Todd Solondz is one the most distinct filmmakers we have working today. Like watching one minute of a random movie by either Neil Labute or David Fincher without warning, you know it is by Solondz when you see one of his. My high anticipation for his new film Life During Wartime (2010), which premiered last year at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festive), is matched by seeing what its movie poster will look like — and for good reason. Over Solondz’s career from Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996) to Palindromes (2004), the posters of his films have been consistently inspired and in tune with each other. Their designs and illustrations(!) convey the sweet and sour qualities of his controversial themes, which engage and then subvert our expectations.  Whether it is Solondz’s direct influence or just what each different advertising company happens to come up with when facing his material, the results in style are remarkably alike.

Illustrated movie posters have been a dying breed for the past quarter of a century. Most of Todd Solondz’s films have kept that art on the respirator starting with Daniel Clowes’ take on Happiness (1998) and then what Kathryn Rathke ran with in Palindromes (2004). Life During Wartime (2010) continues down that illustration path – it’s very appropriate since Life is the sequel to Solondz’s Happiness – but not before some photographed design comps were made. Before unveiling the illustrated version, I will take you through how it evolved starting with the international poster made for the film.

“Life During Wartime” (2010) International Poster

Beginning last April on Todd Solondz’s unofficial website, an international poster was released featuring Dylan Riley Snyder. After ten years of Happiness (1998), the character who Synder plays is Timmy now at fourteen. His four-year-old counterpart in the original was played by Justin Elvin whose main priority in the previous film was his Tamagotchi. For such a minor character to be the focus of the poster (“Either Scooby is the focus or forget it!”), it looks like Timmy is going to have a lot more to do in Life During Wartime. It’s not surprising what with his upcoming Bar Mitzvah and the prison release of his “SERIAL RAPIST PERVERT” father Bill (Cirian Hindes takes on the role made immortal by Dylan Baker).

For a movie that is going to deal with pedophilia among other taboos, setting Timmy in a lovely field of flowers is terrifically disturbing. Especially that glazed look in his eyes. However, the execution of the design work looks like a hurried first draft that needs more improvement. Next up, it appears that the designers back in the US thought so too.

“Life During Wartime” (2010) US Poster

Where the first design reeked of amateurism, this version of the poster is much better. The typography of the title and its “film by” credit has been lovingly modeled by hand. Each letter has a life all its own. As a whole, it works harmoniously in this carefully thought-out composition. Isn’t it cool the way that cursive line in the word Life goes from the L down to the D in During and then up to complete the e? Brother, am I ever glad that they turned the film’s credits into one single block of text.

The photograph of the poster has also been rightfully reworked.  Starting with Timmy’s head, I’d just as soon believe that the first poster shrunk it. Even if that was the way Mr. Snyder’s photo was taken, his head looked wrong. My philosophy of design is that a wrong picture is best so long as it looks right. The head in the improved version has not only been made larger to push the “child” look, it has been colour corrected to amplify the boy’s “Gingerness” — Cartman would cry at this sight. His glazed eyes have also been blown up a bit and the irises are lighter.

To pull our attention to the pinks and oranges up top, the tulip Timmy is holding has been changed from red to white. His clothes have been ironed over to an impossible smooth. The green grass and hills have been softened and altered anew to look more pastoral and dreamlike. The yellow flowers have been replaced with smaller ones that don’t crowd the bottom of the poster. Even the sky is new with fluffier, whiter clouds that merge evenly with even fewer hints of light cyan.

With all of these improvements made, the poster is still straining towards that punch of immediate excellence. Thank our lucky stars that the last poster was used as a template for a complete realization.

“Life During Wartime” (2010) Poster by Akiko Stehrenberger

Perfect! This final poster (and most certainly the last one) was created by the design company called Mojo, which elected its in-house talent Akiko Stehrenberger to illustrate it. Last year, Stehrenberger was responsible for these sweet movie posters of (500) Days of Summer and A Serious Man — it’s too bad they were past up. For Life During Wartime, she broke out her acrylic paints and rendered one of most vividly creepy movie posters ever conceived.

The clouds are purposefully designed into a unified shape, which all create a hollow effect around Timmy. The flowers are all gone leaving a clean, green field. Those glassy eyes along with the few perfectly symmetrical freckles (his breast pockets and knees are also symmetrical!) and the shiny plasticity of his hair makes the young boy look like the product of a doll-maker. The only real humanness left of Timmy can be found is in those lush, plushy, moist, pink lips — EEEUUWWW!

Stehrenberger subtlety zeroes in on “ICK!” factor here. His limbs and clothing are rendered with a gradating shade that highlight in the middle to emphasize the three-dimensional cylinder forms. Despite how straight this illustrated Timmy standing compared to the photograph, Stehrenberger still kept that single wrinkle on the right side of his shirt. Perhaps it’s part of a pederast’s subconscious view to grab the wrinkle like a handle and pull his shirt up and off. Again, eeeEEEHHHUUWWW!

Bravo, Stehrenberger! Bravo!

The original title of the film was supposed to be Forgiveness, a single word that would have married nicely to Happiness. The next question isn’t why the title has been changed because the characters like us all are living in a time of war – officially with Iraq and unofficially with North Korea. Judging from the trailer, the twist Solondz is making with Life During Wartime is that these Floridians and Americans are carrying on quite comfortably with the Iraqi War all the way over there. Then again, their very lives have already made these poor souls casualties.

A picture from the film released last September as part of its publicity campaign shows Helen (the Lara Flynn Boyle role taken on Ally Sheedy) in front of a giant photograph depicting a tank in a third world country. I strongly suspect that that is the closest any of the Happiness characters will get to a war zone, unless Solondz goes all Alex in Wonderland (dir. Paul Mazursky, 1970) and brings the soldiers and firebombs to America in a character’s fantasy-trip. It wouldn’t be the first time Solondz brought us such a marijuana-induced fantasy like he did in Storytelling (2001) complete with a burning at the stake and the redhead of Conan O’Brien.

The real question from the title change is can forgiveness be possible for these characters. It seems that would be the major thing Bill would want after his release into the world.

The cast of Life During Wartime (2010) from left to right:
Allison Janney (Trish Jordan), Michael Kenneth Williams (Allen), Shirley Henderson (Joy Jordan), Ciarán Hinds (Bill Maplewood), Ally Sheedy (Helen Jordan), Renée Taylor (Mona Jordan), Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens (Andy Kornbluth)

“Life During Wartime” (2010) Trailer

It’s the same trailer as the UK trailer from March 31st.

“Happiness” (1998)

“Happiness” (1998) Poster by Daniel Clowes

Here Daniel Clowes renders the characters in Happiness (1998) as caricatures full of anxiety, suspicion, and anger. Yet part of Clowes’ personal style is to downplay their physical features as human and exactly proportioned. The strained emotions on their faces threatens to blow their faces up like they were compressed of bolts and flesh. They counterattack the bold-faced title that hangs above them out of reach.

The cast of Happiness (1998) from left to right:
Cynthia Stevenson (Trish Maplewood), Camryn Manheim (Kristina), Jared Harris (Vlad), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Allen), Lara Flynn Boyle (Helen Jordan), Louise Lasser (Mona Jordan), Dylan Baker (Bill Maplewood), Jane Adams (Joy Jordan), Jon Lovitz (Andy Kornbluth), and Ben Gazzara (Lenny Jordan)

Daniel Clowes Talks About His Happiness Poster:

Running Time: 2 minutes.

On Todd Solondz’s News Website, it turns out that Bill (Dylan Baker) was originally supposed to die at the end of Happiness:

If you missed Christine Vachon and David Edelstein’s auto-job-ography Shooting To Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers To Make Movies That Matter, here is the text referring to an alternate sequence in Happiness, in a chapter on special effects. It reveals the ultimate fate of Dylan Baker’s character that was never shown in the finished version: “(In Happiness, the character Bill was supposed to) open a package and get blown up. We debated ways of doing it – from moronically inexpensive (cut from the character opening the box to someone next door doing dishes and hearing a BOOM! while the camera shakes) to the Schwarzeneggerian (blow up a whole house). We also thought about blowing up a miniature. In the end, we built a fake front door on the house, blew it off its hinges, and pumped out a lot of black smoke. It cost about two thousand dollars.”

“Happiness” (1998) Trailer

“Palindromes” (2004)

Kathryn Rathke produced this brilliant poster (voted (#9/10) Best of the Decade by Adrian Curry of MUBI) for the ad agency Supermarket Studio. Rathke has produced a number of illustrations for Alice in Wonderland in a style that is loosely based on the Wonderland drawings of Sir John Tenniel, but is all her own. This transition was easy for the classical fairy-tale book style Rathke uses for the poster of Palindromes (2004). Everything in this watercolour picture from the calm, staring lamb to the lush greenery of the forest is serene and enchanting… except for the large black woman dresses like a thirteen-year-old.

The central figure of poster demands speculation. This is one of the eight representations of Aviva (Aviva><avivA), the main character who at the age of thirteen is determined to mother a child immediately no matter what. The purpose of this is to demonstrate how issues involving pre-teen pregnancy as well as the abortion debate are universal among women no matter their race, sex, class and age is. Sharon Wilkins (plays the incarnation of Aviva as a black woman in her thirties and does a really terrific job at playing a teenage girl. At that point in the film, Aviva wanders into a comfortable compound for children deformed at birth. It is run by the scary-cheerful Mama Sunshine (Debra Monk) who has outfitted the kids with stereo equipment to form a Christian Rock band called “The Sunshine Singers”. Aviva’s explanation for her parents whereabouts to Mama Sunshine is shockingly funny.

“The Sunshine Singers”

You might want to watch the movie first before you see these song numbers!

Aviva is also played by Jennifer Jason Leigh who was forty at the time.

Aviva talks with Mark:

Oy vey, Mark…

“Palindromes” (2004) Outlined Poster by Kathryn Rathke

“Palindromes” (2004) Full-Colour Poster by Kathryn Rathke

What Ebert & Roeper Said About It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtW_stHLcUc

“Palindromes” (2004) Trailer

Why is it so hard to find a decent Palindromes trailer?

Coming Up Next: “Storytelling” (2002) and “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1996)!

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Milosci
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Milosci
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Design (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Milosci
A Short Film About Love (1988)
Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Krotki Film O Zabijaniu
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Design (39.4” x 27.8”)
Krotki Film O Zabijaniu
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (11” x 17”)
Dekalog
The Decalogue (1988-90)
Designer: Unknown

Other Kieslowski Films:

Design (27.8” x 39.4”)
Amator
Camera Buff (1979)
Designer: Andrzej Krauze

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Bez Konca
No End (1984)
Illustrator/Designer: Andrzej Pagowski

Illustration (27.8” x 39.4”)
Przypadek
Blind Chance (1987)
Illustrator/Designer: Unknown

Two weeks ago, Chicago-based film reviewer codenamed Quint (real name: Jim Fyfe) from Ain’t It Cool News challenged graphic designers and film fanatics alike to participate in a contest: Make An Insane Movie Poster of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Quint being a great admirer of the new Werner Herzog film from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) – not to mention Jaws (1975)! – has had mixed feelings toward what its distributors First Look Studios and Polsky Films have done in the way of movie posters. First, they made an edgy poster that the MPAA threw its gavel down hard on for showing its title character pointing a gun at someone. Harvey Keitel, the original 1992 Bad Lieutenant from the 1992 Abel Ferrara film, amongst thousands of other trigger-itchy characters can point their gun at us gazers, but according to the MPAA we can’t handle anyone inside the poster being promised some bullets. Finally, First Look settled on a poster that looks like your generic rogue cop-seeks-killer thriller complete with two famous giant heads suspended over a landscape of dread and action.

Just like these ones!

The Official Poster from First Look Studios:

Nneyyeh! It’s not baaaad… This poster just doesn’t convey the baadasssss quality of a movie made by Herzog and Cage, those lovable madcaps. What we need is an advertisement that looks gritty and dangerous with a dirty 70s vibe to it.

Like this!

The Naughty Poster! Never to be seen again!

CAAAGGGE! NOOOooooooo! What are you DOING? Are you crazy? Point that gun at me! Not at someone you’re actually with! I can’t cope seeing this unless I’m in a movie theatre and you THREE are actually MOVING! What did Irma P. Hall ever do to you! Point the gun at ME! Just don’t shoot–

With the blessings of First Look Studios along with the original source art, I jumped at the chance to make my own dark and crazed movie poster for a very bad lieutenant. Before starting I would have loved to have seen the entire film, but the Vancouver theatrical release is on November 20th and the poster is due on the 9th. So my only point of reference now is the film’s trailer.

“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” Trailer

My approach to the poster sans movie reminds me a little of what Ken Hartford chose to do according to Roger Ebert in his 1987 book Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook. Mr. Hartford, a cheerfully corrupt salesman of cheap exploitation movies like Assault of the Killer Bimbos (1988), made his business by producing eye-catching promotional posters and video covers without ever seeing the actual movies. He’d boast, “I sell movies by the pound!” Ebert described finding him in “…the Marché du Film, the marketplace… down at the very bottommost level, there are the nameless videos that are retailed from small booths in the basement of the Palais…” Like a vampire hiding from daylight, that is where you’ll find the most prosperous of Grindhouse movie-pushers.

Having watched the trailer, I had some ideas of what makes the Bad Lieutenant tick. What are the three things on this man’s mind? His back pain. Oh, that searing wear up and down his spin has got to be KILLING him! Which brings us to drugs. Hard drugs! Anything to stop the pain! Finally, those goddamn iguanas! Nobody but him can see them… But they’re there! They’re crawling all over the place! Just look! Where’s the gun!

The back pain is key. I decided on a X-ray layout. The spine was my focus. In fact, I often thought of the human spine as resembling the bone-makings of a snake — a reptilian tail. Well, we did descend from reptiles! Our bone structure has just evolved to cage itself with ribs. They must have been very insecure primordial descendants to want to imprison themselves safely. And by placing the skull of one of those friggin’ iguana heads on top of the spine, it looks like the creepy crawlie is slithering out of what was once human.

Two down, one to go. Cocaine! This wreck of a man needs it and more of it. He’ll die without it. He’ll die anyway. Quicker in fact! But it’s the only way to keep this killer and rapist functioning. Like feeding a fish, only by the nostrils. I had to turn this mad experiment of bone into a structure of white powder.

You didn’t ask, but here are some songs on the substance:

Cocaine by JJ Cale
Cocaine by Jackson Browne
Draggin’ The Line by Tommy James & The Shondells
Junkhead by Alice in Chains
Snowblind by Black Sabbath
White Lines by Grandmaster Flash
Powder by Yellowcard
What a Waster by The Libertines
Feel Good Hit of the Summer by Queens of the Stone Age
Morning Glory by Oasis
Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac
This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m on This Song
by System of a Down
Twist of Cain by Danzig
Night of the Living Baseheads by Public Enemy
Master of Puppets by Metallica
Save Me by Shinedown

None of the images supplied by the good folks at First Look Studio are of much use to me. I need me a particular face – a look on Nicolas Cage. Luckily I found just the right one at the celebrity entertainment site AceShowbiz.com. Just had to superimpose Cage’s anguished, exhausted face over the x-ray slide and make some of that delicious cocaine whiff up his nose. Now there’s a happy Bad Lieutenant!

Now my poster has been sent over to Quint with the header “His Soul’s Still Dancing” and my fingers are crossed! The contest and its prizes are not open to those living outside the US. Oh, well! It was fun designing the poster. It has kept my white-knuckled anticipation for Werner Herzog’s latest film to reach my movie theaters at bay. Seeing it next week will be reward enough.

Still, I would have loved to have won a Lena Herzog photography book signed by the man Werner Herzog.

No matter what anybody else does, this foreign import poster of director Abel Ferrara’s original Bad Lieutenant (1992) is one that is hard to beat. So is the movie – it’s a brutal masterpiece. I wonder if Nicolas Cage will be in a scene similar to what Keitel did. I know Cage and Herzog are crazy enough to do it.

“Bad Lieutenant” (1992) Trailer

“Assault of the Killer Bimbos” (1988) Trailer

How could I resist?

UPDATE: November 21, 2009

The time has come. The contestants have been tallied, fondled, and judged. And the winners are… I wasn’t amongst them. Check them out for yourselves.

Here is a collection of my favourites from the finalists:

Congratulations to those who were selected!

Why didn’t anybody else think of using the tagline “Don’t Forget Your Lucky Crack Pipe!”? It’s much better than “The Only Criminal He Can’t Catch Is Himself.” Technically, it looks like the corrupt cop already has. He just can’t let himself go.

The main font used on the poster is appropriately called Dirty Ego. The color is that of dried blood – something a Bad Lieutenant has to live with on a daily basis.

UPDATE: November 22, 2009

I just saw the film and thought it was awesome. I noticed over the main title sequence that the title of the movie was indeed “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”. I’m glad to feel so validated for using the “the” when it wasn’t required. Works much better as an introduction.

I don’t care what anyone else says, I love that whole “Port of Call New Orleans” bit.

Only eleven more days left…

“Normal criminals usually have logical motives, but the Joker’s insane schemes make sense to him alone.”
—Batman in The Laughing Fish by Paul Dini.

FUN FACT:

The Joker was inspired by Gwynplaine, the title character with the deformed grin, in The Man Who Laughs, who was played by Conrad Veidt.

Smile everyone!

The typographer in me is doing jumping-jacks over this Bell-font teaser poster for Oliver Stone’s W. I hope to see them lined up across the marquee walls soon. The Bushisms are also a great send up of the commander in thief.

Do you think this type of all-type movie advertisement sheet could set a trend for future movie posters? No pictures, but with more font-laced words dedicated to more than just the film’s title and a tag line.

Extra

You can download the font regularly used for movie poster credits here.

Distributed by QED International and Lionsgate Films, Oliver Stone’s W. is starring Josh Brolin – George W. Bush (In the Valley of Elah, 2007), Elizabeth Banks – Laura Bush (Catch Me If You Can, 2002), James Cromwell – George H.W. Bush (The General’s Daughter, 1999), Ellen Burstyn – Barbara Bush (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974), Thandie Newton – Condoleezza Rice (Flirting, 1991), Jeffrey Wright – Colin Powell (Syriana, 2005), Scott Glenn – Donald Rumsfeld (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991), Toby Jones – Karl Rove (Nightwatching, 2007) Ioan Gruffud – Tony Blair (Black Hawk Down, 2001), and Richard Dreyfuss – Dick Cheney (Jaws, 1975) will be released this October.