Posted By Dan Greenfield on Mar 18, 2024 | 5 comments

A NEAL ADAMS CHRONICLES birthday tribute to the movie-poster master…

By PETER STONE

Think about your favorite most iconic movie posters. Jaws, The Thing, Rocky, Alien, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Hellboy, Harry Potter, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones. I bet half, if not more, were painted by Drew Struzan, who was born 77 years ago, on March 18, 1947. Bob Peak, Richard Amsel and a few exceptional graphic designers probably created the rest.

Drew Struzan is an exceptional painter and uses photos to create likenesses of famous actors better than even photographs can. He makes some actors look better than they do in real life. He is one of the best painters in the last 100 years.

Struzan is probably the last great movie poster artist of the 20th century. His work will be forever remembered in connection to Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, The Goonies and even Back to the Future. His compositions were unique and brilliant. He captured the heart of the story in a single illustration as he created a tremendously commercial imagr. Before Struzan, movie posters were graphic designs like Jaws. Or photographs. Like The Godfather.

Neal Adams loved Drew Struzan’s work to the degree that he would show other artists that Struzan knew how to capture a likeness better than possibly anyone working at the time. He loved the highlights Drew put on the faces, the double-lighting, the fact that he worked with photos better than anyone. (NOTE from Dan: The first time I met Neal many years ago, he asked me if I knew who Drew Struzan was and then went off on a tangent about him.)

Neal totally understood what it meant to work with a photo of an actor. I remember him doing a promotional image of a series of actors for a popular TV show. He told me on many occasions that you could not draw the actor as they really were but as they thought they really were. In other words, make them look better than possibly they really were. This time when he was working on this TV promotion was wonderful. Each of the actors were dead on and attractive. Then, one actor said “No, I don’t look like that.” Neal, ever the commercial artist said, “Fine. I will try again.”

Nope. The second try wasn’t good either. On the third try, Neal finally got it right. For the actor. All of us who were working with him at the time expected this back and forth. Actors are a cowardly lot… not, wait, that’s Batman’s line. Actors are mostly wonderful people, but once in a while someone wants to look better than they photograph. Imagine meeting Brooke Shields in real life… or George Clooney, or a young Brad Pitt or Robert Redford or Paul Newman or Lynda Carter. I, personally, would be amazed at how attractive they are in real life.

That’s what Drew Struzan did. He found their most attractive moment and painted that. Neal said he admired what Struzan did because it was the same thing that he did. He took a photograph of a person, discovered what it is that makes them attractive and then enhanced it. He made that person look better than perhaps they really are. Harry Potter had to look young and innocent and interesting in every poster. He captured Michael J. Fox in all his youthful, energetic, attractive moments during Back to the Future. He captured Natalie Portman’s beauty, Hayden Christensen’s handsome face and Darth Vader’s evil all in the same poster for Revenge of the Sith.

I remember Neal asking me to find photos of various actors that he could use for commissions or portraits. I learned what made a “good” photo for an artist. It showed their eyes, their chins, their noses. Then Neal would trace the photo, but alter it as he went. He would always make them look better, more attractive, more handsome, more beautiful. He would change the photo in so many subtle ways that you never realized it was a photo. Neal was a master of that.

So, when he created the layout for Continuity Comics’ 1991 CyberRad #2 cover, he asked the wonderful painter James Martin (jamesmartinstudio.com) to finish the cover in a Drew Struzan style. Together, Neal and James worked to make a cover that was unique in comics, one that looked like a movie poster. James, so he told me, has the original art hanging in his home. The two later on combined for a Megalith cover to the same end. Perhaps not “movie inspired,” but still a testament to how much Neal enjoyed Struzan’s style.

There will be people who say that Struzan wasn’t a “real” artist because he used photographs for his work. Norman Rockwell gets the same critique. However, Roy Lichtenstein, who copied comic book artists’ work is considered to be a master painter. Rembrandt used candles to illuminate the shadows of his models to create his paintings, especially “The Night Watch.” He is considered a master. Neal Adams photographed models (mostly himself and his family) for a three-and-a-half-year stint on the Ben Casey comic strip. Drew Struzan, Rembrandt and Neal Adams all used the same technique. Just like a thousand, thousand other artists. Neal always said to me, “Who can draw the Empire State Building from memory?”

Drew Struzan is probably the last of the artists who painted movie posters. These days, Photoshop is God. Take a photo and put it into a poster, perhaps using an effect to enhance it. The graphic designer becomes the artist. The Photoshop artist becomes the final talent behind the image. It certainly works and promotes the movie, but it’s lost a sense of the artistic. You’ll never see the poster for The Thing again. You’ll get a beautiful image of Kurt Russell, but not a unique and wonderful artistic image.

Drew Struzan was one of the best movie poster artists ever. He was certainly one of the most commercial. If I had few million extra dollars, I would buy his Adventures in Babysitting art. And not because I thought Elizabeth Shue was cute (she was) but because it’s a truly wonderful image. It’s a great poster, selling that movie perfectly. Are there other great movie poster artists? Of course. But Drew Struzan was the man to call when you needed a commercial artist who could capture likenesses better than probably anyone. In that group, it might, just might, include Neal.

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MORE

— 13 BRILLIANT MOVIE POSTERS: A DREW STRUZAN Birthday Celebration. Click here.

— Dig DREW STRUZAN’s Gorgeous Preliminary Sketch for His Famed 1977 BATMAN Poster. Click here.

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Peter Stone is a writer and son-in-law of the late Neal Adams. In addition to this column, he also writes 13th Dimension’s Buried Treasure feature. Be sure to check out the family’s twice-weekly online Facebook auctions, as well as the NealAdamsStore.com, and their Burbank, California, comics shop Crusty Bunkers Comics and Toys.