Not the best resolution on this picture, but it’s the best I could find…
A lot of the posters I highlight in this column will be from the 1970’s – not only because it is a favorite film era for me personally, but also because some of the best poster artists worked at that time. This was before the much-more pedestrian use of photography became the norm for movie art in the 80’s and 90’s.
Jack Davis, the very distinctive MAD Magazine cartoonist, was the perfect choice for The Bad News Bears in 1976. His wacky, juvenile, anarchic but sly drawing style fit the story of a misfit little league baseball team like an old worn-in catcher’s mitt.
Zoom in and check out the details of the motley crew in the background. Has anyone ever captured Walter Matthau’s hound-dog mug any better? Probably only Al Hirschfeld in the New York Times. Davis gets the attitude just right. Tapping the ash from his cigar and cradling a beer bottle. Tatum O’Neal at age 14 may have been more of a challenge and the likeness is a little more generic, but he captures her confidence. Hard to believe now, but at the time, a girl playing little league baseball was still controversial, almost a political statement. Her pose on the poster says: “What’s the problem? Deal with it.” The whole irreverent style tells us, that despite the young cast, this is NOT a kid’s movie.
(And it wasn’t… It was actually a pretty sophisticated satire on the American sickness of competition, the belief that winning is everything. Like most 70’s films, it had a blunt unapologetic edge. Bill Lancaster – yep, actor Burt’s son – wrote an absolutely brilliant script, and went on to write The Thing as well)
 |
| The Bears, breaking out the beers |
The fact that Davis was the artist for all those wonderful movie parodies in MAD Magazine and was here using those talents to advertise the very same movie they would later mock was a kind of meta-perfection. That’s why I love it. It’s not the most beautiful piece of art on it’s own, obviously, but it captures a pop culture moment and is a sublime representation of a classic comedy.
Look at the weak airbrushed rip-off art they made for the weak airbrushed remake in 2005.
Ugh. The kids have been literally smoothed over and made “cool”.
They even try to make freakish Billy Bob Thornton look good.
You could write a whole thesis paper on how this sums up the different eras – the one sloppy and wild and creative, the latter cleaner and prettier and still trying to imitate the earlier time.
It also contrasts a true artist with a mere illustrator. (Sorry, Anonymous Studio Hack)
On top of his enormous legacy in hundreds of issues of MAD, Davis did similarly gonzo posters for Stanley Kramer’s It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Woody Allen’s Bananas, and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye.
Like all the greats, you know his work instantly when you see it. It’s wonderfully rude. It’s ridiculous, busy, overcrowded with detail. Wikipedia says all his characters have “distorted anatomy…big heads, skinny legs, and extremely big feet”. Yeah, so? What’s the problem? Deal with it.
Long live da’ Bears. The original uncool messy ones, with big heads and feet…
And long live Mr. Jack Davis, who turns 90 this year.
