while browsing the east side book store on st. mark's place, bakshi came across a copy of "r. crumb's fritz the cat" (1969). impressed by crumb's sharp satire, bakshi purchased the book and suggested to krantz that it would work as a film. bakshi was interested in directing the film because he felt that crumb's work was the closest to his own. krantz arranged a meeting with crumb, during which bakshi showed crumb drawings that had been created as the result of bakshi attempting to learn crumb's style to prove that he could translate the look of crumb's artwork to animation. impressed by bakshi's tenacity, crumb lent him one of his sketchbooks as a reference.