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In 1992, a bum was discovered sleeping next to the dumpster behind a famous movie poster design firm. 'Dumpster Dan' had improvised a bed out of rejected movie poster comps that he fished out of the trash. Major studios had paid tens of thousands of dollars to have these works of art created and this guy was passing out drunk every night on them. 'Dumpster Dan' was removed from the premises by security one morning while he was pleasuring himself over one of the comps. Show business really is the most glamorous business of them all! |
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Movie
Posters that never made it to print 
(Left:
artists Jose Perez and Brad Hochberg at Seiniger Advertising in 1993.)
Year of the Comet
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The
money can be quite good. Sketch artists get paid by the drawing, so
the really fast guys are able to make thousands of dollars in a day.
This becomes hard to walk away from, to return to an illustration
market that has shrunk tremendously since the advent of Photoshop.
Photos can be so easily manipulated today that illustrators aren't
needed for movie posters anymore, unless a particular style is called
for.
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BugsyIn the 1930's, tough guy Bugsy Siegel came to Hollywood to terrorize the film community for fun and profit. But that was nothing compared to the torture Warren Beatty put everyone through sixty years later for his big-budget 'Bugsy' movie.Hundreds of comps were created for 'Bugsy' over the course of three months, millions of dollars were spent, marriages were shattered and several people nearly died pulling all-nighters to come up with just the poster for Warren Beatty's gangster movie.
The photo in the background on the left is by old school movie studio photographer George Hurrell. He was the choice photographer from Garland to Garbo back in the day but Hurrell felt his work was forgotten in Hollywood by 1991 and was grateful for the assignment - a special request by Warren Beatty. Hurrell (a small, unassuming gentleman) did some stunning work for 'Bugsy,' retouching his photos directly on the oversized, silver negatives he always used. This was one of the last jobs the legendary photographer did, if not the last; he died in 1992, a year after Bugsy was released. While trying to decide on the final look for the campaign, Warren Beatty (who seemingly had total control over all aspects of production and promotion) asked that future poster designs have two scorpions having sex atop the logo. When we researched the mating habits of the scorpion to portray the action accurately, we discovered that scorpions don't copulate at all, they just sort of dance around each other. That didn't matter to the Beatty, a dozen comps were ordered with bugs screwing on the logo so that Warren could see it and (thankfully) kill the idea.
In the end, Tri-Star went with a tasteful Herb Ritts photo and a simple type treatment (at right). Art director Olga Kaljakan tells us: "Beatty didn't decide on the final Bugsy poster, he wanted the one with the glasses with Annette in the foreground"prancing" but in the end the director, Barry Levinson, was so pissed off at having been left out of the whole process he demanded input and chose the final outcome. Cest la vie. "Meanwhile
Annette and Warren got married, copulated, unlike scorpions, and made
lots of babies... and we're still working like Here's a photo of the Seiniger crew after a 30 hour day and night session creating art for Bugsy. It was one of several all-nighters.
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On
these comps, we see Annette Bening, shot
by Bruce Weber, prancing
around the desert in a gold-lame dress. The nice thing about designing
movie posters is working with great unit photography and incredible
special shoot material by the world's finest photographers. Herb Ritts,
Bruce Weber, Annie Leibovitz and George
Hurrell
were all brought in to do special photo shoots for 'Bugsy'.
After
rejecting probably a thousand concepts for the poster (from several
different agencies), art directors eventually ran out of viable ideas.
We even desperately submitted Warren and Annette standing in front of
dozens of dead bodies stacked up in the desert to resemble the Las Vegas
skyline.
When a
film gets extraordinary reviews and/or needs a box office boost, 'quote
ads' are run in newspapers and occasionally a new poster is ordered
that incorporates the best reviews.
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Other People's MoneyWhen you can get the stars to commit to a special photo shoot, you're lucky. Generally the biggest stars won't do it, others are happy to cooperate in order to benefit a project that they have a major career investment in.
Looking back on my eight years as a movie poster comp artist, those were great times overall - even if it was the most stressful creative environment anyone could imagine. Maybe one day I'll tell you about some of the REALLY outrageous things that happened to us on a daily basis!
NEXT: PART FIVE: Movie Poster Artists
page 1: Unseen
Movie Posters |
Annie Leibovitz shot these hilarious set-ups and several
others with newcomer Penelope Anne Miller and old pro
Danny DeVito in 1990 - but these pictures were never seen by the public. So much wonderful work just gets chucked in the ashcan although I've seen rejected movie poster designs used on DVD box covers.
