Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Fantastic Fest is quickly approaching and one of the key events that's going to kick off the fest this year is the unveiling of a crazy book called The Act of Seeing which features a look at some really obscure exploitation movie posters curated from the collection of Drive and Only God Forgives director Nicolas Winding Refn.
And this ain't no cheapy book, either. Refn teamed up with FAB Press to make an 8 pound giant tome dedicated to preserving some really obscure “trash cinema” from the '60s and '70s.
If you're going to Fantastic Fest you can pre-order your copy and get it signed by Refn at many points during the fest. Click here for more info and the pre-order page!
Refn was gracious enough to jump on the phone with me to discuss the book and his love of Fantastic Fest. Check out our chat about really random cinema below! Enjoy!
Quint: When they asked me if I'd be interested in talking with you about this book I immediately said “Yes!” because I've been collecting movie paper for pretty much my entire geek life. I love poster art and have one-sheets all over my house. Matter of fact, I met Harry Knowles for the first time when he was going show to show selling movie posters for a living before he started Ain't It Cool.
Nicolas Winding Refn: Wow.
Quint: Weirdly, without this habit of mine I might not have fallen into this crazy line of work. So, it feels like you aimed this book right at me specifically.
Nicolas Winding Refn: I did.
Quint: I had a feeling you did. Even if you didn't know, you knew.
Nicolas Winding Refn: I admit it!
Quint: I read in the intro that this all came about because you purchased a large poster collection and wasn't sure what you were going to do with it.
Nicolas Winding Refn: It kind of came about because I became friends with a writer called Jimmy McDonough. He did the bio on Andy Milligan and Russ Meyer and Neil Young and other interesting people. He and I had become friends because I had purchased every single thing that he had kept from Andy's life. Contracts, scripts, plays, film prints, stills... you name it.
Jimmy had a very interesting career. One of the things that he did was he was the co-creator of Sleazoid Express, which was the first Times Square 1970s/early '80s fanzine about 42nd Street in New York. In that period he had collected a lot of material. One day he asked if I wanted to buy his poster collection. I said, “Yeah, why not? I'm buying everything else you have!”
I didn't really know how many until about 8 weeks later boxes of posters arrived at our house here in Copenhagen and my wife was like, “What the fuck?” I'm like, “Nothing...”
Quint: You should have said that it could be worse. You could have a cocaine habit or something.
Nicolas Winding Refn: Yeah, it's nothing! So, I open them up and I'm by no means a walking encyclopedia of movies. I have not seen every movie, I don't know all those things. I open these boxes and there are hundreds of posters of films I've never heard of. I go, “Oh, God. What am I going to do with this?” It's a lot of paper and I don't own an eBay business.
But one of the things that was interesting to me was they were all from this particular time, the late '60s and early '70s. It was a bit like a time capsule. I felt a bit like I was in a Doctor Who episode and I went back to the swinging '60s of New York.
I thought it would be really interesting to do a poster book out of this. The fun part would be that I wanted to make the most expensive poster book you ever imagined. Whatever it would cost I would pay because the idea was to present it as high art. A lot of these films seem to have become cherished in a way that I don't think was anticipated.
I went to FAB Press because I liked those kind of crazy characters and I liked the kind of books Harvey (Fenton) had been producing and I said, “You tell me what the most expensive poster book would cost to make.” He came back and said it would be roughly around $100,000. And I said “I want to produce this book.” That was the ambition and that was how the book was created.
Quint: How much of the overall collection ended up making it into the book?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Out of about a thousand I think I chose 220 or 230. I kind of felt I needed something a little extra. I was approaching the book as if I was editing a movie. I spent almost a year and a half just going over what order they would come in. At the same time I was trying to gather information because I wanted it to be more than just random images. It had to be like a time machine.
I was very fortunate to meet a gentleman in California, in the middle of the desert, who was selling this very strange archive and that enabled me to complete what I felt the book should feel like.
Quint: I noticed you had some fun juxtapositions in there, like you have two posters for different genres that prominently featured “Velvet” in the title. I also noticed there was a Sexploitation poster on one page and on the next page was a Godsploitation movie.
Nicolas Winding Refn: Oh, yeah. (laughs) Everything was about color, mood, style, not making it repetitious, not categorizing everything, but always keeping a comfortable randomness to the flow.
Quint: Did discovering all these weird titles and crazy pulpy poster art prompt you to search out any of these films?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I wish I had the time. There's so many things in the book that I went, “I wonder what that is?” Like The X-Rated Supermarket. What the hell is that? Of course, there are a few classics, like Captive Wild Woman and Queen of Blood. Then there's a personal touch from my end, which is I was very lucky to befriend Curtis Harrington before he passed away years ago and I very much admired his filmmaking.
I absolutely love Night Tide and in a way I wanted that to be included in a book of posters. Curtis had a turbulent career and I don't think he ever got the recognition he deserved. He made a lot of strange choices, but for me Night Tide is one of the greatest achievements in cinema, so that was a personal decision to include it. And they're fucking great posters.
Quint: I really appreciated seeing the different versions of some of these posters. A lot of the exploitation movies of the time would be re-released under different titles and with different art work to fool people into thinking it was a new movie. You included the alternate Eaten Alive poster that was rebranded as Horror Hotel, for instance.
Nicolas Winding Refn: It's the greatest pleasure to hear!
Quint: Was there any particular connection between these films that you discovered while deciding the order of the posters presented in the book? I noticed a lot of Joe Sarno stuff...
Nicolas Winding Refn: He was one of the filmmakers I was finding myself becoming really intrigued by as I was going through it. A lot of his posters ended up in the book and I have seen very few of his films. You asked what I would like to see and some of his films would be of interest.
Quint: What struck when I was reading was that there was nothing like this period of exploitation. It was so specific to the industry and society of the time that it could never be repeated. Was that something that was important to you when composing this book? Not just showing off some cool art, but also documenting this crazy period of cinema?
Nicolas Winding Refn: I think so, yeah. First it became a matter of taste for me and then once that was done it became a matter of what would I like to see? What images spoke to me? What did I find interesting?
Quint: So, you're coming to Fantastic Fest, you're screening a film featured in the book and doing a big signing, right?
Nicolas Winding Refn: Yes.
Quint: You had to have Fantastic Fest in mind when all this was coming together because this is totally your target audience.
Nicolas Winding Refn: My people! Actually, when I was conceiving the book I had visited Austin with Only God Forgives and I had visited Fantastic Fest with my wife's documentary (My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn). I have become friends with Tim League, who I think is a magnificent person and a good friend. I was like, “Would you consider maybe doing something together?” They loved the idea and it became like a partnership.
The book is something, I think, everyone likes. It represents a level of obscurity I think is one of the things all of us have in common. We like to see strange stuff.
Quint: Absolutely, man. The reason I have seen or heard of any of the movies featured in your book can be attributed to stuff like Weird Wednesday and other crazy Alamo Drafthouse programming. It's definitely a perfect fit and I look forward to seeing everybody's reaction when you bring the book down.
Nicolas Winding Refn: I'm there, man! I hopefully people won't be disappointed.
Quint: I doubt it. Thank you very much for your time.
Nicolas Winding Refn: Absolutely. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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