Marshall and the Movies

Freshman year

I recently graduated from college, and I will miss it for a number of reasons.  But one I did not realize until recently was how much I am going to miss the easy dorm room decor.  For me, it was all as simple as a movie poster and some sticky tack.  Now, I am actually going to have to buy frames … maybe even ones that match the color of the poster or the room.

(You might be asking how on earth I got these posters, and I’ll tell you that I was lucky to have a connection with a promoter and an exhibitor.  But if you don’t have those contacts, never fear!  Many iconic posters that you may well have seen in homes, bedrooms and offices now that they’re readily available through services like Fast Print posters.)

The posters in my room rotated from year to year, although I sadly only have pictures of freshman and senior year.

In my first year of college, I came armed with posters for two films that had yet to open, “Moneyball” and “The Ides of March.”  After the latter fell short of lofty expectations, I took it down.  For some odd reason, I turned down one of my hall-mates’ offer to buy the “Moneyball” poster for $10.  Why was I so stupid?  That would have paid for the ticket!

By sophomore year, I turned to a different mix: “The Social Network” and “Hitchcock,” with smaller posters for “Les Misérables,” “Black Swan,” “127 Hours,” and “Skyfall” adorning my radiator.  I mean, why have any white space?

I spent first semester of my junior year abroad in a dorm room where I was not allowed to hang anything on my walls.  That spirit, I suppose, came back home with me for second semester.  I hardly had any posters because most of them had torn and frayed from being well-loved.  When someone visited my room and saw the sparse decoration, they compared it to a prison cell.  I later added a “12 Years a Slave” poster, but that did little to alleviate things since it had a primarily white background.

Senior Year

Senior year, though, I went all out.  At one point, I had five 27×40 posters adorning the walls in my room, plus one in my closet and three smaller posters scattered throughout.  Oh, and a “22 Jump Street” poster in my suite common area.

The senior showcase included:

• “American Hustle”
• “The Master“
• “Men, Women & Children” (the poster is gorgeous, ok?!)
• “The Immigrant“
• “Blue Jasmine” (behind my door)
• “The Past” (in my closet)
• Smaller posters of “Boyhood,” “Midnight in Paris,” and “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” (they gave it away at the 8pm showing)

I only kept a few of these, knowing that the potential for them to actually hang in my apartment after graduation was slim.  Besides, I have much nicer framed Cannes Film Festival posters from my two years attending the event.

Movie posters served as a convenient expression of my taste in college, where no one cared if anything was ornate or fancy.  Now, I am going to have to step up my game to communicate the same thing about myself with pieces of paper that serve more as “art” than a piece of “marketing material.”