They Live Poster Phenomena!

Earlier today I saw that Shepard Fairey was going to be appearing at a showing of They Live at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin Texas. Mondo mentioned there would be a special secret poster that they commissioned Shepard to design for the event, but they wouldn't release the image until the day of the show. "We will be debuting the poster image at the screening and you will get one in a tube after the movie is over." So I clicked through to the ticket sales page and found that the image I designed a year ago, spoofing Shepard's Obama Hope poster was being use to sell this show.

They Live (prez) by Marc Palm

I got the address to the Alamo and sent them a simple e-mail:

"To whom it may concern -

I'm a huge fan of They Live and Shepard's work. That's why I designed the They Live poster a year ago that parodies his Obama HOPE poster. This is the same image that is being used on the Alamo site where you're selling tickets for the show.

I'd appreciate if I could be credited as the artist if you want to continue to use that picture.

For some sort of proof here's a link to the blog post I made over a year ago when I debuted the image. http://marcpalm.blogspot.com/2010/04/they-live-posters.html

Marc Palm"


I got a reply saying they were forwarding it onto the dept that will remedy the issue. Then I got a reply from Kayla Williams:

"Hey Marc,Thank you for letting us know about this and we apologize sincerely. We did not intend to use someone's personal image. We have changed the image to the movie poster for They Live. Thanks again for reaching out.

- Show quoted text -

--
Kayla Williams
Creative Manager
Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas"

By that time the show had completely sold out. Everyone who only saw the ticket page would have seen my image in the left and only read: "The ticket for this screening includes a THEY LIVE poster by Shepard Fairey!" They don't specify what poster, or that it's going to be special poster that has yet to be re-veiled. So it's possible that people think they are getting a copy of the poster I designed.

If you're one of those people who want one of those posters,  you can order them from me. I am offering them for sale via Imagekind.com. http://www.imagekind.com/They-Live-prez_art?IMID=1b2bd486-b828-4bd8-a636-9704811ccf70

I recommend them because of the ability for variation. You can get the size that is good for you and if you want it framed there's that too.

Anyway, this is not the poster that people who go to the Alamo show featuring Shepard Fairey will receive, unless something REALLY WEIRD happens.

If you want to use this image for your article about They Live, or use it to promote your event. ASK ME!!! It's the least you could do.

They Live Posters

The Central Cinema here in Seattle asked me to do some posters for some of their up-coming shows. John Carpenter's They Live was on the list and I had to do it. The poster at the top is the one they're going with and the one on the bottom was passed on for whatever reason. I'll just make prints of it myself.

The one that on top I chose to do in a rough painted style akin to those great Polish movie posters you might have seen before. They're always really well designed and sometimes very abstract. I couldn't get around the iconic alien face and just loosened myself up a lot to get the final result.

I've loved the alien design in this movie since I was a kid. It's really iconic to me. When I finally saw this movie just a few years ago I was already aware of Shepard Fairey and thought that he had to have been influenced by this film. With all the subliminal messages like "OBEY" and whatnot. When I got this chance I just had to riff on his most recent iconic piece. Almost as if I'm bring his original idea back around on itself.
I made sure that Fairey hadn't done the same thing already and only saw his own They Live piece. Researching I saw a couple of people give a good try and make this same image, but as the obsessive "literalist" that I am I HAD to recreate it as close to the original as possible.

John Carpenter's They Live will be showing from April 16th to April 22nd. At the Central Cinema in Seattle. Prints available now at Imagekind.com