Here in LA, Universal Studios has launched a new ad campaign seemingly inspired by hitchhiking, panhandling, and homelessness. The billboard on the corner of their property at Barham shows a family holding a sign reading “A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES” – a bit unclear if that’s what the family was looking for, or had already achieved (and felt the need to tell you by scrawling it on cardboard?). When I saw it I thought it had to be the all-time worst ad I’d ever seen for a theme park. But after scanning their site for a photo of the billboard (because I HAD to blog about it) I discovered they’d shot a whole commercial with the “people holding cardboard signs” concept – only, the people in the commercial look gloomy and we never see a vehicle or magic Universal Studios bus come to pick them up, the camera simply drives past as if they were just another Mexican selling oranges in the median.

So I shlepped down the hill in the rain to photograph the billboard when – oh heaven – there was an actual homeless person standing on the corner holding his own cardboard sign in front of the fake family holding their cardboard sign. His name was Ruben and he hadn’t noticed the ironic nature of the composition he was part of. (I took his pic then gave him five bucks.)

Which brings me to the moment when I offer Universal Studios my own free bad PR idea: Go guerrilla marketing with this and pay the panhandlers of LA to hold your cardboard signs. They’re already standing at the busiest intersections, only now, instead of spare change, they’ll be begging to be taken to the “Jurassic Park River Plunge” – and just like the people in the commercial, everyone will ignore them.

In other theme park advertising news, Disney, wisely deciding to take their campaign in a more upscale direction, hired Annie Leibovitz to shoot celebrities playing dress up in designer versions of Disney character costumes. (A $325,000 Harry Winston tiara and Steuben glass slippers for Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella.)

It’s a smart idea and the execution is brilliant. Mostly so because they’re a tad dark in tone but also because the celeb’s expressions are more complex than the beaming smile one would’ve expected in such an ad. Look at Beyonce in the spinning teacup, she’s not squealing like a little girl, she reclining in a VIP lounge, teasing you with that hand on her lap. Granted, I don’t see a conceptual reason it had to be celebrities, but it does ensure more press and one can hardly fault a company for trying to get that.

The print versions will run in Conde Nast publications including Vanity Fair, GQ, and Vogue, with the aim of attracting an older more sophisticated audience.

The decision to represent the Disney parks as high-end adult amusements is not a new idea though.
John Hench, Herbert Ryman, and other designers of the original Disney parks consistently saw a day at Disneyland as such. In a 1960’s Hench rendering of the Circlevision 360 theater in Tomorrowland, women clutch their furs as if it were a night at the opera. And a late 1970’s Ryman concept painting suggests a visit to Epcot was worthy of nothing less than your Sunday best, then in 1988, he painted formal evening attire on those watching the fireworks over Euro Disneyland.

But my favorite example of promoting Disney parks as more adult fare is a 1970’s Walt Disney World shopping bag (it hangs framed on my wall) with a spectacular graphic design featuring Mickey (the walk-around version, not the cartoon) and the castle, but not a single child. There’s a couple clinking wine glasses over lobster, a chef, jazz musician, hula dancer, and nightclub singer, a man golfing, a couple in a canoe,  a woman on horseback, another playing tennis - and everyone riding Dumbo and Space Mountain, they’re all adults.

Interesting aside: When Walt was planning the Florida parks, which he didn’t live to see, he’d imagined they’d be visited primarily by a sophisticated east coast clientele which would require a more elegant theme park experience than the casual west coast atmosphere of Disneyland. Boy was he wrong about that one.

But that’s a whole other tangent, so I’ll just say, I hope the Leibovitz promos do change any perception that the Disney parks are all cotton candy and culturally empty calories because there is an elegance, maturity, and complexity built into those parks (maybe not always maintained, but there nevertheless) and it’s refreshing to see it acknowledged again.

It sells for $75 at Karmaloop. It’s from CLH, which, according to UrbanDictionary.com is an acronym for Creating Limitless Heights, and describes CLH as: “A tight ass urban clothing line worn by none other than Cash Money himself. The hoodies they do be so fresh to def dat dem bitches be all up on you like stank on sheeeit.”

I don’t know who Cash Money is and I don’t need bitches up on me like stank on sheeeit, I just think the hoody is pretty.

See Hussein Chalayan’s latest runway collection where garments change color, shape, and length - while being worn. The show concludes with an entire dress being consumed by the model’s hat. I’m shocked, stunned, and jolted.

Here’s a link to a high quality video of the entire show.

The Film:

In 1923 Cecil B. DeMille filmed the Ten Commandments, a film he’d make again in 1954 with full color and sound. At the time, its sets were the largest ever made; the walls of The City of the Pharaoh were 720 feet long, 120 feet high and required 1,500 laborers to create. When filming was complete Cecil ordered the sets toppled and buried to prevent rival film crews from using them. The film itself was hugely successful and more than recovered the cost of production making over $4 million.

The Designer:

In 1906, designer and illustrator Paul Iribe launched the satirical journal Le Témoin (The Witness), a weekly anti-fascist publication produced with artists Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, and others. Two years later, Iribe became famous among the design community after illustrating a brochure of Paul Poiret’s new fashion collection with clean, elegant lines and flat color. Shortly after, Iribe opened his own studio and began designing fashion, fabrics, and home furnishings, Mesopotamian inspired works art historians would later cite as the beginning of the art deco movement. Iribe then moved to New York after WWI and began working for Vogue. By the 1920’s, he’d traveled west to take part in that new moving picture business where one of his first jobs was designing the giant sets for DeMille’s 1923, Ten Commandments. After designing and directing several films in Hollywood, he moved back to Paris and designed a jewelry collection for Coco Chanel, a woman he would be romantically linked to although never marry. He died in 1935 at 52.

The Ruins:

In 1998 I heard about “The Lost City of DeMille,�? as it has come to be known, and insisted I see it for myself. This was in the early days of the internet and all I had to go on was “it was filmed 100 miles north of LA in dunes near the ocean.�? I got out my maps and the only dunes I could find were near a small town called Guadalupe. So I told my college roommate we were going on an adventure to see some real fake Egyptian ruins. He was game and we headed off up the coast. Nearly 200 miles later (not 100) we were there. (Well, I’m leaving out us getting lost and the car sinking in the sand.)

The exact location was easy to spot. It was the one dune covered in plaster debris. The sand was so soft we could reach our arm in and feel the whole set right under us. But we didn’t even need to dig; whole areas were exposed, including a hand (of Ramses?) lying on the sand. Because the film was shot in a duo-tone process, giving some range of color but not the full spectrum, the sets were painted in color, color that was still intact on unexposed pieces.

I’ve since read that excavations were underway, and a team was brought in with ground-penetrating radar that revealed as much as two-thirds of the set were still burried. So a month ago (September 2006) I went back to see the progress. Sadly, there is no progress; the dunes look the same. Only now you can’t even see what was there because the Ten Commandments ruins share the dunes with the Snowy Plover, an endangered bird. The entire area is roped off now with signs every 20 feet all the way to the ocean.

This is all well and good, save the birds, protect the set, but nothing seems to be happening in terms of raising money for an excavation. I’m not surprised Hollywood doesn’t care, they’ve never seemed too interested in their own history, but you’d think the art and design world could pool resources to uncover Iribe’s sets. Considering his chairs from the same period sell for $15,000, and an Iribe cabinet auctioned at Christie’s earlier this year was valued at $750,000(!), you’d think his set would be worth something to someone. Until then, if you want to see the sets you’ll have to settle for the artifacts on display at the charming craftsman style bungalow that houses the Dunes Center in Guadalupe.

For more info:

The Lost City of DeMille

The Dunes Center

‘Claw’ porcelain candle holder, set of 4 ‘memento mori’ porcelain skull plates, and silver skull paperweight can be found at Unica Home. See all of Mr. Little’s world at D. L. & Co..

Previously: Skeleton Dinnerware For Every Budget

Attaboy’s Study for Squid Invasion and Christian Montenegro’s Up North Mix.

This new lace fabric from Timorous Beasties would be perfect for my guest bedroom.

Visit the foundation.

Amazing wildlife illustrator, Charley Harper has a second set of skateboard decks out for Habitat and has liscensed his art for use on accesories and fabrics for the Todd Oldham Collection at La-Z-boy. (In NY? There’s a party for him next week.)

Todd is totally crazy about Charley and is finishing a massive book of him and his art for Regan Books that’ll be out this winter. Oh and FTD is making Todd Oldham branded flower arangements. I like these two:

Things I’d like for my yet-to-be-built catacomb themed dinning room: Bronze skull lamp from Blackman Cruz and silver skeletal serving set by Michael Aram from Zipper.

While the U.S. Vogue does another safe Nicole Kidman shoot Italian Vogue delivers fierce insect/vampire insanity.