Poster Collecting for Fun and Prophecy

“Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.”

Daniel J. Boorstin.

I love movie posters. I’ve been collecting them since I won a Star Wars poster from a guy in a Darth Vader suit back in 1977 for correctly answering a trivia question about our solar system at the Surf Theater in Swampscott, Massachusetts.

The poster was taller than me at the time. When asked if I wanted Vader to sign the poster, I replied with the totality of my second grade wisdom that it would ruin the value of the poster. I sold it last year (unsigned) for $500.00.

That’s a lot of money for what is essentially a marketing tool, though by no means a record price, or even the most amount of money anyone ever paid me for a movie poster*. So why do people spend that kind of money (and a whole lot more) on studio produced advertisements?



Well for one thing, it’s artwork. That Star Wars poster is a mass-produced, printed lithograph of a Drew Struzan painting. But even posters that feature photographs rather than illustrated images rely on an artistic layout and iconic images that one can immediately connect with the film that they represent. Well at least until the 1990’s when imagination was replaced by big heads –literally.

Most star vehicles (film projects starring a single celebrity in a heroic role) and buddy pictures (films packaging two celebrity actors) are marketed with the actor(s) name at the top above a giant photo of their head, and the title of the film near the bottom, possibly with another name or two in much smaller type font immediately above the title treatment. Luckily, most of these films are terrible, and the lack of imagination utilized for the poster serves as a warning of the lack of imagination to be found in the movie, itself.

That is almost never true of foreign movie posters.

While the studios have tightened their grip on the art departments here in the states, the foreign licensors for these films have been given a wider berth for creativity. The idea is that the American sensibility is not the world sensibility and foreign distributors must be given the opportunity to market to their own audiences. The results are everything from wondrous to enchanting to audacious. French and Italian movie posters are often over-sized and feature pivotal scenes as a marketing ploy to draw interested audiences. German and Japanese posters are smaller and are not afraid to sport nudity, gore or profanity. Turkish and Indian posters are often illustrated, and the house look of each country has a distinctly comic book feel: Jack Kirby for the Turks, and Mad Magazine for the Hindus.

Polish and Czech posters have become well known for not featuring any images directly associated with the films. They are surreal, expressionist masterpieces rendered anonymously by world-class painters, and as a result are highly sought by cinema collectors.

But to be fair, none of these countries has to contend with the MPAA.

The Motion Picture Association of America doesn’t only assign the rating certification (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17), it also approves all advertising materials. On occasion when a studio exhibits a billboard for a film with unapproved imagery, there has been heavy reprimand and monetary fines. That might not seem like such a big deal, but a violation of the terms and services of the MPAA can lead to a retraction of certification. Almost no major metropolitan newspaper will run an ad for film without an MPAA rating certification. No ads means no audience. No audience means no revenue. No revenue means no studio. Get the picture?

Among the images not allowed on American movie posters are the following:
No nudity. Only 40% of the female breast may be exposed, and from the top only –under no circumstance may the nipples show. No profanity. No feces. No excessive gore. No weapons pointed at the viewer. No weapons pointed at a subject within the poster. No more than two weapons handled by individuals featured on the poster. No religiously offensive imagery. And of course, nothing that has not been mentioned but to which one or more MPAA members objects.

No wonder our posters suck.

There have been a handful of incredibly creative poster designs, but they are generally used as teaser posters, which are replaced by the giant heads by the time the films open. And to defend the decisions of the studios and the MPAA, it must be stated that films that don’t adhere to these guidelines aren’t very successful. The truth of the matter is that Americans are bombarded with imagery, and unless would-be audiences are exposed to the most overt images, they probably won’t even register -especially the audiences for Nicholas Cage, John Travolta or Bruce Willis movies. Of course most films that do adhere to these guidelines also fail. So given those odds, it would be nice if the sales and marketing guys would ease-up on the art department.

But the second, and probably more important reason that people collect movie posters is that they give a concrete, ownable and displayable connection to a film memory. A poster in this instance is a single purpose, all encompassing representative of the emotions the film sparked in the viewer. So when the poster doesn’t covey the depth or core of the film, it is doing a great disservice to the audience. Foreign art departments understand the psychological necessities of iconic imagery, while American ad agencies confuse expense with value.

“What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.” – Abraham Lincoln

And now for a shameless plug: Come check out the opening reception for the Art of Pinky Violence poster exhibition I'm guest curating this Saturday evening at 8PM at Hyaena Gallery in Burbank.

*In 2001 I sold a mint condition, linen-backed Buster Keaton poster for the 1923 short subject film, The Goat, for $20,000.00. A few years prior, Southeby’s auctioned an original Boris Karloff Mummy poster for $453,500.00. That record stood until the original German poster for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis sold for $690,000.00.