ALAN HYNES

Official Mondo/Drafthouse Films screen printed poster for what critics are hailing as “the funniest movie of the year!” (IFC), KLOWN follows two wildly inappropriate friends — played by celebrated international comedians Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen — as they run amok through the Danish countryside, plowing through endless awkward confrontations and unspeakable debaucheries. Hopelessly wrongheaded Frank “kidnaps” the 12-year-old nephew of his pregnant girlfriend in an eager attempt to prove his fatherhood potential, and they join sex-crazed Casper on his secret adulterous weekend camping trip. Rampaging through exclusive brothels, hospitalizations, armed robberies and even prison, the three paddle downstream from one chaotic misadventure to the next, all culminating in a surprisingly sentimental portrait of friendship and a final shocking reveal that you’ll never be able to unsee.

The approval process for this poster was, lets say more difficult than usual. It was on, it was off, it was on again. It was a pretty hard sell. I had to pull out all the stops in order to make it happen which included a rather lengthy description of my concept and design process, part of which you can read below. It’s an 18 x 24 inch screen print in an edition of 140 which will go on sale Tuesday by following @MondoNews The image is also featured as part of the reversible sleeve art on the  Klown BluRay/Dvd available for pre-order here. Limited copies of the poster may also end up in my shop in the near future.

I watched the movie a couple of times – it’s crude, it’s subtle, it’s funny, it’s pretty messy. I really liked it. The underpants as tent idea has the subtle humor angle on a couple of different levels, but it’s the rudimentary drawing that captures the often childish nature of the film’s comedy that I believed essential to communicate. I broke out some scissors to cut the underpants shape and then quickly drew a few lines on some tracing paper. I’d never be able to repeat the carelessness of these lines after thinking about it for even a minute, so I used the very first ones I did. The trees, however, were another matter. I literally drew hundreds of them before I got them “right”. The irony of making a supposedly nonchalant sketch in this manner is not lost on me. I think it ended up somewhere between a bad copy of a Charles Schultz cartoon crossed with a Henryk Tomaszewski poster, a combo I think actually represents the film quite well.

The simplistic bold look of the poster takes a cue from the original look of Klovn series; large Futura type and negative space, very Euro. I think it’s necessary to have some sort of link to the pre-existing imagery rather than totally disregarding it over a new style. The green expanse is a nod to the drink featured so prominently in the film so coolorwise it was a no-brainer. I used the negative space between the trees to trick the eye into seeing more than just the four represented, yet it keeps the focus on the more important elements. It’s an interesting graphic device and a nice way of keeping the poster uncluttered.

Update: Lots of love for the underpants. Here’s what people are saying:

“Who is seriously going to hang this on their wall???”

“Does anyone hate this Klown poster as much as I do? When a poster looks as if I could’ve done it, it probably shouldn’t exist in the first place.”

“Clever, but I would never, ever own something like that”

“Nah…I don’t need an underwear tent print on my wall no matter how good the movie is.”

and my favorite from someone who was very annoyed at missing out on a different Mondo poster;

“I might have to rage purchase the Klown! ”

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