Soapdish - Paramount Pictures 

One of the last projects I was involved with in 1990, was Paramount Pictures, Soapdish. So, rather than go into what the movie was about here, I will tell you briefly about the concept that warranted a call to me from the movies prop department . 

At some point there was to be a small miniature puppet theater sitting in the office of producer, David Barnes, (played by Robert Downey Jr.), complete with marionette replicas of each soap opera star from the film. Now, to how and what extent these puppet  caricatures would have been utilized in the film I can't say. I did however, get to complete my caricature work for the film (as you will see below ) but by the time the  project arrived on my doorstep it had already changed one too many hands and came far too late in the films production schedule that there was very little budget left to move the project to fruition. In fact, the Whoopi Goldberg character was the only caricature that was being retained from the previous designers. The others characters:  Sally Field, as Celeste, Cathy Moriarity, as Montana, Terri Hatcher, as Ariel and Paul Johansson, as Bolt were turned over to me to illustrate. These illustrations were completed and submitted.

Here is a first time look at the  caricatures I produced for the film below. All in all, I think this would have been a fun concept and project to work on. Unfortunately, sometimes puppets  are relegated to sub-plot positions where they are viewed as inanimate objects and fall into prop department categories. This leaves very little funding allotted in the budgets to hire specially trained artisans who know their craft. I believe, in retrospect, we can see how successful this concept was employed in the 1999, film 'Being John Malcovich'. And to that end there is hope for the art. MB