Bill Gold RIP (For Your Eyes Only)

The chap behind this, has passed.

Sad news - he really stood for the art of the movie poster, something that has ridiculously gone out of fashion in the age of photoshopping faces of actors together with no artistic idea.

It’s a lost art, that’s for sure. Bond posters aren’t what they used to be.

RIP, Bill.

Very sad news. Gold‘s œuvre is testament to a bygone era; he created some of the truly iconic images in movie poster art.

R. I. P.

One of the great ones. RIP.

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Those FYEO posters are great–both the US and UK versions. Remember the controversy they generated?

Oh, yes - how tame they now appear…

Tame in general, yeah. Tame compared to current movie posters? Not really. Movie posters are even more risk averse than the movies they advertise these days. This era of Bond posters have been the least inspiring of all; Craig standing or walking, looking grumpy. Holding a gun. Woo?

I guess it is quite hard to come up with variations on the Bond-holding-a-gun poster though: it’s what the FYEO poster basically was, and they essentially ripped that off themselves for the Living Daylights one! :slight_smile:

I agree. The posters for CR were still quite nice - but QOS, SF and SP were visually disappointing.

Hopefully, Universal has better ideas.

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But while we lament, we all Do know the reasoning behind this… Right? While there may indeed be many artists looking to do something amazing, in this day and age, what with the poster now being a very small part of the campaign, there really isn’t any point. I would say the poster is almost redundant. And then there will be the contractually obliged artists’ need to take up x% of the whole poster, be taller, be bigger than the co-star.

It is exactly the same with book covers. Lovely bits of art in the 1950’s. Pan Book covers, for eg. A bloody big title / author name in the 2010’s.

I actually don’t think one has to resort to painting to assure a good design. But I do think some very skilful and artistic photography could be amazing. But, in this day and age where things-video take up the majority of the promoting, there is just no point, I feel…

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I did really like the one of multiple Craigs walking along sideways: I think they should have used that more.

I guess the Skyfall one of him laying down and shooting was vaguely different to anything we’ve had before, if not terribly clever.

Yes: it’s what the Goldfinger one was, after all. And the For Your Eyes Only one we’re even talking about here was photographic.

I would like to see a really lovely photographic Bond poster: a bit like the The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo posters- basically a fashion magazine shoot. The Casino Royale teaser with Bond sitting at the card table was in the right sort of ballpark.

CASINO ROYALE’s teaser poster remains a highlight.

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