Back when I was working at my old job in the printing industry, the art department used to do gift exchanges. One year a co-worker gave me a DVD of an old movie from 1975 called The Phantom of the Paradise directed by Brian DePalma. The interesting thing about this gift is, the person who gave it to me just assumed I was a big fan. But I had never seen it before. In fact I had never even heard of it till I was in my 20s. Now, I don’t want to age myself here, but I will say I was around in 1975, but would have been a little young to see it. But that’s not why I had never heard of it till long after it was released. The reason for that is, although I and all of my immediate family members were born in Winnipeg, in 1975 we lived in Ottawa. And I’m sure Phantom of the Paradise was shown in that city, but like everywhere else in the world it bombed there. Well, not quite everywhere else in the world. You see, it was a huge hit in Winnipeg! There are also rumours that it did well in Paris, France too. But according to phantomoftheparadise.ca this is not confirmed, but I digress.
Anyway, I had this DVD sitting in my house for years knowing that I’d eventually watch it and one day, on a whim my wife and I did just that. And it’s a weird and wonderful romp through the genres of musicals, horror, and comedy with a 70s glam/rock twist. What’s not to like? Well, I won’t say I love it, but I didn’t grow up with it. According to Doug Carlson from phantomoftheparadise.ca, there are Winnipeggers who are probably just slightly older than me who would get a ticket for the matinee and then sit through six consecutive screenings! It was a phenomenon that probably can’t quite be understood unless you were there. And I was a solid 24 hour drive away–and that’s if you drive without stopping–Canada is big!
So why am I bringing this movie up? Well, last week an old friend of mine from junior high/high school days contacted me and suggested I do a series of paintings in my current style of characters from the movie. He figures there are enough fans on the Facebook group he runs that I could maybe sell them there. Of course, I’m always wanting to sell my work, but my biggest motivation to create paintings is interesting faces and imagery. And this movie has those things in spades. So, here is the first painting of what could become a little mini-series. This character is Winslow Leach–the Phantom himself, and I used a couple of photos as reference, one of his face after it was disfigured (the movie is based on Phantom of the Opera, as you can guess, so of course his face was damaged) and one with the helmet/mask he wore to cover it up. I’m pretty happy with the result, I have to say.
I will likely do more paintings of characters from the movie, but I’ll see how the people on the Facebook group like this one. Also, I always want to try to beat the Instagram algorithm and an image from a movie that is unknown almost everywhere (though it has become a bit of a cult movie outside of Winnipeg?) is not likely to do that. So I may spread this out a bit. Any characters from the movie you’d like to see? Once again, sorry I can’t allow comments. Hello, artmoi, can you help me on this????