ANDREA ALVIN DISCUSSES JOHN ALVIN'S CAREER

AND SOME TRULY ICONIC POSTERS

AIM: Thanks, Andrea, for taking time out to tell John's fans a bit more about your experiences and your memories of the work you did together, and for passing on some of his stories!  As you know, we have that wonderful Blade Runner art in the gallery now.  There's such a great collection of images surrounding me I hardly know where to start!

How did John wind up with the Blazing Saddles poster, the one that pretty much started it all, or at least made him a hot property almost overnight…and the Young Frankenstein poster, what do you remember about working on that?

AA: John had just completed a couple of play posters with a freelance graphic designer in Los Angeles. The designer was working on a title segment for a Mel Brooks film called Blazing Saddles and saw that Brooks had been unhappy with the poster concepts that were presented to him by the studio. He asked John if he would like to take a chance and make a poster for the film. There was nothing to lose, so John said yes. Over the span of about a week, they came up with a concept and John did a finished painting. The poster was filled with hidden, and not so hidden, jokes. There were Gucci saddle bags, a jet plane flying in the clouds, Mel Brooks' head as an Indian on a Nickel that read, "Hi I'm Mel, Trust Me." Hebrew letters that read "Kosher for Passover" on the Indian headdress. They turned it in and Brooks loved it. Originally there was a black Cadillac convertible,  the one that Count Basie arrives in, at the bottom of the poster.  Brooks thought it was "too funereal" so the clouds were painted, cut out,  and pasted on top. Remember, this is the era before digital. The next morning, a friend called and said come down to Hollywood and see what's happening! We drove down, and on every flat surface, they had posted the Blazing Saddles poster. Many of them were torn because people were trying to take them off the walls. That was the beginning of nearly 35 years of non stop work. 

Young Frankenstein followed very shortly afterward. That was not so quick and easy. There were many comps and paintings before the final art. Instead of the wild posting of Blazing Saddles, the Young Frankenstein poster was painted on the side of the Playboy Building on Sunset Strip becoming the world's largest billboard at the time. Unfortunately we have none of the comprehensive art or the final painting that was done for the film. These things had a way of disappearing.

AIM: He worked on some great art for Star Wars, right?  How did he get the gig for the Concert Poster, which is now one of the most collectible of all Star Wars posters?

AA: Just before Star Wars was released, we were at a screening at Twentieth Century Fox. I believe it was for The Turning Point, a big release for them. It was a Herbert Ross movie starring Anne Bankroft, Shirley MacLaine and Mikhial Baryshnikov. Some of the Fox  marketing people said, we have this movie that we don't know what to do with. It's a space opera(as in horse opera or western) called Star Wars. Can you please work on it for us? John turned it down becauseThe Turning Point was his top priority. The success of Star Wars was a surprise to everyone there. Once John saw it, he was kicking himself because he became an immediate fan. The concert poster was a job that came through his agent. It was for a concert to be held at the Hollywood Bowl conducted by John Wiliams. For reasons I don't really know, the concert never happened. They had printed a small run of posters and when the concert was cancelled, Lucasfilm confiscated the posters. Only a few of the samples were left in circulation. I believe because it was such a great image, and the scarcity of printed posters, it has become highly prized as a collectible.

AIM: The E.T. poster won tons of accolades and the Saturn Award etc., and is considered one of the best and most recognizable.  How did that image come together?  And he also did several other images, including the advance, right?  John told me he got to go on set and see the Extra Terrestrial when it was super top secret.  Do you remember all that?  

AA: The two fingers touching a la "The Creation of Adam" Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel painting, was Steven Spielberg's idea. John had to figure out how to make it work. He placed the hands in outer space floating above the Earth. He needed reference material on ET's hand, so he was allowed to go to the studio and photograph the prop arm and hand. He came home very disappointed because it was a very floppy rubber hand. I have the polaroids he took, and they will be in John's book. He had to go the the prop designer for the schematic drawings of the arm to get the proper detail. Elliott's hand was modeled by our daughter Farah as she was about Elliott's age at the time. No matter how famous she becomes as a singer and actress, she will always have the notoriety of having her hand on that famously iconic poster. 

Before the film was shot, he did a series of paintings that were used as a multi page fold-out ad in the trades. They portrayed a sequence of the space ship coming through the clouds and the boy watching it. I was told that the colors and atmosphere of the clouds as John painted it influenced Spielberg's lighting of the scene in the film. True? I hope so. The Advance or teaser poster of the ship coming through the clouds was also inspired by those paintings.

Another  interesting fact is that in 1990, we bought a house in the northern foothills of Los Angeles called Porter Ranch. We were told ET had been filmed there, but not exactly where. We rented the film and were tickled to find that the Halloween sequence took place on the corner of our block, and when the brother first takes off on his bike, he rides down our street. 

AIM: I remember John telling me a story about being in a meeting with the production team and Ridley Scott was there.  The team wanted a very different look for the poster,  but when John described having the architecture playing essentially another character in the poster, Ridley Scott loved the idea and let him run with it.  Can you tell us anything else about how that image came together?

AA: You are correct. After seeing the film, John thought the architecture was an important element in the film. He felt it was like another character.  Also Harrison Ford had become a very important movie star by the time the movie was released, and it became very important to feature him. It was unusual to show him tired, gritty and sweaty... not the usual star portrait. As you must realize, in order to paint a portrait of an actor, the artist needs a picture for reference. For some reason, they did not have still photos from the production. John had to paint Harrison Ford from a frame of film. He mounted it in a photographer's loup and held it up to the light. Not an ideal situation. The night before it was due, we both knew something about Ford's face was "off." We had both been looking at it so long, that we could not see it clearly any more. John called another artist friend to come over and look at it with us. He noticed that one of Ford's eyes was not in the right place. That was the answer. John stayed up late into the night and repainted it.  

AIM: The Beauty and the Beast art is just one of many images he did for Disney, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin being a few others.  When did you get wind of the expression "Alvin-izing"--that was coined by someone at Disney, yes?  How did John feel about that? 

AA: When Disney was about to release Beauty and the Beast, they realized that they had more than a children's audience for their movies. They decided to do two posters for their films, one "Adult" and one "Juvenile." John was chosen for the Adult campaigns. He started working on the film before the characters had been finalized. He did several comps where the characters kept changing. The decision was to do the final poster with Beauty dancing with the Beast and bathing them in a misty, etherial light. Thus, disguising the fact that the character models were not fully developed. The effect was so beautiful and unique, that Fred Tio, head of marketing at the time coined it "Alvinizing." They could refer to that for an effect that they wanted in future paintings. John loved it.

AIM: Part of that Alvin-izing is the mist, stars, smoke, light, etc. that John used in his work. Explain what he was doing with light and where that style came from--also I remember he never let anyone see him work.  I assume you did every day.  Any tips for artists you can glean from having that opportunity?

AA: John spent his young adult years in Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula in California. It's a woodsy place near the ocean, and very foggy and misty. I think that living with that kind of light was one influence. He was also very intrigued by the lighting in some of Spielberg's movies. He called it "heavy light." An example is the light peeking under the doorway in Close Encounters. John became weary of the hard edge airbrush painting of the 70's where intricate and painstaking friskets or masks had to be cut for every detail. He began analyzing the work and figuring out the fewest masks he could make to create the art.  He liked to paint freehand with the airbrush, layering color transparently as a watercolorist would do. He was able to attain a luminosity in the work that was rich and delicate and unlike most airbrush artists. Often times he would bring light out of dark which also contributed to the unique quality of his work. He would then come in with Prismacolor pencils for the small details. 

AIM: Phantom of the Paradise is one movie where the poster was better than the movie.  Did you and John have a few you felt that way about that you can remember? 

AA: There have been several cases where the poster was more successful than the movie. Phantom of the Paradise, one of Brian DePalma's early films,  has become a cult classic although many people don't know about it. The poster was chosen by the Smithsonian Museum as one of the great posters of the 20th century.  One of my favorite portraits that John did is of Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child. He really captured the characters essence and it literally jumps out of the poster. The movie was not a financial success. Quest for Camelot was Warner Bros' foray into animation in 1998. John and I worked on this one together. The first series of comps and finished art, had a mature concept and execution. They then began to skew the film and the marketing concepts to a younger audience and wanted a "storybook" feel to the art. John painted many beautiful comps and at least four pieces of finished art for the project. One of the earlier paintings of an eagle flying toward us carrying a sword in his beak looks suspiciously like one of the later Harry Potter one sheets. 

There are a couple of films where the poster was infamous and created quite a controversy. Ironweed starred Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson as derelict characters. Rather than show these big stars in an unattractive light, they chose to obscure their faces. The poster shows the two kissing, but their faces are obscured by their hats. It was quite a bold departure for a film with such heavyweight stars. Another was for the Blake Edwards comedy 10. The poster shows a small Dudley Moor swinging on a chain around the neck of a woman's torso. We do not see her head. This was 1979 and the Women's Movement created an uproar around the poster. They felt that because she had no face or identity, and we only see her from neck to hips, that it objectified  the woman's body in the poster. Of course, that was basically what the film is about...a middle aged man willing to throw his life away on his idea of the perfect woman.

AIM: Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas all have collections of John's work.  What do you think it is that attracted filmmakers to have his work as art in their homes? 

AA: I think John had the unique talent for capturing the essence of a film in a still painting. His work had an emotional quality not often found in illustration, especially in movie posters. I think this is what sets his work apart from the other well known poster artists.

AIM: I know later in his career John did art that was inspired by classic films like Gone With the Wind and My Fair Lady.  He seemed to love Audrey Hepburn.  Based on his huge collection of Star Wars figures, I know he loved all those films.  I know he played movies whenever he worked.  What were some of HIS favorites? 

AA: I have paintings John did as a young teenager. He would talk about going to the movies with his family and coming home and painting from his imagination. He was inspired at that time by the big spectacles like The Vikings, Ben Hur and Spartacus. When we met in the late 60's, we were both fans of Cary Grant. He liked that romanic thriller genre that Stanley Donen did so well like Charade and Arabesque. Star Wars was huge in our house, also The Godfather, Alien and more recently Lord of the Rings.  We would often watch broad comedies while we worked. We knew them well and they were easy to listen to and watch as we needed. Caddyshack, Vacation, Groundhog Day were some of the usual fare. I can still quote much of the dialogue.

AIM: You are currently writing a book on John's life as a cinema artist, showing his work and career in pictures and stories.  When is that coming out and what do you have in store for us there?

AA: The book is being published by the renowned Titan Press in London. It will focus on the process of creating a movie poster and will show everything from rough sketches, comps to finished art. Because John did so many posters, we will only be able to include 40-50 films. Included are some films that he never went to finish on, such as Jurassic Park, to show how a huge amount of time and work can go into a project and then have the filmmaker change his mind about the direction of the marketing campaign. We will have comments and remembrances form the studio side and from John's side, about the process of working on the film. Since John is not here, we will use interviews when possible and I will fill in what I remember. In cases where I wasn't around for the creation, I will interview people who worked with John on the project. I am hoping to get the participation of various directors as well. The book is slated to debut at San Diego Comicon in July 2012. 

AIM: That sounds great!  I’m really looking forward to seeing it!  Thanks again for telling us a bit about some of the great images John created during his career.  There were lots of great movies he was a part of, and it's great to share some of the ways these images were brought into life!  I look forward to seeing your book and reading and seeing what you share with us there.