Chicago-based illustrator and graphic designer Johnny Sampson re-imagined iconic movie monsters as ‘70s super-studs for the Horrorwood Show at the WWA Gallery back in 2010.
See more of Johnny Sampson’s work and posters at his website.
Via Cherrybombed
“I’ve always thought of my programs as prayers. They may not seem that way, but to me they’re my conversation with whatever you want to call it about the condition that exists here, spiritually and physically.”—Joe Frank
As part of their ambitious, month-long Nightmare City horror film fest co-presented by Cinefamily, The Woodshed Horror Company and Cinespia, Thursday night will see a rare performance in Los Angeles by absurdist radio genius Joe Frank.
For two decades straight, Peabody Award-winning Joe Frank burned as brightly as humanly possible in the realm of radio drama, wearing the multiple hats of performer/writer/producer—but to call what Frank does simply “radio drama” is misleading, for “radio confessions”, “radio nightmares” and “radio nirvana” are all equally as accurate. Employing staged (or sometimes real?) phone conversations, tempestuous one-act blackouts, serpentine short stories and hyper-stylized monologues with equal measure, Frank’s noir-ish aural universe is unmatched anywhere in the world, and is highly addictive to boot. Tonight, Frank’s formerly disembodied voice finds a corporeal home at the Cinefamily, as he performs his brand-new, dark-hued work “Old Man” live on our stage. Come revel in it with us.
I can recall the first time I was exposed to the singular artform of Joe Frank. It was twenty years ago and I was driving home after meeting the notorious rouge CIA agent Philip Agee. It had been an odd enough evening already, now it was late at night and I was going through the radio dial trying to find something good to listen to. At first, it was hard to tell if it was real or a put-on (the piece I stumbled upon was in the form of a recorded telephone conversation with music added later), but I was sucked in—totally—before coming to the conclusion that it was, in fact, a scripted drama I was listening to, although that term seems wholly inadequate to describe Frank’s perverse theater of the mind.
In certain respects, you could look at Joe Frank like an American Samuel Beckett. Much admired by the likes of David Sedaris and Ira Glass, Frank is truly a national treasure. You can subscribe to his website and hear 230 hours of his oddball surrealist radio shows. There’s a new free one every day, too.
Below, a fascinating short film called “The Perfect Woman,” written by Frank and directed by Paul Rachman. The racy TV show seen in the beginning is a take-off of an actual show that aired for many years on Manhattan Cable’s notorious Channel J. It was called “Interludes After Midnight” and it was a nude talkshow hosted by a hairy, bearded guy wearing a huge gold medallion and little else. The first time I saw it, in 1984, I was perplexed by the sight of a naked clown juggling on my TV screen. I thought my cable was broken or something, but no, it was just a fully nude talkshow (not exactly par for the course of the Reagan era American television). I think the bar was pretty low for being a guest on “Interludes After Midnight”: you just had to be naked! (Family Guy once referenced “Interludes After Midnight” to my delighted surprise)
Get tickets for Joe Frank at Cinefamily here. And while you’re there, check out the upstairs gallery space with UNWELCOME, a horror film-themed black-light poster exhibit curated by Kramers Ergot creator, Sammy Harkham.
“xxxxxx” by Shary Boyle. Fluorescent yellow, fluorescent blue, fluorescent red, and black. Four colors hand pulled on 100# acid free stock. 20” x 26” edition of 30. Signed by the artist.
$40 at Cinefamily or at the Nightmare City online store.
Graphic designer and artist Peter Saville tells the interesting back-story on how the now iconic Joy Division Unknown Pleasures album cover art came to be in 1979.
Via Nerdcore
Andy Warhol co-directed this seldom-seen video for The Cars’ single, “Hello Again,” with Don Munroe in 1984. It featured Manhattan “It Girl” fashion designer Dianne Brill (above), a young Gina Gershon, Benjamin Liu (as Ming Vauze), Warhol himself as the bartender and my late friend John Sex, the guy with the boa constrictor.
From an entry dated Thursday, March 29, 1984, pages 560-561 in The Andy Warhol Diaries:
It was raining and snowing out and this was the day we had to film all day doing the Cars video for their song “Hello Again” at the Be-Bop Cafe on 8th Street. Benjamin [Liu] came in drag to pick me up for shooting. He was going to be in it, too.
I had to be a bartender and wear a tux. The crowd of extras looked like the old Factory days—Benjamin in drag, and a bald-headed mine in a Pierrot outfit, and John Sex with this snake. And then there was Dianne Brill with her big tits and hourglass figure. The Cars were cute.
They finally got to my part at 8:00 and I had to sing a song but I couldn’t remember the words. And I had to mix a drink while I was doing it, and with my contacts on I couldn’t see the Coke button on the soda dispenser.
And that meant being face to face with the Cars for a while, and it was hard to talk to them. I didn’t know what to say. I finished at 9:15. One of the kids gave me a ride home.
I like how the church seems to be scowling, like it’s a mean church.
The Mummy by Laurent Durieux
Mondo Gallery in Austin, Texas has another superb exhibit running from October 19 to November 10 featuring iconic monsters from Universal movie studios. The gallery will be featuring artwork from Martin Ansen, Rick Baker, Jake Edmiston and dozens more.
Mondo is the collectible art division of Alamo Drafthouse, who continue to amaze with their devotion to the celebration and preservation of the cinema arts.
The gallery opening on October 19 will be from 7:00 - 10:00pm with regular hours to follow for the show’s duration. The Mondo Gallery is located at 4115 Guadalupe St. in Austin, TX.
Invisible Man by Franceso Francavilla
Creature From The Black Lagoon by Ken Taylor
Liverpool-based environmental artist Kerry Morrison lays out long sheets of paper in parks in hopes birds poop on them so that the droppings can be “interpreted as musical notes.”
All of this proves to be quite challenging for poor Ms. Morrison.
Aleister Crowley teapot by artist Charles Krafft.
Happy Crowleymass! Aleister Crowley, thee Great Beast 666 was hatched from a dragon’s egg on this day in 1875.
Pablo Fanque, today best known for being mentioned in The Beatles song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” on the Sgt. Pepper’s album was the first black circus proprietor in Britain. For over three decades, his circus, in which he himself was a featured performer, was the most popular n Victorian-era Britain. Circus historian George Speight wrote that Fanque’s big stunt was leaping on horseback over a coach “placed lengthways with a pair of horses in the shafts, and through a military drum at the same time.”
From the Smithsonian website:
While true Beatlemaniacs will know that Mr. Kite and his companions were real performers in a real troupe, however, few will realize that they were associates of what was probably the most successful, and almost certainly the most beloved, “fair” to tour Britain in the mid-Victorian period. And almost none will know that Pablo Fanque–the man who owned the circus—was more than simply an exceptional showman and perhaps the finest horsemen of his day. He was also a black man making his way in an almost uniformly white society, and doing it so successfully that he played to mostly capacity houses for the best part of 30 years.
The song that lent Fanque his posthumous fame had its origins in a promotional film shot for “Strawberry Fields Forever”—another Lennon track—at Sevenoaks in Kent in January 1967. During a break in the filming, the Beatle wandered into a nearby antique shop, where his attention was caught by a gaudy Victorian playbill advertising a performance of Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal in the northern factory town of Rochdale in February 1843. One by one, in the gorgeously prolix style of the time, the poster ran through the wonders that would be on display, among them “Mr. Henderson, the celebrated somerset thrower, wire dancer, vaulter, rider &c.” and Zanthus, “well known to be one of the best Broke Horses in the world!!!”—not to mention Mr. Kite himself, pictured balancing on his head atop a pole while playing the trumpet.
Something about the poster caught Lennon’s fancy; knowing his dry sense of humor, it was probably the bill’s breathless assertion that this show of shows would be “positively the last night but three!” of the circus’s engagement in the town. Anyway, he bought it, took it home and (the musicologist Ian MacDonald notes) hung it in his music room, where “playing his piano, [he] sang phrases from it until he had a song.” The upshot was a track unlike any other in the Beatles’ canon—though it’s fair to say that the finished article owes just as much to the group’s producer, George Martin, who responded heroically to Lennon’s demand for “a ‘fairground’ production wherein one could smell the sawdust.” (Adds MacDonald, wryly: “While not in the narrowest sense a musical specification, [this] was, by Lennon’s standards, a clear and reasonable request. He once asked Martin to make one of his songs sound like an orange.”) The Abbey Road production team used a harmonium and wobbly tapes of vintage Victorian calliopes to create the song’s famously kaleidoscopic wash of sound.
Guaranteed to raise a smile, the 1843 letterpress-printed circus poster from 1843 that John Lennon owned has been recreated using antique wooden and metal type and wood engravings.
Each print is hand-pulled on a Victorian press and individually numbered in a limited edition of 1,967 via the artist behind the project, Peter Dean, who writes:
As a lifelong Beatles fan I found myself simply wanting to hang a copy of this poster on my wall. As a designer, however, I couldn’t accept the many poor imitations I found – all of which use jarringly incorrect fonts (like Futura and Helvetica) and low-quality copies-of-copies of the illustrations.
So I set about doing it properly. What I thought might be a few weeks of work became several months, where sometimes the prospect of one day owning this poster seemed far away. But we got there in the end and I’m truly delighted with the end result.
I can see why he’s so happy, this looks amazing.
It’s worth pointing out that “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” was one of three songs on the Sgt. Pepper’s album to be banned by BBC radio. The lyrics referring to “Henry the horse” were thought to be slang for heroin. Clearly this was not the case. Imagine writing and creating such an amazing piece of childlike music only to find some small minds ready to ban it.
Filmmakers Nick Esdaile and Joe Fellows made a great short film about how it all came together. You can win a copy of the limited edition “Mr. Kite” print yourself by signing up for the Kite newsletter.
Via Kottke
Bow down to this incrdieble Cthulhu pumpkin which was featured at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, for its annual Jack-O’-Lantern Spectacular.
Via Neatorama