Making the D.O.A. Film Titles
D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage Chapter 43: 1979
NARRATOR: In our last episode, John Holmstrom (the writer of this blog) revealed how the opening titles for the film were “shot with guns!” However, a few people who worked with John in those last, dying days of the 1970s PUNK Magazine have different recalls of the events leading up to the shooting. So here’s my first retraction/correction/whatever:
After I posted last week’s newsletter, Bruce Carleton (PUNK Magazine’s Art Director Emeritus since 1978, after he succeeded the eminent Hal Drellich) emailed me:
“…there was this: ‘Lech wanted the film logo (my tiny, hand-lettered D.O.A. logo sized up to a huge size) to be shattered into a million pieces. I loved this idea!’
You forgot that the idea of actually shooting DOA with a gun arose out of my original idea for the title. You had come back to the storefront on 10th and told us about our opportunity to be involved in making the titles, and said to see what we could come up with. One of my ideas was to have “DOA” full of bullet holes as if it were on glass, maybe or maybe not animated, but if so it would be regular hand-drawn stuff. Actually, I can't remember if the animation part of the idea was there originally or came after Lech had seen it and said what he wanted, but hadn’t said about an actual gunshot. I still have the original drawing of “DOA” with bullet holes through it as if it were on glass. There were other ideas too, but they weren’t as good. You later ran them by Lech and came back and said he loved the shot-with-bullets thing, but wanted to actually shoot the title-on-glass with a real gun. From that point on I was out of the loop. Clearly there was a lot that went into making that title sequence that had nothing to do with me, but I don’t want it forgotten that the germ of the idea came from my drawing.
I remember Bruce’s recollection of events back in the day. He’s right, of course. He even reminded me of this about a year ago. My apologies to Bruce. It was his idea that led to the “shooting” of the D.O.A. film title with a gun.
On the other hand, the creative decision to do whatever was always up to the film director. Privately, I didn't like a lot of his choices for the film. But to me? You always need to respect a creator’s creative decisions on how they want to produce something. This is something I expect from people whenever I launch a new magazine or project, so whenever I contribute to someone else’s creative project I try to behave in the way I would expect a collaborator who works with me on something. You can’t be “The Boss” of everyone.
Sometimes, people might accuse you of being a “sellout” or a “corporate stooge” when you work with film company or large corporation, but often you’re just doing a job for someone and expecting to get paid something in return for your work, no questions asked. Happily I can say that Lech Kowlaski paid me for my efforts.
I also heard from Elizabeth Seidman after I asked her on “FakeBook” about everything to do with shooting the titles. She spent her high school internship working for PUNK Magazine back in the day, and was also one of the Marymount High School girls who hung out at CBGB back in the day: That story is worth its own chapter some day!
She sent me this FB message after I asked her who came up with the idea of “shooting the film title” (with a gun): “Yes that is correct. I was doing my high school internship (haha) at Punk magazine. We were brainstorming and I pitched the idea and you liked it. That’s how I remember it at least.”
As I remember, Elizabeth had something to do with painting the film titles onto the glass plates that Lech Kowalski destroyed with his .22 rifle. But she doesn’t remember that… The truth is lost to history, and who gives a fuck, right? But this is “fun film trivia.”
This is what I love about collaborations: When things work out right, everyone feels that they were involved in making creative decisions. And of course, whenever something doesn’t work? They don’t wanna own it. So when someone wants to claim ownership on something, I tend to give them credit. (But sometimes liars claim ownership, then things get complicated!)
I’d guess that the idea for “shooting the titles” resulted from a group discussion held at the office, during one of those wonderful days when everyone throws ideas around, and we were all on the same page talking about how cool it would look to have bullets smashing the title sequence into bits. I do remember Bruce’s sketch of the D.O.A. logo shot with bullet holes, and he deserves ownership of the idea. Anyhow, who cares, it resulted in a cool film title sequence. But I still think we should have used a higher calibre firearm so shooting the glass plates would have been more dramatic.
I did give everyone screen credits, as well as Steve Taylor, who designed the titles for the cities the Pistols performed at. Those were published in PUNK #14, and used in the film. Steve was a wonderful person to work with, he brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm to PUNK Magazine.
I used his title graphics for the D.O.A. film, and paid him a small fee for his work. (Heck, I was paid a grand total of $900, so I did my best for the guy, he was thrilled that his lettering was being used in a feature film, so everything was cool with us forever!)
I created a video on YouTube about Steve Taylor and his contributions to the magazine when his family and I did a livestream to honor the guy. He did a lot of amazing artwork after he left New York City and settled down south. He was truly one of the most talented people I ever worked with, and everyone on the PUNK Magazine staff felt same way.
With that in mind, please check out the video I created that pays tribute to his artwork for PUNK Magazine:
LINK:
Hey, thanks for all of the offers to pay for the content I have been providing!
I might take all of you up on your generous offers.
Meanwhile, the best way to support this newsletter is by supporting my advertisers. Lots of stuff is going to happen soon, so stay tuned!
PUNK is Coming… Back!
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Thanks for the nod, John, then and now. I agree with everything you said about collaboration, credit, etc. in this case I figure Elizabeth's recollection has every likelihood of being as accurate as mine, and what actually happened was some kind of weaving of what she remembers and what I remember. Anyway, whatever my contribution to the gunshot title was, it was just one germ in the mix. Thanks for posting that movie credit with my name on it. Like you said, I must’ve been juiced a bit at the time to see it up on the screen. But the truth is I’d forgotten it was even there. Which is great! It means I get to be juiced all over again!
I didn't know Steve was approached, I only knew about Roberta's photo session (which looked great until the art department added a weird color scheme to it)... Thanks!