I thought it would be fun to do a Halloween post, so I scrounged around in the big trash barrel known as my Archives, and found this old editorial cartoon, circa 2009:
It was inspired by a line in an address by then U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to the Motion Picture Association of America:
I see your product as a uniquely American commodity. Movies and TV shows are direct products of the freedoms we enjoy.
The cynic in me immediately thought of the three staples of modern American films: sex, violence, and profanity. I also thought of the never-ending stream of slasher movies. I tried to imagine Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln extolling them as “direct products of the freedoms we enjoy.” I could not.
Here’s a detail image.
As noted, Gary Locke was U.S. Commerce Secretary in 2009. He is now the United States ambassador to China.
Henry Waxman is a United States congressman (Democrat, California). His district includes Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
I applied Photoshop’s Warp tool to photographs to create the above caricatures. Here’s what the two men actually look like.
Here’s a detail image of the right-hand side:
I was very much into photo manipulation at the time, and wanted to see if I could create a fictitious movie poster using bits and pieces of actual horror movie posters from the 1950s. Here are a couple of detail images from the latter:
Sequence: Use the Pen tool to select and copy each piece; paste them into your composite image on separate layers; use layer masks to help blend them together; apply blurring as needed to smooth out any harsh grain.
Here’s the finished poster. My favorite part is the goofy skull with the ax in his head. The mirrored text looks cool. I’m guessing I used a bevel-and-emboss layer style to give it a raised, three-dimensional look, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the details… : (
What do you think? Are you a horror movie fan? Is garbage still garbage even if it’s a direct product of freedom? Hope you’ll leave a comment.
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