Most serious movie-poster collectors search for that perfect copy of “The Bride of Frankenstein” from 1934, “Casablanca” from 1942, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” from 1951, or Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” from 1958. But for the last half-dozen or so years, a new type of collector has appeared, one whose sights are set on contemporary, limited-edition, signed-and-numbered, screenprinted posters designed not by the marketing departments of Hollywood studios but by some of the biggest names in rock-poster art.
The King Kong, if you will, of this burgeoning movement is an Austin, Texas, company called Mondo, which is part of a small chain of movie theaters and eateries known as Alamo Drafthouse. According to Mondo’s creative director, Justin Ishmael, the idea of creating new posters for old films grew out of an event started in 2005 by Rob Jones, who remains a key part of the Mondo team. That event, the Rolling Roadshow, featured outdoor screenings at the locations of famous films—“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” at Devil’s Tower, “Bullitt” in San Francisco, etc.
“Rob came up with the idea of taking the rock-poster and gig-poster thing and applying it to movies,” says Ishmael. “He does all the stuff for the White Stripes, so he knows a lot of the guys in that scene. At the time Jay Ryan was our biggest name, so when everyone saw that Jay Ryan did a poster for us, they thought it’d be fun, too. All these guys are giants for us now, but they were just doing it for fun at the time.”
Read more of the article from Collector’s Weekly HERE.
