found the negative reaction to the film from his peers to be disheartening. Cinematography Because it was cheaper for Ira Turek to trace photographs to create the backgrounds, Bakshi and Johnnie Vita walked around the streets of the Lower East Side, Washington Square Park, Chinatown and Harlem to take moody snapshots. Turek inked the outlines of these photographs onto cels with a Rapidograph, the technical pen preferred by Crumb, giving the film's backgrounds stylized realism that had never been portrayed in animation before. After Turek completed a background drawing in ink on an animation cel, the drawing would be photocopied onto watercolor paper for Vita and onto animation paper for use in matching the characters to the backgrounds. When Vita finished his painting, Turek's original drawing, on the cel, would be placed over the watercolor, obscuring the photocopy lines on the painting. However, not every background was taken from live-action sources. The tones of the watercolor backgrounds were influenced by the "Ash Can style" of painters, which includes George Luks and John French Sloan. The film also used bent and fisheye camera perspectives in order to replicate the way the film's hippies and hoodlums viewed the city. Rating Fritz received an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (equivalent to the modern NC-17 rating), becoming the first American animated film to receive such a rating. However, at the time, the rating was associated with more arthouse fare, and since the recently released Melvin Van Peebles film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which was released through Cinemation, had received both an X rating and considerable success, the distributor hoped that Fritz the Cat would be even more profitable. Producer Krantz stated that the film lost playdates due to the rating, and 30 American newspapers rejected display advertisements for it or refused to give it editorial publicity. The film's limited screenings led Cinemation to exploit the film's content in its promotion of the film, advertising it as containing "90 minutes of violence, excitement, and SEX ... he's X-rated and animated!" According to Ralph Bakshi, "We almost didn't deliver the picture, because of the exploitation of it." Cinemation's advertising style and the film's rating led many to believe that Fritz the Cat was a pornographic film. When it was introduced as such at a showing at the University of Southern California, Bakshi stated firmly, "Fritz the Cat is not pornographic." In May