Like Hevon, but more fun

Inspired by those two fine wordsmiths Nind and Ray.

Previously on Barnflakes
Welcome to St Decay
Corn + Wall = Cornwall

Nike—on

This only 'works' if you pronounce Nike like I do – it rhymes with bike.

Previously on Barnflakes
OPEN / CLOSED, NOPE / LOSE
Tesco in Tresco

Pencil patterns

Soon to be... enamel pin badges!

Rachael's Cornwall to Antarctica journey

In participation with Homeward Bound, Cornish friend and environmentalist Rachael Bice is soon embarking on a journey from Cornwall to Antarctica to raise awareness about the lack of women working in STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths).

I designed a series of four illustrations (the one above was unused, but probably my favourite) for Rachael, which she is going to use as postcards. Those who sponsor her will receive one posted from Port Lockroy in Antarctica. The designs will also be available as posters, bags and tea towels.

Sponsor her now on Crowdfunder and view my other designs there too. I wish her all the best.

Introducing the all-new Adobe DooBee

Unleash your creativity with the all-new Adobe DooBee, the app you can smoke. Ideal for sharing too, so don't bogart that DooBee, dude. Pass the DooBee and set your creativity free.

Poster for The Last Movie

In a way, I wished I’d never seen The Last Movie, the film Dennis Hopper made whilst riding high (literally) after Easy Rider. I loved the story and myth behind the film: Hopper was given $850,000 to make the picture, which he would star in, direct and have final cut. The Last Movie is a film within a film, featuring a Billy the Kid western being shot in Peru. After an accidental death on the set of the film, Kansas – a  horse wrangler and stuntman, played by Hopper – quits his job in the movies to stay on in Peru. Turns out the Hollywood shoot has inspired the locals, and they decide to make their own film, but the camera they use is made out of bamboo and the violence isn't staged, it's real, as they have no concept of film-making.

It seems Hopper’s main reason for shooting in Peru was it had then become the cocaine capital of the world. The production of the film was, according to Hopper, ‘one long sex-and-drugs orgy’, with many scenes improvised. After shooting wrapped, Hopper holed up in Taos, New Mexico, to edit the film. Around this time, directors Lawrence Schiller and LM Kit Carson (writer of Paris, Texas) rocked up to make a documentary about Hopper, called American Dreamer (also ‘lost’ for decades, then recently ‘found’ and re-released). Then cult Mexican film maker Alejandro Jodorowsky turned up, criticising Hopper’s ‘conventional’ edit of the film, encouraging him to completely re-edit the film in a non-linear, experimental style. Which Hopper duly did.

The film was finally released in 1971; it won an award at the Venice Film Festival, then played in New York for a few weeks where no one saw it, it got terrible reviews, then vanished. 'A wasteland of cinematic wreckage' Roger Ebert wrote about it at the time, but time – and not being able to see it, and a fair degree of mythologising – have been kind to The Last Movie, with critics now calling it some kind of masterpiece. I remember it being pretty hard to watch; incoherent and self-indulgent – two traits in films I normally don’t mind; so I’m quite looking forward to seeing it again – it's getting an official DVD release in November.

Supposedly being an existentialist, experimental, anti-. neo-, post-western, I was also disappointed in the rather dull original poster for the film. And the VHS cover of the film was even more bland, seeming to have nothing to do with the actual film whatsoever. So I've designed mine to feature my favourite aspect of the film – the camera made of sticks. I suddenly thought the whole stick thing reminded me of The Wicker Man, so I used similar colours to the poster of that.

On the web, alternative film posters, created by fans, have become a sub-genre in itself, with many of them capturing a film in simple, bold graphics or beautiful illustrations, where often the original poster was formulaic. They remind me of Polish film posters, produced during the communist era as an alternative to banned American publicity material, yet always stunningly surpassing the pedestrian American originals.

The Last Movie is released on DVD by Arbelos Films, on 13 November.

Coincidentally, another near-mythical film-within-a-film lost for decades is also being released in November: Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind. Welles started shooting the film in 1970, and didn’t finish until 1976. After being in limbo for forty years, it is finally being released... by Netflix on 2 November.

I don't know. Sometimes lost, forgotten, unedited or unmade films are like that for a reason. Like the impossible dreams of Jodorowsky's Dune, Kubrick's Napoleon or Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno. Films that weren't meant to be seen, but to live in the imagination of fans (or get turned into documentaries). They're always better that way.

OPEN/CLOSED, NOPE/LOSE

Danger: Electric sock risk

Previously on Barnflakes:
Cautionary advice for female graphic designers

Swan Lake

Swan feather floating on the water.

Mine over matter

Cornwall mines warning poster.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Corn + Wall = Cornwall
Padstow's 'Obby 'Oss
Beauty and the Brutalist exhibition
Barnflakes goes Cornwall
Celebrating Cornwall's mining heritage
Notes on Cornish fiction 

Be good to your fiends

See also: BARNACLES

Corn + Wall = Cornwall

50 Shades of Ray / Catching some Rays

Just two (for the price of one) concepts from the 28-page book that is It's A Shame About Ray.

Here's what people are already saying about it:

"U r a fucking genius!!!!!!"
– Christian

"Makes me want to meet the legend"
– Mel

"You must have a lot of time on your hands"
– Caspar

"Brilliant work"
– Narinder

"No comment"
– Ray

It's a Shame About Ray – the book

Yes, this is now an actual thing. What started off as a drunken laugh in the pub is now, a week later, an actual book – well, once I get it printed of course. It's a Shame About Ray – named after the classic Lemonheads album – is a tribute to production manager Ray, his B2B magazine flatplans, and the cornucopia of puns that go with the man and the name.

And what an array of Rays: from Blu-Ray, Stingray and Ray Gun to the Milky Ray, 50 Shades of Ray and Ray of Hope, all the clichés – and more – are featured in one handy 28-page, A5 booklet. A fitting panegyric to the man and his work, it is also the perfect companion to my previous Rashisms: The Book of Rash, as Ray and Rash both worked together.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The Rayfaring Stranger
Rashims: The Book of Rash

Cautionary advice for female graphic designers

Don't just be yourself

Previously on Barnflakes:
Book cover: The anatomy of human destructiveness
Class should be dictated by taste
Dream job is an oxymoron
Barnacles

Three recent coincidences

1. R had been telling me about Unit Editions, ‘a progressive publishing venture producing high-quality, affordable books on graphic design and visual culture’, that I’d never heard of, the day before. The next evening R popped round the flat (a rare occurrence btw, being allergic to my cat, Casper). A parcel was waiting for me in the doorway. I opened it up and it was a beautiful book called Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution (with ‘free’ poster), published by, yup, you guessed it, Unit Editions and costing £55 (I must take umbrage at the ‘affordable’ claim in their blurb). I hadn’t ordered it; it was sent by an old friend I hadn’t heard from for years, completely out of the blue. He thought I’d like it.

2. S and I were sipping our Greggs coffees on a bench behind a church in Greenwich. We were talking about Krautrock, Can and Stockhausen, then onto atonality and minimalism; then came Carrie and Brian de Palma, followed by Dario Argento and Italian giallo films which led on to Peter Strickland via Berberian Sound Studio and the Duke of Burgundy, then vampire films and finally, somehow, the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Fear Eats the Soul is one of my favourite films, ever). Five minutes later we were strolling around the secondhand market across the road, and S spotted a DVD box set of Fassbinder films. What are the chances? S didn’t want it, so I snapped it up immediately. 9 Fassbinder films! For £5! Barngain.

3. I was moaning on the phone to H about many things, including this very blog. 12 years I’ve been writing it, I said, and virtually no comments, no feedback, nothing in return (I blame social media for the death of blogs). Why do I bother writing it, I asked her. She didn’t know. I didn’t know. Anyway, just as I said no one ever leaves a comment, I was checking my emails and a notification came up that C (for Caspar; different spelling to my cat, so, no, they're not one and the same) had left a comment on a recent post. Faith in mankind was temporarily restored.

Sketches of unmade sculptures

The things I do and the things I don't

Alton estate of mind – the book

The Alton estate of mind book(let) is finally finished. It's a personal and architectural guide to the Grade II listed Alton estate in Roehampton, where I lived many years ago. The text is mainly the same as on this very blog (see here); some of the photos are on Flickr. But there's nothing like  holding a book (or going to an exhibition). You know, the physical, tactile thing. I still have to get it printed, mind. Watch this space (again).