 AN
AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL
An exploitation classic gets the Romano treatment!
Fresh off the success of his collaboration with Grindhouse
Releasing on their promo campaign for GONE WITH THE
POPE, Stephen Romano now unveils his latest creation:
the ambitious one-sheet poster for the new release of
the obscure 1970s exploitation classic AN AMERICAN HIPPIE
IN ISRAEL. “I’ve been working with Grindhouse
on and off for well over ten years now,” Romano
says. “That company basically amounts to Bob Murawski
and Sage Stallone (yeah, THAT Sage Stallone) sitting
in a room together and hatching crazy schemes to take
over the world. They’re both pretty major players
in Hollywood, but they’re completely insane.
They spend all their money on releasing sleaze classics
and old obscure horror films and stuff. The first thing
I did for them was the CANNIBAL FEROX soundtrack . .
. and, ten years later, I’m doing their posters.
I had to teach myself how to do this stuff for SHOCK
FESTIVAL, and now it’s kind of paying off. HIPPIE
is just a nutty movie. It starts off with all this flower
power stuff, with a truckload of sandal-wearing longhairs
trying to organize a commune, but most of them get gunned
down by these weird pasty faced mime guys, who may or
may not be angels of death . . . and, by the end, the
whole thing descends into a bizarre LORD OF THE FLIES
style nightmare. I wanted to cram as much of that craziness
into the poster as I could. It’s a really busy
affair, with way too much going on, even more ambitious
than GONE WITH THE POPE, which everyone really liked.
Bob was blown away by HIPPIE—and he wanted even
MORE in there! I also went out of my way to make this
one as eerily authentic as possible. I have a complete
historical understanding of how these vintage things
are supposed to look.
I live it and breathe it. I always insist on designing
everything, down to the last line of text. I even wrote
all the ad copy myself—I do that a lot for Synapse
Films, too. I wanted real hippies from the 70s to look
at our poster and wonder if they were in a time warp!
It looks exactly like something you’d see in a
theatre lobby or a drive-in snack bar back then. What
I like about all this is that Grindhouse is releasing
these flicks in honest-to-god movie theatres, which
means my posters are in the lobbies, and they’re
honest-to-god exploitation films from the 1970s, man!
That’s a kick unlike any other job I’ve
done since I started working professionally as a poster
designer. I get to be involved with the history of these
amazing flicks in a really bizarre post-modern timewarp
kinda way!” Romano will also be finishing his
long-delayed novelization of the Grindhouse Releasing
title PIECES, a favorite among fans of 1980s sleaze
horror slasher flicks. “I love movie novelizations.
It’s such a tacky form of literature—how
can you not love that? I collect those paperbacks, you
know.
I have hundreds and hundreds on a shelf in my living
room. You name the film, and I either have the book,
or I’ve been obsessively searching all my life
for the fucking thing! I just scored the complete set
of KOJAK novelizations the other day and read them in
one sitting. I did a deal with Grindhouse to do PIECES
because it’s a favorite sleaze flick and I started
it last year, but we ran into some problems. After a
long delay, we were able to get back on it. I’ve
almost finished the book and it will provide some interesting
alternate perspectives on the characters, to say the
least. Some twists that will make the book worth reading
for fans who know the film backwards and forward. I’m
doing the cover art and design, as well. You’ll
hear more about that later in the year. I can promise
you, it’ll be messy, man. And no hippies, either!”
|
