Fred Wolf directed the animated TV version of Harry Nilsson's album, The Point!. Wolf's company, Murakami-Wolf Productions, Inc. produced the film in association with Nilsson's company, Nilsson House Music.

 

Fred was 38 years old in 1970 when Harry Nilsson approached him about creating an animated film based on The Point!. Two years earlier, Wolf had received an Academy Award for his short feature, The Box and had worked on Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. Nilsson already had a contract in hand with ABC to air The Point! as a "movie of the week." The contract gave Nilsson and Wolf a modest budget and little time to produce the animation in those pre-computer days.

 

“I agreed to do this and the budget was incredibly low," Wolf told Erik Himmelsbach in a 2004 interview, "I had to complete this in 34 weeks and unlike the music business where you can wait till the last minute and dash out a couple things. It’s a long tedious process - hand-drawn animation. Worse than that, fool that I was, I decided to animate the whole thing by myself. I damn near made the Guinness Book of Records. For 34 weeks, I had to work seven days a week, 10 hours a day. The only times I didn’t was because of Harry. It’s hard to push Harry away. He’d say, we’re just going out for a couple of drinks. I’d say, ‘Harry, the last time I did that I got home at six in the morning. It takes me too long to recover from these things.’ Harry was an incredible man when it comes to partying. We were really, really having fun. He’s one of those remarkable guys that I’ll never forget. I’ll always look back at the fun that we had and cherish that friendship.” [1]

 

Fred Wolf and Jimmy T. Murakami started Murakami-Wolf Productions in 1967. When Charles Swenson was added as a full partner in 1978, the company became Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, Inc. After reorganizing in 2013, the company was renamed Fred Wolf Films.