The months where the whole world stopped and stayed inside forced people to be creative with what they had at home. What really stays in my mind form this time was the Getty Art Museum challenge, where people would recreate famous pieces of art using household items – it’s something I took part in and really enjoyed. It was with that spirit that I went into today’s challenge, recreating some film posters.
I’ve seen quite a few people on social media do this to great effect, but they often seem to use the same films. Fight Club is not only a great film but has a great, two-person poster which is instantly recognisable to film fans everywhere. I decided to pick a couple of films that were a bit more left-field, as well as adding a classic in for fun.
The first film poster we decided to recreate is one of my favourite comedies, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. It has my favourite comedic combination of Carl Reiner and Steve Martin and is a clever parody of film noir. Footage of classic films from the genre is mixed in with Martin and the rest of the cast and leads to comic interactions between him and Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardener, and Barbara Stanwyck. It’s a clever and endlessly silly film and I love it a lot.
Yes, we did nail the gloves to the wall, yes my husband is wearing a Sonic tie, and yes that is a banana as a gun – I think we got it bang on! We had a ridiculous amount of fun with this, and it was only the first one. Next up, was another well-loved comedy film in my house, 1999’s Office Space.
Office Space, written and directed by Mike Judge, is a film that anyone who has worked in an office can relate to – the monotony, the weird characters, the desperate desire to get out of there by any means necessary. It’s a dark comedy with some very quotable lines and is a firm favourite in our house. Of course, now you’ve seen the poster, you know what lengths we had to go to, to recreate this one…
This took ages and was a bit of a nightmare trying to keep all of the post-it notes on, especially when James started crying laughing at something mid-way through. I wanted to cover him head to toe, but I think I’d have been in tears by the end of it so we quickly took a picture of the covered top half. This was so funny, I had to control myself from bursting into laughter every couple of minutes just so the post-its would actually stay on James!
We decided to round off the film posters with a classic, Back to the Future Part II one of our childhood favourites that we still love today. I wanted to actually get in one of the posters, so we went with the poster that had both Doc Brown and Marty in it.
I think this could be my favourite of the three, as it involved a little bit more creative thinking – we were stuck on how to recreate the Delorean door for quite a while!
If you squint very hard you can see some foil lightning between our heads, and of course, laundry basket was the most natural choice for the car door! I don’t have yellow trousers (shame on me) but I do have a yellow scarf, so that is what’s wrapped around my legs, and I think James is wearing a combination of three jackets to try and get that true Marty McFly look. Despite looking a little like a fisherman in waders who’s running late, I loved dressing up as Doc Brown – my crazy hair has finally found a purpose!
This was the most fun we’ve had in ages! It really sparked some creativity and forced us to look at what we have in different ways. Plus, any day where I get to cover someone in post-it notes is going to be a good one. I laughed so much that I cried doing these today, just a normal weekend in our house!
New Day, New Thing 