SPOTLIGHT ON
DROP DEAD
GORGEOUS
BY TODD HEUGHENS
2.05.2024
As a child, I was obsessed with horror films. I loved them all, from Frankenstein and The Mummy to Night of the Living Dead, The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. It was the theatricality and imagination, but also that creepy and disturbing scare factor. If I wasn't watching horror I was drawing its characters - Dracula, The Werewolf, Creature from the Black Lagoon. This was before gore took over and became its own genre and the focus of most modern horror. I preferred films like Psycho, where violent murder was handled in a much more artistic way and there was something left to the imagination.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW…
FLASH FORWARD
Flash forward almost thirty years and I'm working at FX on a new project from Ryan Murphy. The show is called American Horror Story. The concept of the show is that each season features a completely new story which will be inspired by and/or pay homage to the great horror films of the past! What a gift. And it was a gift that kept on giving. The president of marketing, Stephanie Gibbons, and the CEO of FX, John Landgraf were keen on pushing the envelope and creating campaigns that were unlike anything the world had seen to promote a television show. The key became the amalgamation of three things: the Ryan Murphy brand, the FX brand and a new and modern take on different genres of horror.
For the key art specifically, the goal was to create images that stopped you in your tracks. These were not didactic posters. They made you ask more questions than they answered. They were polarizing. They could verge on shocking, but were always beautiful. Several times there was a lot of publicity surrounding certain factions of the community demanding the billboards be taken down, resulting, of course, in more attention to the campaign and the show! Over the years, I found myself disappointed if the outdoor campaign didn't cause at least somewhat of an uproar. Looking back on the massive body of work we created for this property (some of which you see here) I think it's pretty clear we understood the assignment!
We collaborated with Frank Ockenfels III on most of the key art campaigns, with Matthias Clamer stepping in to shoot season 4 and Pari Dukovic shooting season 11. Kurt Iswarienko also came in to shoot some amazing gallery photography for seasons 8 and 9. The gallery was as exciting to shoot as the key art. This is where we featured our amazing talent - Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, Evan Peters, among a slew of other incredible actors - with a unique concept each year, inspired by the horror genre or genres explored that season.
Who knew that horror would come back around for me as a major highlight of my life and career. Working on these campaigns was such fun, but also challenged me in ways I could not have predicted and tapped into a depth of creativity I didn't know I possessed.
Thanks FX and thanks Ryan Murphy for the ultimate challenge and incredible reward.
