Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - S10E04 - Escape Or Die Frying: The Art Of The Movie Poster

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

This week, we look at the most famous movie posters of all time. The movie poster is the beginning of the story - often the first piece of marketing created for a new film. We’ll look at how posters are designed and we’ll analyze how the best posters of all time influenced ticket buyers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than no nose. You're not you when you're hungry. You're a good hand with all teeth. You're under the influence of Terry O'Reilly. One day in 1949, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was being interviewed for a newspaper article. The editor asked Hoover to name the 10 most dangerous criminals the FBI was hunting.

Hoover told him, and an article was later published listing the FBI's top 10 most wanted list. It attracted enormous attention, and leads from the public began pouring in. Hoover was surprised at how many successful leads the article generated. So on March 14, 1950, the FBI formally launched its Ten Most Wanted program. The Bureau began by creating Most Wanted posters. These posters showed photographs of the fugitives, along with information detailing all distinguishing marks,

the crimes they were wanted for, and where they were last seen. For decades, the posters were put up in post offices, chosen because they were the high-traffic areas of every town in the country. In the 70 years since the Most Wanted posters were first issued, there have been over 520 fugitives listed. The very first criminal to have his mug shot on a poster was Thomas James Holden. He began his career with robbery,

then graduated to murder. The FBI put out his Most Wanted poster, and Holden was arrested 13 months later after the Bureau received a tip from the public. The first woman

on a Wanted poster was a kidnapper named Ruth Eisman Shire. She was arrested soon after her face appeared on the poster. To date, there have only been

10 women on the FBI's Most Wanted list. James Earl Ray has the distinction of being on FBI posters two times. The first was when he was sought for the assassination of Martin Luther King. Ray was captured two months later when a Heathrow Airport customs agent recognized his face from the Most Wanted poster. The second time was when he escaped from the Tennessee penitentiary in 1977.

The ink on the poster was still wet when he was recaptured three days later. Over 490 Most Wanted fugitives have been apprehended by the FBI, and one-third of them were captured thanks to tips from the public. The FBI still creates Most Wanted posters today, translates them into foreign languages, and puts fugitive faces on billboards. You can view the current top 10 Most Wanted list on the FBI's website. There's even an app.

Because getting the public's attention is job one. The art of using posters to attract attention has a long history in the world of marketing, and in particular, the world of movie marketing. All motion picture marketing begins with the poster. Creating iconic movie posters is a tricky balancing act, as they must please the director, the producers, the movie studio, and demanding movie stars. But long before J. Edgar Hoover discovered the power of posters, Hollywood already knew they could capture the public's attention.

You're under the influence. Creating an effective movie poster is no easy feat. It has to express the very essence of the film in one single image. It has to highlight what makes the film unique. It has to capture not just attention, but the imagination. It has to be a poster that stands out in a sea of movie posters. The design has to make the director happy, the producer happy, and the movie studio happy.

Besides all of those demands, the movie poster must also feature all the wording, including the movie title, the movie tagline, a critic's review line, the movie distribution company, the movie studio, the actor's name, the director's name, the screenwriters, the producers, the casting director, the director of photography, the movie studio, the actor's name, the director's name, the screenwriters, the producers, the casting director, the director of photography, the music composer, the movie rating, etc. And it all has to be expressed with a single creative idea delivered on time. Welcome to the difficult world of advertising. The very first movie poster

was created, not in America, but in France in 1895, 15 years before the first movie rolled out of Hollywood. It was for a film called La Rousseur à Rosé, done by the Lumière brothers. It was a 49 film called La Rousseur à Rosé, done by the Lumière brothers. It was a 49-second movie, making it the first fictional film ever made and the first comedy,

which, by the way, you can still find on YouTube. The poster showed an audience in a theater laughing at an actual scene from the film, a very strategic decision on behalf of the filmmakers. The movie was projected onto a white sheet hung in the basement of a cafe. The Lumiere brothers set out 100 chairs, but the poster only attracted 30 people. The press chose to ignore it.

Shocking, considering how historic that moment was. Early movie posters did not contain much wording, as the literacy rate was low in the early 1900s. And movie studios didn't list the names of actors on early posters for fear the performers would get too popular and demand more money. But by the Charlie Chaplin era of the 1920s, studios realized an audience would actually pay to see their favorite actors. So stars were featured on posters from that point on.

Movie posters are either designed by the in-house marketing department of big movie studios or by independent design firms. Designers are expected to develop 40 to 50 poster ideas for a single movie before one direction is ultimately chosen. Then it goes through months of tweaks and input from all the various stakeholders. It's design by committee, which is never ideal, but a lot is riding on a movie poster. Once the basic idea is agreed upon, the poster designer works with a copywriter to come up with the best possible tagline,

then renders and arranges all the mandatory elements that must exist within the poster's borders. There are a lot of mandatory elements. All the credits at the bottom of a movie poster are referred to as the billing block. The billing block can eat up a lot of valuable real estate on a poster. You may think it's just the usual credits, but the billing block is the result of detailed legal agreements and intense contract negotiations. The billing block has increased a lot over the years. The New York Times noted the original Ocean's Eleven movie poster from 1960

only listed three non-cast members. The remake in 2001 had, coincidentally, 11. The studio marketing department wants an uncluttered poster, but the various craft unions want their members prominently credited. The Directors Guild and the Writers Guild require their members' names to be at least 15% of the size of the main movie title. Then, there are the stars and their

agents. There is a massive tug-of-war when it comes to which name comes first on the poster. Talent agents negotiate hard to get their client's name above the title on the poster, which is to say, before the title. This signifies not only an actor's stature,

but also showcases the star's ability to open a picture, as they say. In other words, the actor's very name will sell tickets. Therefore, putting that name above the movie title is a strategic marketing decision. Big stars like Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts or Tom Hanks automatically go above the title. But lesser stars have to bargain for that and sometimes the deals fall through completely

over this one single negotiation. But what happens when two megastars are competing for the first above-the-title poster position? That problem came to a head during the 1970s disaster movie Towering Inferno. The film had a big cast of stars, to a head during the 1970s disaster movie Towering Inferno. The film had a big cast of stars, but the top two were Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. McQueen didn't want Newman to get first billing and also demanded they both have exactly the same amount of lines in the movie.

So a precedent-setting solution was struck. While Steve McQueen's name would be first above the title, Newman used a little jujitsu. His name would be second, but positioned slightly higher than McQueen's on the poster. That staggered compromise is still used to this

day. If it's an ensemble cast of big names, like in the movie The Big Chill, the names will be listed in an alphabetical block. The last name in a long list is a preferred place to be, believe it or not, as the I usually goes

there first. In that movie, Jo Beth Williams won the coveted spot. When the movie Outrageous Fortune came out in 1987, stars Shelley Long and Bette Midler both demanded top billing. So a Solomon-like compromise was struck. Half the marketing posters would list Long first,

half would list Midler, which probably doubled the printing cost. When John Grisham's book The Firm was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman, the poster said, Tom Cruise on line 1, a film by Sidney Pollack on line 2, followed by The Firm on line 3. But Gene Hackman's name was nowhere to be found. Surprising, considering Hackman had just won an Oscar for his performance in Unforgiven. But Cruise has a stipulation in his contract that his name must always be first above the title.

As did Hackman. So Hackman made the unusual move of removing his name from the poster altogether. Hard to say whether Hackman was acquiescing to Cruise, or if he was punishing the producers by not allowing them to use his name to sell tickets. And we'll be right back. New year, new me. Season is here here and honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year.

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You're listening to Season 10 of Under the Influence. If you're enjoying this episode, you might also like For Your Consideration, the Hollywood Oscar campaigns the public never sees. Season 4, Episode 8. You'll find it in our archives wherever you download your pods. There have been some iconic movie posters designed over the years that have helped sell a lot of tickets. When the movie Alien was first discussed, the writer

pitched it as Jaws in Space. He said he always had a problem with horror movies because people could just run away from the monster. But in a spaceship, everybody's trapped. The studio didn't know how to sell the movie, so the studio's

chief hired Stephen Frankfurt, an ex-New York advertising agency creative director. Frankfurt knew it was a difficult movie to sell. He told the studio head he wouldn't accept a dime to work on the poster, but if they were to buy one of his ideas, he wanted $100,000. Frankfurt came back with a poster showing an eerie alien egg hatching with green gas escaping from it

against an ominous black background. The tagline said, In space, no one can hear you scream. The studio chief slid a check for $100,000 across the desk to Frankfurt. Taglines are a big part of a movie poster. They carry as much communication weight as the main image.

The sequel to Jaws wasn't great, but the tagline was. It said, Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Hitchcock's Psycho poster didn't so much have a tagline as a warning.

It said, No one, but no one, will be admitted to the theater after the start of each performance. For the movie Platoon, the line summed up the emotional crux of the story. It said,

The first casualty of war is innocence. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre poster posed a question that drew horror fans in. It asked, who will survive and what will be left of them? And the hilarious poster for Chicken Run showed a freaked out chicken holding a frying pan. The tagline? Escape or die frying. One of the most influential poster designers of all time was Bill Gold.

He created posters for Deliverance, Bonnie and Clyde, Dirty Harry, A Clockwork Orange, and Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, to name but a few from his eight-decade career. One of his most iconic was for The Exorcist. Standing outside the McNeil house at night, lit hauntingly by a streetlight, summed up the terrifying enormity of the task before him, which was the heart of the story. Gold also created the famous poster for the classic film Casablanca. Warner Brothers hired Gold right out of school. Casablanca was his first assignment. He was only 21 years old at the time.

The classic poster for The Graduate captures the most notorious seduction in movie history. It shows Mrs. Robinson, a.k.a. actress Anne Bancroft, peeling nylons off her seductive leg as a young Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, looks on. Everyone assumed that was Bancroft's leg, but 46 years later, it was revealed the leg actually belonged to actress Linda Gray of Dallas TV fame. She was paid $35 for the shot.

The iconic poster for Pulp Fiction showed a 10-cent Pulp Fiction paperback book cover, complete with wrinkles and dog-eared corners, framing star Uma Thurman. The poster was retro-cool, perfectly capturing Tarantino's fresh and influential film. The long list of Pulp Fiction stars

is contained in a block on the left side of the poster, with Bruce Willis holding the prized last spot. The poster for the 1927 silent film

Metropolis is a classic piece of design. Not only did the film pioneer the modern sci-fi genre, the poster uses a stunning Art Deco futurism. It is considered one of the most admired achievements in design to this day. An original poster from 1927 recently sold for $1.2 million. The poster for Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo is considered one of the best of all time.

Designed by the famous Saul Bass, he used bright orange and a spirograph design to capture the feeling of falling into madness. The poster for the Social Network is highly regarded by movie poster designers. It was a difficult movie to sell. A poster showing a computer screen would not have been very compelling. On top of that, there was only one photo approved for the poster campaign, that of lead actor Jesse Eisenberg's face.

So the designer placed the movie's terrific tagline over Eisenberg's face in bold type. It said, you don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. It perfectly expressed the drama of the story. Some movie posters are better than the movie, like the cult classic Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. The movie was forgettable 50s schlock,

but the poster was iconic, showing a giant woman sporting an equally giant decolletage and a very short skirt while she terrorizes a major highway. Some posters make a statement about the statement. The People vs. Larry Flint was a movie about censorship. The poster showed star Woody Harrelson wearing a Stars and Stripes loincloth striking a crucifixion pose

against a woman's pelvic area. Ironically, the poster was censored. The revised design was just a close-up of Harrelson's face with the U.S. flag across his mouth. Drew Struzan is also one of the great movie poster designers. He has done Back to the Future,

Indiana Jones, E.T., Blade Runner, and George Lucas' favorite poster for Star Wars, to name a few. Steven Spielberg says he almost had to live up to the posters Struzan designed for his movies, because they are that good. Another of Struzan's famous posters was for the remake of The Thing. He got a panic call from the studio one day saying they needed a poster for the horror film done overnight.

Struzan asked to see the movie or at least read the script, but the studio said there was no time. They asked him if he was familiar with the original film from the 50s. He said, sort of, and they said, good, that's the brief. Struzan conceived, painted, and delivered it in under 24 hours. As a matter of fact, when it was put under glass to be photographed, the paint stuck to the glass because it was still wet. In spite of that mad rush, the poster is considered a classic.

New year, new me. Season is here, and honestly honestly we're already over it enter felix the healthcare company helping canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year weight loss is more than just diet and exercise it can be about tackling genetics hormones metabolism felix gets it they connect you with licensed healthcare practitioners online who'll create a personalized treatment plan that pairs your healthy lifestyle with a little help and a little extra support. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work

with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Actor Michael J. Fox says the movie poster is the first note of the piece. It is the beginning of the story. Clint Eastwood has said he's not sure what it is that first causes a person to become interested in a film. It might be the cast, it might be the title, or it just might be the poster.

And there is one poster that almost all designers point to as the best of all time. There is a creature alive today who has survived millions of years of evolution without change, without passion, and without logic. It lives to kill. A mindless eating machine. It will attack and devour anything.

It is as if God created the devil and gave him Jaws. That famous trailer for Jaws was voiced by Canadian Percy Rodriguez, by the way. But before it was a movie, it was a book. Back in the early 70s, Roger Castell was an art director working for paperback company Bantam Publishing. One day, his boss handed him a hardcover copy of Jaws and told him it was going to be a bestseller. The black cover showed a woman swimming with a shark under her.

But Bantam wanted more drama for the paperback. Castell did up a rough sketch. His boss liked it, instructing Castell to make the shark larger and more realistic. So Castell went down to the American Museum of Natural History and took photos of stuffed sharks. Later, when he was sketching an ad for Good Housekeeping, he had the model stay a little longer and asked her to lay across two stools to simulate swimming.

Castell did an oil painting of the cover art. It was much more dramatic than the hardcover. It showed a naked swimmer in cool blue water, with the great white shark surging underneath her, mouth open, rows of jagged teeth glistening. And as a subtle design element, the J of the Blood Red Jaws title resembled a fishing hook. The book cover was so dramatic,

it was banned in Boston and St. Petersburg, Florida. Castell thought he might lose his job, but Bantam was thrilled with the publicity. The cover helped sell over 6 million copies of Peter Benchley's book within one year. At that time, Bantam allowed Spielberg to use the cover art as a movie poster free of charge.

The only alteration was to strategically position some foamy bubbles around the swimmer's breasts. The movie became the first $100 million summer blockbuster. The movie poster became the most copied, plagiarized, parodied, and most honored of all time. If the Metropolis poster was worth $1.2 million, what do you think the original Jaws painting would be worth? The answer is, nobody knows.

Universal toured the 20 by 30 inch painting around the country. Then it disappeared mysteriously one day. Castell suspects it was either stolen by a fan or it secretly resides on the wall of a movie executive somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. Jaws is continuously shown on TV and is one of the most streamed movies to this day. But the original poster

artwork was never seen again. The design of a movie poster is a masterful juggling act. It has to contain a single image that must express the essence of a two-hour film. And it has to keep

the director, the studio, the stars, and a bevy of agents happy. The best of the best are works of art. But remember that movie posters are designed as marketing. They are meant to sell and sell hard.

They must say so much and so little. The true measure of a movie poster is to leave you wanting more. When Spielberg said he feels like he has to live up to the creativity of his movie posters, you can understand his reverence for the art. Spielberg has also said that painted posters are becoming a lost art. He feels the new posters are digitally perfect, but they don't go after your imagination.

They go after your wallet. And with the unstoppable advance of technology, it may mean the end of the paper poster. But posters, digital or otherwise, will always have a place in the world of motion pictures.

Just as J. Edgar Hoover discovered way back in the 50s, a powerful poster can be very arresting when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. music music music music This episode was recorded in the Tearstream Mobile Recording Studio.

Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Keith Ullman. Theme music by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Research, Allison Pinches. See you next week. Warning. This program contains mature audio, some language and descriptions of strong posters,

only suitable for all listeners. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution will be investigated by inter... In case nobody's told you, weight loss goes beyond the old just eat less and move more narrative. And that's where Felix comes in. Felix is redefining weight loss for Canadians with a smarter, more personalized approach to help you crush your health goals this year.

Losing weight is about more than diet and exercise. It can also be about our genetics, hormones, metabolism. connects you with online licensed healthcare practitioners who understand that everybody is different and can pair your healthy lifestyle with the right support to reach your goals. Start your visit today at felix.ca. That's F-E-L-I-X dot C-A. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Pull. Whatever that is.