The Art of Drew Struzan

I whipped the keys out of my pocket and plunged the teeth of one into the strip of packing tape. The bold amazon.com logo rooted with that trademark half smile printed on the sides told me everything that I needed to know about the box’s contents. I threw back the flaps of the box and plunged my hands into the dense peanut packing foam. My fingers found purchase on the edges of the hard bound cover and I lifted the book free with the care one would give a sacred tome. It was here; The Art of Drew Struzan.

Seven years ago I had met Drew for the first time. He was lecturing at the studio I was working for. One of the things he shared with me was the story of how his career as an illustrator had begun with an interview with the enrollment councilor at Art Center College of Design. He rocked slowly back on his heels, and cocked his head down, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye, like he was about to bestow upon me a great gem of wisdom. He wore black from neck to knee; I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wearing anything but black, and most often a turtleneck, with the cuffs of his pants rolled up shin-high. His thinning hair beginning to frost and deep within his trademark peppered beard he cracked a thin smile, and related with the soft voice of a Tibetan monk:

“While I was sitting in the office of the counselor, he asked me; “Are you intending to enroll in the Fine Arts Program, or the Illustration Program?” “What’s the difference?” I asked. He replied; “Do you want to make money when you’re dead, or while you’re still alive?” Being a starving young man, I answered; “While I’m still alive.” “Illustration it is.” He replied, and the rest is history.” (Struzan)

It was at that moment that I realized who Drew Struzan really was. He was J.C. Leyendecker. He was Maxfield Parrish and J.W. Waterhouse. He was Norman Rockwell. He was an art genius cuffed with the title “illustrator” not knowing true respect until he died.

In Drew’s case his death is only metaphorical so far.

When I first heard that this book was being published I was excited. I had been a fan and supporter of Drew’s work for as long as I can remember. Like many people growing up in the 80’s, my first experience with Drew Struzan’s art came in a dimly lit lobby of the local movie theater. It was 1983 and bustling moviegoers patronized the concession stand, oblivious to the small boy that stood transfixed before the most powerful image he had ever seen in his short lived life. The movie poster that was framed in a silver plated shadowbox was dominated by the most violent of reds, designed to invoke the most visceral of emotion. In the midst of that crimson field was the broken silhouette of the foreboding death’s head mask of Darth Vader. In the bottom right hand corner the silhouettes of the heroic Luke Skywalker and the menacing Darth Vader were locked in the mortal struggle of father and son. All around the poster’s subjects were flecks of frenetic paint. A rich spattering of black infused the negative space of red. A gaseous swirl of purples and blues framed the figures. At the bottom of the poster emblazoned in red text were the words; “RETURN OF THE JEDI” stamped like a statement of fact. This image did not come from the ether, it came from the mind of a man, and that man had placed that image in my mind forever.

So here I sat with a book that held the title that seemed to encompass the whole of Drew’s Art. Turning the book over to inspect it, I couldn’t help but smile when I realized that the bold semi-gloss black dust jacket was appropriate for a book representing a man who almost always dressed just that way. On the cover beneath the title were paneled images of Anakin Skywalker, Harry Potter, Marty Mcfly and Harrison Ford as Decker from Bladerunner. All of them excerpts from the posters Drew had illustrated.

As you’d expect from a book chronicling the works of a master artist, the pages were pregnant with illustrations that are evocative, entertaining and immersive. You cannot help but look upon the images of Indiana Jones, or Dustin Hoffman’s Hook without the memories of those films and the positive emotions associated with them coming back to you. Titan Books spared no expense on the publication of this title. The books dimensions are near coffee table in size and weighs in with 160 pages, almost all of them filled with Drew’s illustrations. The reproductions of the artwork are vivid and of the sincerest fidelity to the artist’s work.

In years past Struzan had made two attempts at publishing his artwork in book form. His first came in 2004 entitled The Movie Posters of Drew Struzan. It was a worthy publication highlighting some of the most memorable of Drew’s posters. However it was far from being a comprehensive collection of Struzan’s artwork which spanned beyond just movie posters. Two years later Drew invested heavily in a joint venture with Dreamwave Productions, a publishing company located in Toronto, to print his massive Oeuvre. The word literally means the lifework or body of work of an artist, writer or composer. This book was enormous in dimensions and scope. Its coffee table format was perfect for presenting what was at the time nearly his entire collected works. Unfortunately, shortly after its initial run Dreamwave Productions went under, taking any future prospect of Drew’s book seeing reprint with it.

What could I expect from a new book that the other two hadn’t addressed? Similar to the recently released book Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, The Art of Drew Struzan focuses on the artist’s process and personal experiences with working in the illustration industry. I found it curious that some of Drew’s most memorable posters like the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition 3-up were absent from the book, while more obscure posters such as the unused comprehensives from the Money Pit were included.

Presented in chronological order, individual posters were selected to point out landmark experiences that Struzan had while working in the movie poster illustration industry. The artist shares in his own words compelling, inspirational and sometimes infuriating tales of what it meant to work with some of the most influential filmmakers of our generation. I was fascinated as I delved into the story of his working with the Walt Disney Studios to create the Adventures in Babysitting poster. A series of never before seen photos document the changes that Drew had to make to appease the studio heads. These included an image where Drew took an exacto knife and cut out the characters of his original poster and pasted them to an entirely new background. My frustration was off the charts as Struzan tells how years later that poster was found stored in a Disney Studio sound stage in “a pile of artwork nearly four feet tall, sitting in a pool of water…on the very bottom, face down” (Struzan and Schow 50). Luckily the man who found the discarded poster was a friend of Struzan’s, and the poster was returned to its rightful owner who later restored it.

It was inspiring and joyful to read how Struzan commanded the respect of such great filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Guillermo Del Toro. However as I continued reading through, I felt an emerging bitterness seeping into Struzan’s text as his experiences working with the studios began to sour.

With the new generation of buzz-word businessmen heading the studios, they didn’t understand the value of artwork as it related to movie making. Never mind that Drew’s posters were the primary marketing tool for over 30 of the top 100 grossing films of all time. Emptiness filled me as I read how most of the posters directors commissioned Drew to paint for their films were no longer being used in the promotion of the movies. On one occasion Del Toro had commissioned Struzan to paint the poster for Pan’s Labyrinth, the studio declined to use it. I nearly jumped from my seat and flung the book across the room when I read that during a press conference a journalist asked one of the marketing people, “How come you didn’t use Drew Struzan’s artwork for the poster.”…The suit’s reply was: “We didn’t use it because it looks too much like art”(Struzan and Schow 138). After having read that, I realized that The Art of Drew Struzan is in actuality, a cautionary tale. It is the pictorial history of the rise, decline and eventual retirement of one of the world’s greatest illustrators. It is not a collected works like his other books. It serves as both inspiration and warning voice to all aspiring illustrators.

I remember how I felt when Drew Struzan announced his retirement in 2008. My heart sank, just as it had when I had learned of Charles Schultz death. He made his choice largely due to the ignorance of the modern film marketing machine, and to the Photoshop copy/paste designers that have saturated the movie poster industry. Despite that he has enjoyed a recent revival of interest in his work, as evidenced by the popularity of the book; The Art of Drew Struzan. Perhaps it is a buyer’s remorse response to the void that his retiring left behind. Drew relates this to having died:

“I dunno, maybe it’s that retirement, you know what, people come when you die, people come to your funeral and talk about all the cool stuff you did. Well, I died and now they’re talkin’ about it so now I realize that it actually did reach people”(Donahue).

As I closed the book and contemplated the self portrait of the artist on the back of the dust jacket I couldn’t help but think that perhaps Drew’s interview for Art Center was a bit paradoxical in the end. From its slick dust jacket, to its incredible reproduction of Drew’s work, to the artists own words, The Art of Drew Struzan is a unique and insightful book that gives you a peek into the life of the man Time Magazine calls “the Last Movie Poster Artist” (TIME “The Last Movie-Poster Artist” - Photo Essays)