Fantasy art fans, you’re in for something special! Rediscovered Realms has unearthed a long-lost 1985 interview with Frank Frazetta, where the legendary artist reflects on his career, Fire and Ice, and his influence on famous Hollywood icons.
For the first time online, we’ve fully transcribed this rare conversation, making it easier to read than ever. Whether you’re a die-hard Frazetta fan or just love classic sword & sorcery and fantasy cinema, this is one rediscovery you won’t want to miss!
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This Week’s Rediscovered Realms Theme Song:
Amidst a valley of shadows and whispers of fate, a mysterious femme fatale enters the fray, her intentions veiled behind dangerous allure. One question remains—will courage and love triumph over deception and doom?
I have no idea if the Gaelic portion is pronounced right. Any Gaelic-speaking Adventurers - please let me know!
“Is mise an t-amadan A lean do ghuth binn Mo chridhe briste San dorchadas seo”
translates to
“I am the fool Who followed your sweet voice My broken heart In this darkness”
Your next piece of fantasy fun is calling.
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“Frazetta On His Films!” Interview by James H. Burns
“The Gladiator” by Marcus Boas
This week's rediscovery comes from a rare 1985 fanzine called Heroic Fantasy, a short-lived yet passionate publication by heroic fantasy artist Marcus Boas. Though only three issues were ever produced, they were packed with heart—and stunning artwork.
Marcus Boas, deeply influenced by Frank Frazetta, Jim Steranko, and Robert E. Howard’s Conan, built a career crafting evocative heroic covers, movie posters, and illustrations for Heavy Metal and Castle of Frankenstein. His work, especially his portrayals of gorgeous femme fatales, is a testament to his old-school fantasy roots.
While we’ll explore more from Heroic Fantasy in future editions, today we’re bringing you a legendary interview with none other than Frank Frazetta himself! At 55 years old, Frazetta sat down with James H. Burns to discuss his films—most notably Fire and Ice—in a conversation filled with incredible insights and behind-the-scenes stories.
Initially, I tried sharing the smartly laid-out two-page spreads, but the text was too difficult to read. Then I took close-up shots—better, but still not great. Finally, I transcribed the entire interview so you could experience every word.
And wow—this interview is WAY cooler than I expected. Frazetta drops fascinating tidbits about George Lucas & Star Wars, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood, Conan the Barbarian, 3 draft offers from the New York Giants (!), and the origin & creation of the iconic animated fantasy film Fire and Ice!
Buckle up, adventurer—you’re in for an absolute treat.
The popularity of the films Conan and Beastmaster, and the future production of similarly themed movies, indicates that sword and sorcery is quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s fastest-growing sub-genres. Remarkably, all of these films were influenced (directly or indirectly) by the artist, Frank Frazetta, although he didn’t work on any of them.
This phenomenon dates back to Frazetta’s single-handedly revolutionizing the fantasy art world in the 1960s, when he illustrated a bevy of paperback covers featuring such subjects as ancient and imagined cultures; fierce warriors often battling exotic beasts like mammoth tigers and lizards, or each other; alien planets and creatures; and demons from hell. The paintings of men frequently sported “super-anatomies,” while the women were amazing voluptuaries, helping Frank’s work achieve a primalness and sensuality that had rarely been seen before. Frazetta’s uncanny knack for handling color, layout, action (and how to best represent it in a single tableau), and basic craftsmanship, combined to give life to bizarre situations that had previously existed only in people’s minds, if at all. (“I always try to paint a scene—no matter how wild—as it might appear to me if I were actually there,” Frank comments.)
A former prodigy (who drew as well as an adult when he was but a child) and comic book artist (“doing everything from ‘funny animal’ stories to John Wayne adventures”), before settling down to a 9-year stint ‘ghost-drawing’ the Sunday pages for Al Capp’s Li’l Abner), Frazetta’s initial major paperback assignment didn’t occur until he was in his early thirties, in 1964. After illustrating some Tarzan books, Frank was hired to create the covers for Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian saga, reprinted for the first time since its 1930s ‘pulp’ magazine origins. Frazetta invented his own interpretation of the character, which not only became the accepted image for Conan (“Used in all additional Conan books and, of course, the movie, without remuneration to myself,” Frank notes), but for nearly every other sword and sorcery hero as well.
Frazetta’s art soon proved to be as successful as it was innovative (meriting its reproduction in a set of treasure collections available from Bantam Books and in a poster-mail order business run by Frank’s wife, Ellie). Sales of the paperbacks demonstrated that fans were usually buying them for the artist’s covers. Indeed, Frazetta’s artwork is crammed with characterization and suggested visual story content, that each painting virtually tells a story by itself.
Frank’s prosperity assisted the fostering of a heroic fantasy publishing boom that many media critics believe prompted Hollywood’s current fascination with the ‘cinema of wonder.’ Today, fantasy film directors often refer to Frazetta’s repertoire to aid in determining their movies’ environments, sometimes going as far as to blatantly ‘borrow’ his paintings’ images. Additionally, Frazetta inspired many artists who are now either working in movies (such as conceptual designer Michael Ploog, whose credits include Superman III) or who have had their ideas adapted to film (like Len Wein’s and Berni Wrightson’s Swamp Thing), broadening Frank’s cinematic ages.
Incredibly, Frazetta’s art isn’t important only to the fantasy genre (best evidenced by his being honored with the rare distinction of a cover story in the prestigious American Artist magazine). Frazetta’s ability to capture any emotion on canvas (Frank has a lesser known body of painting ranging in diversity from figure studies of beautiful women to delightful comedic vignettes) gained him a large following of ‘mainstream’ admirers, including such Hollywood luminaries as Clint Eastwood, Marlon Brando, George Lucas, Sylvester Stallone, Bo and John Derek, and Dino De Laurentiis. Some of them even made the trek to Frazetta’s lush 67-acre Eastern Pennsylvania home (complete with lake, pool, and occasional bears and deer).
“It’s a thrill to meet the celebrities but, due to my art, many of them come up here thinking that I’ll be a crazy man, possibly wielding a battle-axe,” says Frazetta, who, in reality, embodies a charismatic blend of vitality with easy-going charm. “When Sylvester Stallone’s agent called to see if his client could visit, he said, ‘Sly’s intimidated.’ I laughed, not believing what I heard. ‘Rocky’s nervous about me?’ Even Clint looked around a little warily when he first walked into my house.”
Most people who journey to Frazetta’s abode come simply as fans, to meet the man and view his work in person.
“When I displayed my paintings for George Lucas—who’s a brilliant, soft-spoken, dear guy—he looked like he had died and gone to heaven,” Frank remembers. “He said that a series of 1950s Buck Rogers comic book covers that I had done ‘inspired the life out of him,’ when he was a youngster. One of them even wound up as a small moment in Star Wars!”
Others contact Frazetta for business purposes. Eastwood commissioned Frank to do the poster for The Gauntlet (Frazetta had already done the ad-art for such films as What’s New, Pussycat?, The Fearless Vampire Killers, and The Night They Raided Minsky’s), while the Dereks had Frank devise the stationery for their Svengali Productions (“If Bo asked you to do something for her, wouldn’t you?” Frazetta quips).
Throughout the past several years, Frank has also received offers to actually work on movies, including the chance to design all the characters for Heavy Metal and Francis Ford Coppola’s invitation to join him in the Philippines on Apocalypse Now (“I was incredibly flattered—Francis is a hero of mine—but I didn’t think I could deal with the 20-plus hour plane trip or the jungle”). Frank had denied every request, until Ralph Bakshi (Wizards, Fritz the Cat) proposed—during a ‘fan visit’—that they team up to fulfill the director’s dream of “bringing Frazetta’s characters to life in an animated heroic fantasy epic.”
“Partnership” was the magic word to Frazetta, since he had always been reticent to deliver a substantial input to a film without a proper stake.
During two separate one-week sessions with Bakshi at Frazetta’s home (followed by a one-and-a-half year stay in Los Angeles), Frank hatched the film’s (Fire and Ice) main characters (“I did tons of sketches,” Frazetta reports) and basic plot situations (later fleshed out by comic book scripters turned screenwriters, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, selected by Bakshi). Frank also used his innate story sense to edit some of Bakshi’s ‘more extravagant’ ideas.
“Fantasy works best when it emanates from some kind of logical base,” Frazetta avers. “Another of my priorities was to keep Fire and Ice wholesome, with the relationship between the hero and heroine depicted romantically, and the violence never overdone. I was also able to make general suggestions, like convincing Ralph to use a classical music score. Additionally, I stressed that the story be kept simple—Ralph usually loves to use hordes of characters to better emphasize the film’s action and drama. Less is always more in art, provided that the less is brilliant.”
To ensure that Fire and Ice’s art world, at the least, looked realistic, Bakshi opted to use rotoscoping (tracing live action, a process pioneered by Max Fleischer (Popeye/Betty Boop) in the late 1910s), which he had originally employed in his adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and American Pop. Fire and Ice was shot entirely with actors (except for such creatures as flying dragons) in black and white 16mm film, utilizing minimal costuming and sparse sets. Afterwards, each of the actors’ movements were broken down into 15 to 20 key frames, which were then blown up into 8 ½ by 11” stills. The animators later enhanced those figures to spawn Fire and Ice’s eerie world of primeval intrigue.
On Fire and Ice’s ‘live’ set, Frazetta directed what he claims is most of the completed film’s action sequences (due to contracts, Frank is credited only as ‘Co-Producer’). Frazetta compelled the actors to eschew “standard Hollywood stunt fights,” explaining that “barbarians …
… don’t punch like John Wayne, or use karate.” Frank innovated such tricks as having the actors use rolled-up newspapers in place of swords and clubs (“so that they could realistically bludgeon each other, without flinching”) and often demonstrated his action ideas to persuade reluctant stuntmen that the maneuvers could be done.
Although now 55 years old, a lifetime of athletics has kept Frazetta in prime condition (as a youth, Frank was a top baseball player, asked by the New York Giants to sign with them on three separate occasions).
Since Fire and Ice was designed as a tribute to Frazetta’s milieu, he had to train Bakshi's artists to emulate his style.
“I’d go from office to office, correcting their work and teaching them how to draw,” Frank reveals. “I also brought in some of my paintings to give them an idea of what we were shooting for. Most of them picked up on my concepts pretty quickly—the background artists were especially sensational—but no one could draw the film’s wolves or giant lizard. I had to sketch every frame of those creatures myself. The colorists took it from there.”
Despite such contributions, Frazetta feels that it would be stupid for people to think that watching Fire and Ice is the equivalent of looking at several of his paintings, a sentiment that he’s actually held since before the movie’s premiere.
“Artistically, at best, the film is an imitation. You can’t have 700,000 frames that look like involved oil paintings. For a movie, however, the art is great.” He also doesn’t think that Fire and Ice is even the ultimate in a Frazetta film.
“There are some elements that aren’t to my taste,” Frank admits, “which were due to compromises necessitated by my collaborating with Ralph. I expected that, and don’t begrudge it, but I wish that the film could have had more of a classic adventure sense, along the lines of the original King Kong.”
(JHB: Chances are that the released film contained even more facets unsuitable to Frazetta, since—according to industry sources—Bakshi severely altered Fire and Ice’s final cut, without Frazetta’s knowledge or, inherently, approval.)
Nevertheless, Fire and Ice is entertaining and contains many firsts.
“You can judge my ability to make a total film if and when I do one as the only producer,” Frazetta finalizes, knowing that he has an open door at numerous studios to pitch projects. “The picture doesn’t even have to be fantasy or animated. I think that I could do some very interesting things with a contemporary setting. As good as Fire and Ice may be, that film would be 100 times better.”
So, Bold Adventurer, what did you think? Frazetta’s words give us a rare glimpse into the mind of a true fantasy legend—one whose art shaped the very worlds we dream of. Whether it’s Fire and Ice, Conan, or his unexpected ties to Hollywood and even baseball, his larger-than-life presence is undeniable. Did anything in the interview surprise you? Drop a comment and let’s keep the adventure going!
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Enchanted [Verse 1] Lost in your eyes You seemed so pure How could I know What lay in store? [Pre-chorus] Through this ancient grove tonight Something's not quite right [Chorus] You dance before me in the pale moonlight Your spell has bound me, can't put up a fight (Can't resist, can't turn away) (Led astray, led astray) [Verse 2] Sharp as a knife Sweet as the spring Death in your smile Poison you bring [Pre-chorus] Feel the magic drawing near All I feel is fear [Chorus] You dance before me in the pale moonlight Your spell has bound me, can't put up a fight (Can't resist, can't turn away) (Led astray, led astray) [Bridge - Gaelic] Is mise an t-amadan A lean do ghuth binn Mo chridhe briste San dorchadas seo (Ah-yi-yi-oh, ah-yi-yi-oh) [Verse 3] Wings turn to blades Teeth sharp as steel Too late I see What you conceal [Pre-chorus] All the signs I should have known Now I'm not alone [Chorus] You dance before me in the pale moonlight Your spell has bound me, can't put up a fight (Can't resist, can't turn away) (Led astray, led astray) [Bridge - Syllabic] Hey-na na-na hey-na na Li-la li-la ley-oh (Hey-na hey-na hey-na na) [Sound effect: Flute trill] [Outro] The price is paid The deed is done The battle lost Before it's begun
Fire and Ice is an awesome example of the genre, my second favourite S&S film (after Conan the Barbarian). It has a decent story, fantastic art and some of the best rotoscoping put to film.
Renting it with a buddy for a sleepover from one of those old family video places is a great memory.
It was one of the few films where the coolest character (not the main hero) was the one to realistically take out the bad guy.
I was at the Frazetta museum last year. Beautiful rural spot. Here’s a deer that was on the property.
Another great find, JQ.
Fire and Ice is an awesome example of the genre, my second favourite S&S film (after Conan the Barbarian). It has a decent story, fantastic art and some of the best rotoscoping put to film.
Renting it with a buddy for a sleepover from one of those old family video places is a great memory.
It was one of the few films where the coolest character (not the main hero) was the one to realistically take out the bad guy.