“Here’s Mr. Nice Guy. What’s his name? Tom Hanks? I wish he’d shut the fuck up. Don’t you?”
- Art Chantry, discussing his poster for The Von Zippers

Perhaps the ultimate form of disposable art exists in the small posters found on wooden poles used by bands to promote their local gigs in small towns or the corner pockets of cities – ephemeral images that get torn down or stapled over with new material once the band has left town, and a night’s performance is just a memory.

These posters are designed to grab attention, and part of the scheme can include clever use of fonts, incorporating existing images (photos, old print graphics), or coming up with the most outlandish concept, usually in black & white, or through the use of two or three colours.

It’s all pretty low-tech, but when the graphic artists in Died Young, Stayed Pretty (2008)  explain the logic behind their mini-campaigns, one can argue the skill to nail a band’s character (or transcend its sometimes meagre quality) on a weekly basis is maybe more creatively challenging than the big, splashy commercial campaigns on the major music labels.

Eileen Yaghoobian’s documentary is a loopy, visually eccentric film about the minds behind what some might call punk art – the deliberately provocative, anger-inducing concepts stemming from a very odd group of artists (some doubling at night as musicians) and culture historians at heart. Some, like Tyler Stout, are more well-known because of a greater awareness among graphic art aficionados, whereas many others in Yaghoobian’s film are more regional players.

Regionalism doesn’t lessen anyone’s importance, because each distinctive poster style reflects an idiosyncratic style and persona, and as odd as many of the artists are, whether it’s a large colour canvas or a grungy black & white letter-sized poster, there’s some clever ideas being put to paper.

The film does feel a bit loose at times, and Yaghoobian films the graphic art in a series of movements or hand-held shots evocative of passing by a stapled poster, and catching just a glimpse of the harshest, loudest poster element, but it all gels into a casual narrative style which positions the artists’ personalities on equal footing with their creations.

Most interviews are filmed in the cramped studios, farm homesteads, or in a coffee shop, and that’s in tune with the regional cultures wherein the artists live; no one’s interested in going commercial nor landing a career-making campaign with a major band, and as Brian Chippendale explains in one of the deleted interview segments in the DVD’s extras section, there’s the quiet satisfaction of helping out a fellow artist because it’s just the right thing to do; no one’s in it to make a lot of money.

The film’s unofficial host is Art Chantry, who uses his studio and his own work to beautifully articulate the history of ‘punk art’ and the creative process that marries intelligent social criticism with shock tactics along the lines of serving a dinner plate of freshly severed hand, frozen in a flipped bird stance.

Chantry is also part of a more astute group of graphic artists who collect obsolete or ephemeral materials for their own creations and archives, including old catalogues with vintage clip art, archaic custom fonts, and colourful ad copy; another artist integrates relics of a handed-down linotype machine.

It’s all hand-crafted art, and that alone might separate them from digital artists who render everything on a computer and take it to a printing house. Some of the artists do their own silk-screening, whereas others go after custom colours for silk-screened posters, layers of hand drawings, coarsely blown-up photos, and/or offset colours – the latter reminiscent of fifties commercial catalogue, albeit with a bit of backroom grunge.

If Yaghoobian’s doc has a major flaw, it’s that it’s perhaps too encompassing; there’s a lot of artists whose names never register, and there’s a lack of formalism: while some subjects are followed in their cars or walking along streets, the doc has few establishing shots that give us a decisive sense of place, making it seem as though everyone leaves in one expansive rural pockets of middle America.

That’s actually true to a small extent, as Chippendale explains in a deleted interview bit: everyone is a few people away from knowing someone in local government – something that can also be a headache when displeasure with a poster makes it way to an official figure.

The DVD’s deleted scenes provide some intriguing info, including Chantry’s Marilyn Monroe poster (whose title Yaghoobian used for her film), as well as dissections of two unique campaigns: the vacuum-packed “Nirvana” hard poster, and the rejected “Flaming Lips” design (itself one of the funniest tales in the film).

There’s also artist Ron Liberti illustrating his strange low-tech world that includes playing indie 45’s on a cheap mono Fisher Price record player – probably the ultimate insult to audiophiles. (In fairness, though, there’s also another artist who pipes his CD player through a Marantz amplifier, which is more symbolic of Yaghoobian’s subjects taking the ageless quality of vintage gear to filter contemporary concepts, musical or visual.)

The sometimes cramped digital cinematography is enhanced by some snappy editing and subtle transition effects, and Mark Greenberg’s music score is a great blend of grunge and fat, analogue sounds (which the composer describes as “the audible equivalent of layered pulpy stapled skin on a telephone pole”).

The only qualms with Warner Canada’s DVD is a lack of artist bios, more web links and sample art, as was done for MVD’s Style Wars DVD. Some artists admit that some of their collages use copyrighted images, but the film’s official website (see below) has some great samples of the film’s great alternate posters.

© 2009 Mark R. Hasan