Died Young, Stayed Pretty: Movie Screening

On Monday, I'm glad I went to the, "Died Young, Stayed Pretty" movie screening. The director was a woman named Eileen Yaghoobian.

The movie followed a number of artists across the country who make event posters for small rock bands around the country. These are not the posters that you see in cheap plexiglass display cases at the mall. These are the kind that you see stapled to telephone poles and bus stops.

All of the poster artists felt like they belonged to something that they believed in. The subculture that Yaghoobian studies was able to reach new growth with the help of a website called gigposters.com. This website allowed once ephemeral posters to be stapled onto the internet forever.

Here's an interesting collection of quotes from the movie. They may not be word for word exactly.

"Gigposters.com creates a community for a bunch of people that don't have one...allows a group of people to share one mindset."

"People that haven't done anything with their lives realize it and do something that makes them think they have accomplished something...like collecting Star Trek toys."

"Culture is something that you shovel out your window so you don't drown from it in the night...that's why you can't be a sponge."

"The happy face...the most ubiquitous piece of graphic design around...it's the American version of the Swastika."

"Drugs and alcohol dull creativity...make things appear better. We lower our standards. We should instead focus on being bored, sober and creative...and actually making things better."

"As long as the world keeps playing the ice cream song, the world can't be that bad of a place."