s kind of missing in the department Buttholes and Testicles compared to this movie. For the director, it was a challenge to have to change his feelings and look at exactly where he wanted the movie to go. “It can’t be just a straight dialogue all the way,” Tartakovsky explained. “It’s my sensitivity, it must have some physics.”
That physics comes in the form of striking, exaggerated and caricatured animations directly from the golden age to Chuck Jones and, for example, Avery -signed films. For Tartakovsky, who fell in love with the animation style that grew up, it was a dream. “I’ve studied it for so long,” he said. “It’s part of me and it is informed of my style.” Whether it is the Slapstick Humor in “Dexter’s Laboratory”, or the use of silence in stories in “Samurai Jack” or even how he uses Bugs Bunny-type Physicality in non-comedo projects such as “Klon War”, “Tartakovsky has not taken an old school. Stretch, exactly, is a shared feeling of physical humor and slapstick in golden age cartoons and a pocket of a packet of dogs chasing a squirrel and cuts to those who tear the poor creature to bloody pieces.
After working with the French studio La Cachette for its last two projects, “Fast” was also new territory for Tartakovsky in the form of a new team of animators who worked to get that Avery and Jones Vibe to “Fixed.” Although he worked in the industry for decades, his collaborators scared the Creator. “I won’t animate as much, so when I suddenly work with fantastic animators, I get in my head and think they will see that I am a fake because I have only done my own things for so long,” Tartakovsky said. “I had Disney animators in my team of our guys worked on ‘Roger Rabbit’, and he is incredible, so will I really give him guidance? He can make me animate me at any time.” According to Tartakovsky, it did not stop being a problem. “It was the most minimal amount of notes we have ever made on a movie. It was never about the technical side of the animation, I would only talk to them about the joke and they got it right away.”
Behind a sex joke lies a pretty hearty story about a group of friends who try to cheer up one of their own and even a sweet romantic story. Perhaps the most surprisingly tender, but still very fun, the subplan in the film means Lucky, a neurotic dog obsessed with strange scents and flavors, learns to love himself after a meeting with Frankie, an intersex dog expressed by River Gallo.
“Everyone held their breath and asked if I was sure I wanted to include it,” Tartakovsky said. “I thought, why not? It’s fun and we don’t make fun of it. We want to be sincere about it and don’t mean.” In fact, there is a sincerity in the way Gallo expresses Frankie that makes humor in their big stage also a moment of personal triumph, of acceptance and also fun dog sex. “Hiring a voice actor who is part of that society has added a lot to it. Sometimes I would do something and they would explain why it could be interpreted wrong because I don’t have that perspective, so they would explain it to me, and then I would change it. We worked through the whole movie that way.”
To prevent the rapid drowning of the heart, and the heart from softening out the humor, was a balance that was critical for creating the film. “We try to build characters that we really like and who are fun,” Tartakovsky said. “It’s really hard to do from the ground up in an original story.” It does not help it is a function, which unlike TVYou can’t just be based on happy accidents from one episode to the next. Cracking the right balance took years and several variants of the script. Part of the beauty, but also the problem, writing for animation is that something that works well on the page, or even with a specific art style, does not necessarily translate into another visual style. At one point, Tartakovsky was pressed to try 3D animation to more easily sell the film, but it had an unexpected effect on the film. “Animated balls look better in 2D.”
