Stranger Than Fiction has some very interesting graphic elements to help illustrate the written words.

Prospero’s Books? I haven’t seen it in a while.

American Psycho. (The business card scene.)

Shop Girl - the bloke (who isn’t Steve Martin) is a failed type designer.

Domino – Chris Walken’s character rants about design apparently

I’ve not seen either movie.

Truffaut loved books. In the “Mississippi Mermaid” there is a scene of the printing process of a tobaco package with the face of Catherine Deneuve, and if I remember well, in “The Man Who Loved Women” there is one or two scenes about books and printing.

I also remember a cool scene in an antique book store with Bogart in The Big Sleep.

Di Caprio is arrested in a french press in “Catch Me If You Can”.

Here’s some...
The Printer’s Devil from, 1923 -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014375/

The Font of Courage, 1917 -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0953400/

The Mafia Type, 2004 -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459451/

The Wrong Type, 1994 -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402593/

Times, 2002 -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308985/

etc., etc.,

There’re a lot of them.

— The New Age - Judy Davis is a graphic designer.

Type/typefaces (movies & tv) see the documentary: Hollywood at Last

It’s a small part, but there’s a great scene in The Lives of Others, in which a Stasi expert describes to an investigator the letterforms of the typewriter model used by a dissident writer.

> Shop Girl - the bloke (who isn’t Steve Martin) is a failed type designer.

Not exactly. He just says he’s working on a font. It’s more of a funny little line than an actual intended profession.

American Psycho with Christian Bale. There are a few great scenes where the yuppie lawyers compare typefaces and paper stock, they also mention letterpress.

I should add that the initial meeting where the cards are shown and compared gets Christian Bale’s character mad enough to kill the guy who supposedly has a nicer card.

Dustin Hoffman played an art director in Kramer vs. Kramer.
His marriage was ruined staying up all night working on ad layouts.

There’s that obscure film that recently came out. I doubt anyone on here has seen it. It’s called “Helvetica”.
:)

The main female character in De Niro/Pacino film “Heat” is a graphic designer with a copy of Fuse on her desk in one scene.

As mentioned above Patrick Bateman being upstaged by someone else’s business card is the classic one: “Oh my God, it even has a watermark!”

Any film involving a ransom note.

> Any film involving a ransom note.

The Clearing, for example.

There was a German film I saw a few years ago on TV... I think it dated from the’80s.

A famous graphic designer - head of a big firm is always wrapped up in his work. Eats sleeps and drinks design.

Design design design.

His wife is bored.

She has an affair and runs off with a hip young artist.
Uber cool young artist.

The husband responds by taking the young atist (who reminds him of himself) under his wing and turning him into an uber successful, famous designer - With whom his wife quickly becomes bored and she returns home.

The young artist’s life is destroyed by success. What a terrible revenge.

I don’t remember the name of the film though

There’s that obscure film that recently came out. I doubt anyone on here has seen it. It’s called “Helvetica”.
:)

Here, you need this: .~

(Sorry, I just had to.)

Whoa...my NetFlix queue is now 3 years long! Some good recommendations in here!

here’s a horrible film (based on a wonderful play), but the demi moore character was a graphic designer, if i remember correctly:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090583/

and again at:
www.fast-rewind.com/alnight.htm

I always loved the opening title credits for Dr. Strangelove.
As for the type being a plot element, I thought that the recreation of Times Square was well done from the recent King Kong.

On a side note: I always loved the map in Goonies, even though it is not well done, but I thought it was still cool.

-Joe

The “Out-of-Towners” starring Steve Martin as an Ad Executive who has an interview in New York. His hilarious hijinx throughout the movie become the concept for his interview presentation.
In “Catwoman” Haley Barry’s character is a Graphic Designer during the day.

Also, if you goto www.imdb.com and search for Graphic Designer or Web Designer under plots, there’s like 4 or 5 movies that come up with characters who play such roles.

Recently, I watched a show on the Sci-Fi Channel called “Mind-Control with Derren Brown” who manipulates people with subliminal messages. Here’s a video of him tricking two employees of the Saatchi and Saatchi ad agency that they’ll pitch him an idea he has already written down.
Sci Fi Pulse

In the 1991 Scorcese remake of Cape Fear, Jessica Lange’s character is a graphic designer. She has a conversation with her daughter, played by Juliette Lewis, about how to draw a logo for a travel agency. Later on, the villain Max Cady (Robert De Niro) taunts her about her “pesky little sketches”. Not quite a crucial plot point, but not a bad reference either.

I did a quick search on imdb with typographer under plot and got this response:

“Cronache di poveri amanti (1954)” : In 1925 the young florentine typographer Mario moves to via del Corno to be near his girl-friend Bianca.

“Cronache di poveri amanti” means “Chronicle of the poor lovers”. Poor because they are star-crossed or poor because he can’t make a living at typography?

Couldn’t tell you, the rest of the plot goes like this: ...Here he becomes friends with Maciste, his landlord, and Ugo, anti-fascists both of them. When Campolmi is beaten by the fascists, Mario meets Milena, Campolmi’s wife, at the hospital and falls in love with her leaving Bianca. Then Maciste is killed, again by the fascists, Ugo is wounded and he seeks shelter in ^ÓSignora^Ô’s house. Here he falls in love with Gesuina and the two marry. Campolmi dies, but Mario and Milena part themselves. Later Mario too is arrested by the police.

No mention of how much typography this guy does, or even if he keeps doing it after moving to del Corno. The movie sounds like a political romance, like “The American President”.

The Science of Sleep (2006) has a gratuitous paste up scene.

Not a movie (and perhaps not a plot element), but...

Are any of you watching the excellent new series “Mad Men,” on AMC? It’s set in a 1960 ad agency in NYC. One of the episodes showed the executives bemusedly tossing back and forth the Doyle Dane Bernbach Volkswagen “Lemon” print ad.

Although not specifically about type or graphic design, Crazy People starring Dudley Moore comes to mind.

- Lex

“Are any of you watching the excellent new series “Mad Men,” on AMC?”

I watched the pilot. I enjoyed the vibe of the era, and the cute jokes that reference the future (“there is no imaginary machine that can make perfect copies of paper reports”). But I’m not sure if they can drag an entire series along with that. Has the series remained watchable?

> Has the series remained watchable?

Why not. This is top 10 production!

Pillow Book, by Peter Greenaway

“Why not. This is top 10 production!”

;o)

The issue I had was that I wasn’t sure there was a plot. OK, ad men. Suits. Booze. Machismo. Plot?

BTW, “The Ninth Gate” is based on (about half of) the book “The Club Dumas.” I recommend the book much more highly, though I quite enjoyed the film. The radically different endings between the two are an interesting discussion item for those who’ve experienced both.

Also, note that the all-important book everyone’s dying over in “The Ninth Gate” is a thinly-fictionalized version of the actual book “Hypnerotamachia Poliphili” (erotic dreams of Poliphilus), printed by Aldus in 1499. It’s a stunning book, with cool typography and imagery. Another fictional unravelling of the secrets of this same book, but under its real name, is also the inspiration for the best-selling thriller “The Rule of Four,” which is also being made into a film.

Oddly, the Wikipedia pages on “The Ninth Gate” and “The Club Dumas” don’t even mention the Hypnerotomachia.

Dang, must get back to work. :)

Cheers,

T

Burgess Meredith plays an expert Lin-o-type operator who turns out to be Satan.

That would explain how he eventually became the head of the company.

I don’t know exactly if this is what you meant, but I had to think about the movie ’pi’, which is based around all kinds of spooky meanings and theories of the mathematical sign ’pi’.

cheers Queneau

_Pi_ had a great soundtrack.

Burgess Meredith plays an expert Lin-o-type operator who turns out to be Satan.

That would explain how he eventually became the head of the company.

even Satan had to work his way up!

> even Satan had to work his way up!

And wouldn’t you know his minions would be lawyers.
; )

Burgess?
New thread anyone?
The devil made me do it.

“even Satan had to work his way up!”

He had to work his way out of the Hellbox :-)

ChrisL

He had to work his way out of the Hellbox

Wasn’t Hell appropriately in Linotype’s name at one time? Or did I dream that? (is that what this reference is to?)

fp- the hellbox is where typesetter’s would toss discarded lead characters

I remember going to an exhibition of printing equipment way back when...

The was the Linotype booth, the Hiebleburg booth, and way, way off in the distancer was this huge sign that said “HELL”

It’s now Linotype-Hell, I believe.

Linotype–Hell AG was in existence from c. 1989 to 1997. Linotype AG acquired Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH in 1989, and then changed its company name. Heidelberg acquired Linotype–Hell AG around 1997, at which point Linotype Library GmbH was formed (Heidelberg AG sold Linotype in 2006). The “Library” was dropped from Linotype’s name in 2005, and the company is now known simply as Linotype GmbH.

“Hell” was a great company. Its founder (Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell) invented both the fax machine and the scanner. They also created the world’s first digital typesetting machine, the DigiSet, in 1968 I believe. Many designers, including Hermann Zaps and Gerard Unger, worked for Hell for a time. Note that they were both freelancers or external employees, as far as I know. This is important, because of the differentiation it creates—while they may have worked for Hell, they did not work in Hell. Hell’s offices, of course, were located in Kiel, a port city in Northern Germany.

Some may be sad to hear that “Hell” no longer exists ;-)

Some may be sad to hear that “Hell” no longer exists ;-)

LOL. It does appear to be a kinder and friendlier company these days.

I’m sorry but IMHO the Ninth Gate is awful and rates among my worst films of all time; there was no ending and at times I felt like I was watching a Range rover ad. I couldn’t believe Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp had produced this. Sorry if I missed something.

> Hell’s offices, of course, were located in Kiel, a port city in Northern Germany.

Is it true that a few winters back Hell froze over? I think it was a few months before Monotype purchased Linotype? ;-)

I’m sorry but IMHO the Ninth Gate is awful and rates among my worst films of all time...

That’s half the reason I loved it. The Ninth Gate like watching a bigger-budget Hammer or American International Pictures film. It has overacting, cheesy dialogue, gratuitous bosoms, and with the nerdiest plot to hit a film since Wargames.

I couldn’t believe Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp had produced this.

Polanski has a dearth of critical thinking skills that tend to get him into all sorts of trouble. Thankfully he’s been limiting that trouble to crummy movies for a while now. But yeah, Depp should have known better.

Polanski has a dearth of critical thinking skills that tend to get him into all sorts of trouble.

Oh right? So is this movie kinda formalist? I can see the Hammer thing; and I’m sure I must have missed something; Chinatown/Rosemary’s Baby are so good and you just can’t usually fault Depp on his movie choices... it just seemed so spectaularly bad that there must be a deeper (or shallower) meaning that’s hidden to the casual viewer. Surely. Or perhaps it was just that making advertisements for Shell (? pretty sure it was shell) and Range Rover was worth it so that other and better movies could get made. I remember one shot that made us laugh out loud, Depp is walking down a otherwise dark and dingy London street completely emptied of any colour apart from a huge and glowing Shell sign attched to a building behind him!

A similar if less sophisticated device of the type used by Stranger than fiction was used in Fight club; As Ed Norton’s character walks around the aparment, everything progressively appears and is labelled and priced so it looks like an IKEA catalogue . And you can’t mention type in films and David Fincher without talking about the awesome opening titles in Se7en featuring the feverish obsessive scratchings of Kevin Spacey’s Psychopathic serial-killer.

There’s a neat little Russian import called “Night Watch” that got pretty creative with the subtitles on the dvd here in the U.S. (and maybe at the theaters too?). I’ve never seen subs treated that way before, and thought it was an excellent idea. They added a whole new dimension to the movie by animating the type, and was like the subtitles became another character in the movie. Did nobody mention this?

Beats plain old 24 point arial all the way through.

Another one by Peter Greenaway — with a lot of type, if I remember correctly: Prospero’s Books
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102722/

___
Bert Vanderveen BNO

[Edit: Sorry, that’s already been mentioned.]

...I’m sure I must have missed something; Chinatown/Rosemary’s Baby are so good...

I tend to see Polanski as perpetually overrated. But I also think the same about Vertigo and Citizen Kane, so my views on cinema are far from agreement with film buffs.

I enjoyed A Merry War, featuring Richard E. Grant as a copywriter and Helena Bonham Carter as a graphic designer who meet at work. (And not just because I’m a copywriter who married a graphic designer.)

“Grant stars as Gordon Comstock, a successful copywriter at a flourishing advertising firm in 1930’s London. His girlfriend and coworker, Rosemary (Bonham-Carter), fears he may never settle down with her when he suddenly disavows his money-based lifestyle and quits his job for the artistic satisfaction of writing poetry. Based on George Orwell’s novel “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”.”

Rotten Tomatoes review | IMDB Entry

I loved The Pianist and Oliver Twist, especially the outdoor mise-en-scènes. Recreating 19th century London from Doré prints—brilliant.

Can’t overlook some of the earliest American interactive films, e.g., Merrie Melodies, Silly Symphonies, and others from the late 1920s and early ’30s. The karaoke of their time, these bouncing ball sing-alongs were nothing without lyrics and the beat. The “type” was hand-lettered, but still an essential - - sometimes the only - - element of plot in these forerunners of music video. The films were designed to promote pop music.

Don’t forget the relatively recent remake of 13 Ghosts where the Da Vinci handwriting font has a larger role, better acted and with considerably more screen time than F. Murray Abraham and Matthew Lillard added together.

Dave Nalle
Scriptorium Fonts

Well, look what the cat dragged in.

(and I meant that in a good way)
; )