A unique design and artwork on this English one sheet for the Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte comedy action film 48 Hrs. In 2012 I met and interviewed the artist responsible, Brian Bysouth, and the resulting article can be read here. This poster was briefly discussed:
Another favourite of mine is your painting for 48 Hrs, which features Eddie Murphy raising his middle finger. Was that from your design?
No, I can’t recall who designed that. I need to check my invoice books to confirm, as I’d always write who briefed me to do the painting. Sorry, but I never really liked that design. I’d been given poor reference material and I think Nick Nolte’s likeness is fairly dire. I spent a while on it because of that difficulty but really didn’t like the painting because I never liked the design.
This one sheet was supposedly withdrawn by the studio after Sigourney Weaver objected to the image of her toting the pulse rifle/flamethrower bundle as she is known to be staunchly anti-firearms.
Several hundred copies of the poster must have survived the withdrawal and have made their way into collectors hands. I owned a reprint of this poster before I started collecting original one sheets and the quality of the reprint was atrocious.
If anyone has any more details on this please get in touch
A brilliant quad for this John Carpenter classic, which was designed and illustrated by the British poster artist Brian Bysouth. In 2012 I met and interviewed Brian and the resulting article can be found here.
