Love, Squared

Nothing says sweet love like a good romantic comedy, and apparently nothing says “romantic comedy” like people in boxes. This seems to be a trend of late and it’s a curiosity. Maybe it means in spite of our best efforts at love, we’re still hopelessly boxed in by our own self-interests. Or maybe it means there are just too many protagonists and the only other option was to line people up in a Scream actor stack. It’s also apparently a fun trend to give your movie a completely non-descriptive name like Love Happens or perhaps… This One Time, Whadd’ya Know?, or Can’t Beat That!

Jim Carrey, Call Your Agent

Something strange has happened to Jim Carrey. As least, something strange has happened to his movie posters. There must be a clause somewhere in his contract that states: “When Mr. Carrey, or his likeness, appears in films which are labeled FANTASY (appealing to, but not limited by a fantastical tone of time, location or character), and as such his character is that of a ghoulish nature, (i.e. being villainous or scoundrelly), the likeness of such a character will henceforth be rendered on all movie posters and associated key art in a three-quarter side pose with outstretched arms, raked fingers and a devilish grin or scowl.”

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This One Goes to 11

This next installment happens to be my favorite progression from original to derivative, given this one has been extrapolating for decades. And the best part is that it didn’t even start with a movie.

Back in college, while designing, I discovered the stark, bold effect of red on black and white (or what have you). Every designer knows it’s a key color juxtaposition when you want to make a statement. Pop culture distiller, director and rock-and-roll media designer Mick Haggerty knew this full well, and is credited with the original artwork for the Smithereens album 11. One might not think twice about the album artwork, but it’s truly a wonderful piece. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought so, with Haggerty’s album cover serving as a kind of splinter, consciously or not, in the minds of a few movie poster artists. Of course, I may be giving too much credit. Likely there was only one true inspiration and the rest just did their best at photocopying a style. Still, one can’t help look at the poster for Ocean’s 11 (yet another Soderbergh film) and ask: “seriously?”

Interestingly, these all seem to be crime-related/cops & robbers flicks. Must be something about black silhouettes walking against red and white that just says “stylish dudes with guns and attitude.” I threw in the Pacino/Deniro film at the end as an afterthought. It’s not entirely the same, but it does borrow heavily from the style. Looking forward to the next iteration!

(click for a larger view)

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Anatomy of a Ripoff

Our next installment of the art of movie poster design “inspiration” comes courtesy of Mr. Spike Lee and his 1995 film Clockers, which for what it’s worth, is a pretty good movie. But the resemblance of the original artwork to the brilliant Saul Bass design for Anatomy of a Murder set off more than one whiff of impostery and sent a few movie historians howling. To his credit, Spike (or the studio) had the artwork changed to something less… impressionistic. The bullet holes were left as they were.

The Wrong Identity

It’s nice to see movie poster mooching open to A-listers as well as the smaller, independent fare. Here’s an example of the designer basically phoning it in. The Bourne Identity, is a fantastic film, so if you’re going to copy the artwork this blatantly, the least you could do is try harder on the script. Unless this is the symptom of abysmal filmmaking: tricking the viewer into renting it. “For some reason, this image reminds me of other great action films I’ve seen. Let’s rent it!” But who’s to say, I’m just picking at the poster. Maybe 88 Minutes is a work of original genius… though I highly doubt it.

Nicht So Gut

I’d like to think the poster for Soderbergh’s film is more of a tribute to the great Casablanca, than a cheeky ripoff intended to skate under the noses of people who have never seen the Bogey film, much less its movie poster. Since there is a very fine line between homage and theft (the poster for American Teen was brilliant for example) I’ll go ahead and give it points for fun creativity. The film on the other hand… ehhh… It looked good.

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An Education in Copying

In honor of this year’s Oscars (which have already passed, sorry) I thought we’d take a closer look at one of this year’s Best Picture noms: An Education. But I’m more interested in the key art than I am in the actual film. The film may or may not be good – I don’t know. It may make it into our Netflix queue… or not.

What’s of particular note is the striking resemblance the poster has to a film from 1999 called A Walk on the Moon, starring Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, also which I have not seen. But movie posters often stick in my head, so I knew I had seen this look before, remembering Diane Lane being part of it. I was surprised to notice just how similar the two posters are. Better yet, both films are set during the same decade and deal with illicit relations, so apparently we’re establishing that head spooning on the ground with a woman in a flowery dress ought to be associated with domestic disenfranchisement during the 1960s. Noted.

This led me to consider all the other movie posters I’ve noticed over the years that bear a striking resemblance to one another and I thought it’d make a good blog series. I realize there are probably far more examples than I’m posting (not to mention the oft regurgitated concepts like floating heads, the actor stack, etc. ), but over the next few posts I’ll share some of the best, or worst, examples of ripoff artistry. As someone currently designing a movie poster for a friend’s feature film debut, I understand the hard work it takes to create an image at once iconic, intriguing and descriptive. But of course when that fails, you can always steal someone else’s idea.

Swinging for the Fences

I remember spotting this little little bit of impostery on the video shelves back in the day, marveling at how the key art designer for Late Last Night must have said, “if I add some girlies in the corner and flip Emilio so he’s holding the martini with his right hand, no one will be the wiser .” Of course, the coup de grace is the review tagline just inside Estevez’s armpit that reads: “Much better than Swingers.” Obviously.

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It occurs to us that a new business model has emerged from the USPS. No longer the vanguards of “come sleet, come snow etc., etc.”, it now appears the Post Office is more interested in letting mail sort-of-kind-of get there whenever it’s convenient. We’ve had no less than three separate instances in the span of two weeks where relatively important pieces of mail did not arrive when even common sense had favored them with a “late” allowance. How a letter going twenty miles south of here takes more than a week to get to its destination, or why another item sits and waits across town in a sorting facility until a “2-9 day delivery window” expires, is beyond my understanding. How about a envelope sent “Priority” across the country, missing for a week and a half?

We can only imagine this is the new streamlined method of delivering the mail under budget cuts and rollbacks of service. Sounds like a model for success. Can’t wait ’til they start running healthcare.

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