Big Trouble in Little China 30th Anniversary

•

Big Trouble in Little China:
30th Anniversary 2-CD Limited Edition Soundtrack
La-La Land Records, 2016

Although labeled a box office disappointment when it debuted in the summer of 1986, director John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (his fourth pairing with frequent star Kurt Russell) was soon embraced by cult movie fans as a misunderstood classic, a subversive East meets West action-comedy blending Chinese mythology with American screwball hijinks.

Carpenter and co-composer Alan Howarth’s music for the film—a mix of Carpenter’s atmospheric synth textures with traditional rock ’n’ roll—had been released in complete form by La-La Land Records some years back but, as is often the case with these limited edition titles, had quickly sold out. This 2016 re-pressing was released in time to mark the 30th anniversary of the film. While the music is identical to that previous edition, this album features all-new liner notes by Jeff Bond and all-new packaging by, well, me.

Above: Previous album covers and CD editions, including the original La-La Land release that sold out (far right) cropped tight on the image of Kurt Russell's Jack Burton character

That previous La-La Land CD release of the Big Trouble score had used the film’s 1986 theatrical poster designed and painted by Drew Struzan. Struzan’s mixed-media paintings dominated multiplexes for much of the 1980s, having adorned the posters for many of the era’s biggest films: Back to the Future, The Cannonball Run and its sequel, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Blade Runner, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Goonies, Rambo, the first four trips to Police Academy, and many others — including one of John Carpenter’s previous films, his remake of the The Thing.

I’ve worked on a few other soundtrack albums featuring Struzan’s artwork in the past and a familiar theme consistently emerges: formatting the vertical poster art for a square CD cover unavoidably means either condensing, cropping, or shrinking-to-fit, with that last option proving least desirable since much of the painting's detail and linework is all but obscured when reproduced at such small sizes. Struzan’s Hook poster was designed in such a way that I was able to condense the artwork, blending the top with the bottom while still allowing room for the title treatment.

Nothing so drastic was needed for the new Big Trouble CD, since the album producers wanted to see the entire artwork, if possible. In the end, all that was needed was some shortening of the bottom portion of the poster art. More effort was spent recreating the logotypes, which had been embedded in Struzan's original artwork off the right shoulder of the Kurt Rusell figure but needed to be moved to a more central location for the new CD cover.

The Big Trouble in Little China logo was redrawn first in black and white, then painted in Photoshop to match the original marketing materials.

This horizontal treatment of the logo was created from scratch in order to use the familiar logo on the thin space provided by the CD spine label.

In addition to the Struzan U.S. theatrical poster, a second cover design was prepared showcasing a lesser-known overseas marketing image. Here, the pulp-inspired painting was more flexible to the proportions of a CD cover, but the best image that could be found suffered from the wear and tear erosion caused by keeping an old poster folded. These fold lines had to be digitally touched out, and, in certain places, covered over with alternate imagery from less impressive scans of less-damaged posters. The final retouched artwork was used as an alternate cover in the finished booklet.

Finally, the below image of the complete album packaging was photographed and digitally enhanced to be used in promotional materials and shareable graphics for social media by the album producers when the release was announced for pre-orders.