NYT: Alternative Movie Posters: Fan Art We Love

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/movies/alternative-movie-posters-fan-art-we-love.html

By ROBERT ITO
SEPT. 22, 2017

A lot of fan art can be pretty lackluster. Consider your typical “Game of Thrones”-inspired noodlings, or the fiction that wistfully imagines romantic interludes between Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Sure, there are occasional gems, but most are more ode than art.

Perhaps the single form of fan art that consistently bucks the trend is the alternative movie poster. Created by artists outside Hollywood, these hand-drawn beauties are not only better than most fan art, they’re often better than the real thing.

To be fair, most official posters today aren’t made to be beautiful or even art — they’re made to sell tickets. In the ’90s, studios figured the best way to do that was to skip hand-painted posters in favor of gigantic photos of stars’ heads. The creators of alternative movie posters, however, don’t care about big heads or bottom lines. They’re concerned, often obsessively so, with reminding us just why we love these films so much.

The result: posters that are more treasured — and often considerably more expensive — than the official one-sheets. As soon as Mondo, the Austin, Tex., company most often credited with the explosion of alternative versions, puts a print on sale, an entire run can be gone in seconds; many fetch hundreds and even thousands of dollars on eBay. “I can’t think of another art movement where the unofficial stuff is worth more than the official stuff,” said Matthew Chojnacki, author of two books on the subject. “It’s like someone doing a knockoff of Keith Haring, and that becoming more popular than the original.”

Many creators have become so popular that they’re also working for studios, on everything from variant posters (Tracie Ching’s prints for “The Jungle Book”) to Blu-ray covers (Marie Bergeron’s illustrations for Takeshi Kitano films). Last year, the illustrator Kyle Lambert created the official “Stranger Things” poster, his homage to classic hand-painted ones of the 1980s.

Today, there are galleries and digital archives (Repostered.com and AlternativeMoviePosters.com) devoted to the form. And then there are the books, like the “Crazy 4 Cult: Cult Movie Art” series, Mr. Chojnacki’s “Alternative Movie Posters” (being published in French by Akileos in October) and, this month, “The Art of Mondo,” a lavishly illustrated history of the company.

The artists are an eclectic and talented bunch. Here are seven to watch....

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This didn't turn out great color-wise - too blue & enhanced fuzziness - but I wanted to nix the odious cancer stick (which technically turned out OK(ish))





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