Review: ‘Drew: The Man Behind the Poster’

“Drew: The Man Behind the Poster” is a documentary about artist Drew Struzan, the man responsible for many of the most iconic movie posters and images of the last thirty years. Many people would be shocked to see how many different posters they have seen that have all been made by the same guy, and this documentary gives everyone a chance to apprecaite the work of Drew Struzan through the years and hopefully will even help more people learn this guy’s name and appreciate his contributions to cinema and to art in general.

And Struzan appreciation is the name of the game with this film, as it is just all about how awesome this guy is and how much everyone likes him and his work, and he is interviewed throughout the movie along with his wife and indeed he comes across as a very nice and very likeable fellow, one who seems almost embarassed by the attention, despite the fact that he created the amazing posters for movies like “Back to the Future,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and oh yeah “Star Wars.” And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as Struzan made posters for well over hundred different major movies (and some not so major) and many of these works get their moment in this film, with a surprising amount of time spent on his work on the “Police Academy” posters and with Steve Guttenberg himself talking about the posters.

Joining Guttenberg in the parade of talking heads exalting Drew Struzan’s work includes a long list of nobodies like Michael J. Fox, Frank Darabont, Thomas Jane, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Guillermo Del Toro, and they all have stories about either giving Struzan an idea and having him bring it to life, or allowing him to come up with something on his own and being totally happy with whatever he came up with, or even in the case of Del Toro how he personally commissioned work from Struzan for “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Hellboy” and “Hellboy II,” work which turned our characteristically excellent and which of course went unused by the marketing executives in charge of such decisions, instead going with the ever-popular and oh so bland “floating giant heads” posters instead.

Outside of saying how awesome Drew Struzan is and putting into context the breadth and influence of his work in the movie industry, there is not much else to this documentary. It doesn’t get too deep into Drew’s life outside of his dealings with the art world, and besides for briefly touching on the industry’s aformentioned practice of using bland imagery for selling movies, this film doesn’t really highlight any problems or issues. It just wants everyone to like Drew Struzan and his work.

I guess that’s good enough. I mean, he made the poster for “The Thing” after all.