Interview Filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian puts ink on celluloid

Died Young, Stayed Pretty was an exercise in endurance. It took Canadian filmmaker Eileen Yaghoobian a shoestring budget, hundreds of miles, four years, and tons of footage to complete her portrait of the oft-neglected figures behind the vibrant subculture of rock poster art. After discovering massive online poster archive GigPosters.com, she was inspired to hunt down dozens of artists (among them, Art Chantry, Tyler Stout, and Keith Herzik) to candidly discuss the worlds that they’ve created on paper. Yaghoobian—who appears tonight at the Starz FilmCenter to open the film's weeklong run—spoke with The A.V. Club about travel, fame, and her fondest on-site experiences.

The A.V. Club: What was the first thing you filmed?

Eileen Yaghoobian: I started at Flatstock [in Seattle]. I had a little crew with me—a DP and a sound guy—for only four days out of the three years I was filming. We had a list of 30 to 40 people that I interviewed. I knew everything I could know about them; the posters they made, their dialogue on GigPosters. I wanted to take them out of their poster convention setting and film them in locations around the area. From there, I had 15 hours of footage and the material was amazing. I brought it back and figured out who I was going to key in on in the cities that I went to film (Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis). It was three years of solo filming and I had 150 hours of footage that I cut down to the feature-length movie.

AVC: Did you get the impression that these poster artists were content with their level of fame or did they want more?

EY: I don’t know. They are getting better known. [Laughs.] Before GigPosters, [rock poster art] existed but it wasn’t worldwide. The people in the town saw the poster and maybe some friends from out of town, but it wasn’t on this site where everyone can see it. In that way, that’s dissipated regionalism. Because of GigPosters, they are meshing together. In the trailer, [an artist] talks about using the color pink. He wants to use this octopus image, but then talks about how pink is overdone and he wouldn’t use it. As far as fame goes, they are definitely getting more recognition. Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster is up to the front; they don’t really connect him as a rock poster guy, but he is one of them.

I think that our world has flipped them off. These guys are on the fringes. High art and design have to do with the money, but as far as rock posters go, they’re not making any money. They are doing it because they are fans of music. Very few sustain themselves on just rock posters, most sustain themselves on design. 

AVC: What are your fondest memories from shooting?

EY: In doing location filming, every moment is amazing. Wrapping my movie with Brian Chippendale was a pleasure. All the questions I had after three years of filming he naturally answered. He gave me the most wonderful ending. It was a one-take and a gift of documentary filmmaking. Getting to film DMBQ at Emo’s; [Mana Nishiura], who was the drummer of Shonen Knife, ended up six months later passing away. I got some amazing footage of them. It’s the process that’s really memorable, although it was extremely difficult. It was a huge sacrifice to make the film.

AVC: It’s an investment, though.

EY: Yeah, I really wanted to make a movie that was the real thing. I didn’t want to just show up in people’s studios and do an interview for three hours and leave. I wanted transparency, honesty, and truth. I think that comes across in the film.