Universal Studios One Sheets, concepts, finals. Out of Africa, Back to the Future, Brazil

A fertile period in my career. I'd gotten out from under the thumb of production houses, working directly with the studio heads, Marvin Antonowski and Ken Harman. Lots of sketches were generated from ideas pitched across the shiny desk of executives, with turnaround times of hours. Best sketches were tightened to B&W comps. My comps were polished up, typography added, printed in short runs and "tested" by the marketing team, the results of the five comps usually finished as a photo collage. The photographic elements would be spliced together to make the poster. This was tragic for me as a wannabe poster painter, Antonowki saying, "people are paying to see film, photographs, they don't want to see paintings." So, Dune would be beautifully designed, it tested well -- on its way to finish -- then actors would be posed, photos collaged and retouched and a photographic fantasy poster for DUNE manufactured. Bob Peak, Daniel Goosee, many terrific illustrators saw their talents suddenly starved as studio after studio began killing creatity in posters. I designed with Harman: BREAKFAST CLUB, BREWSTER MILLIONS, THE FLY, MASK, dozens featured here. I was Harman's hand, he dropped the design firms to pitch to me and I smashed out work, up to four comps a day, and many more sketches, seven days a week. It was great and crazy time. I concede I quit a couple of times to take breathers, the appetite of the studio was unquenchable and a bit overwhelming for a 24 year old a year out of school. It was also for a film lover, the of my life, lasted less than a year. Studio heads changed, Antonowsky and Harman were swiftly removed. "The Battle for Brazil", Gilliam's film, was in full swing at it's Christmas release. I was looking at production stills in awe, and respectfully incorporating them into various sketches. Harman told me about the battle, that Gilliam was over budget and turning in a film over long, I think he said over three hours which Marvin and he called an "in-betweener", the first time I heard that word. He said it's not an action picture. It's not a sci-fi. It's not a comedy and it's not a drama. The studio was trying to cut or bury it, and Gilliam was taking out full-page ads in Variety lambasting Universal, 'Dear Sid Sheinberg, When are you going to release my film, "BRAZIL"? Terry Gilliam.' I got burned because I left town for a weekend and the only painted poster I might have gotten was given to someone else. This was pre-cell phone. I don't have nice photos of a lot of the art because of the extreme speed I was painting and delivering.