Pinball Machine

At one point during the production of 1973 animated film Heavy Traffic, the movie’s producer Steve Krantz, got some unpleasant news. He learned that his director, Ralph Bakshi, was talking to other producers about another film, then called Harlem Nights, and his reaction was, shall we say, not relaxed. Krantz fired Bakshi from the movie, allegedly tapping the animator’s phone line, and tried to get someone else to finish what the “disloyal” director (who had been ripped off on Fritz the Cat) wouldn’t. One of the distinguished men they tried to hire was none other than Chuck Jones, who turned them down flat. The film’s financier, a man named Samuel Arkoff, demanded that Bakshi be rehired, and Krantz relented.

It’s an amusing story because it fits perfectly into the leitmotif of Heavy Traffic: a flashing penny arcade pinball machine. Outside of the tight group of animators and…