"I animated 20 years at Terry Toons. It's important to know that animators like pizza and a raise once in a while, and you've got to treat them with love"
About this Quote
Bakshi’s line lands like a friendly elbow to the ribs: a veteran of the animation trenches reminding you that the “magic” industry runs on very non-magical labor. The pizza joke is doing double duty. It’s the cliché of the underpaid creative workplace - managers who think a slice is compensation - and it’s also a coded memoir of an era when animation was factory work with a bohemian gloss. “I animated 20 years at Terry Toons” isn’t nostalgia; it’s credentialing. He’s establishing that he didn’t parachute in as an auteur. He clocked in, cranked out frames, and knows exactly how disposable studios can treat the people who make their product move.
The subtext is a critique of a business culture that romanticizes passion to justify exploitation. “Animators like pizza and a raise once in a while” pairs the infantilizing perk with the adult need, exposing how often the first is offered as a substitute for the second. Then he pivots to “love,” which in Bakshi’s mouth doesn’t read as woo-woo sentiment. It’s a practical ethic: respect the craft, protect the crew, and you get better work.
Context matters because Bakshi’s career is tied to pushing animation beyond cute commercialism into something rougher, riskier, more adult. That ambition depends on artists who feel safe enough - and paid enough - to take swings. He’s telling producers: you can’t squeeze great animation out of exhausted people and call it art.
The subtext is a critique of a business culture that romanticizes passion to justify exploitation. “Animators like pizza and a raise once in a while” pairs the infantilizing perk with the adult need, exposing how often the first is offered as a substitute for the second. Then he pivots to “love,” which in Bakshi’s mouth doesn’t read as woo-woo sentiment. It’s a practical ethic: respect the craft, protect the crew, and you get better work.
Context matters because Bakshi’s career is tied to pushing animation beyond cute commercialism into something rougher, riskier, more adult. That ambition depends on artists who feel safe enough - and paid enough - to take swings. He’s telling producers: you can’t squeeze great animation out of exhausted people and call it art.
Quote Details
| Topic | Team Building |
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