I Love You Phillip Morris Poster

I Love You Phillip Morris Poster
It's yellow
Source: Collider

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At first glance it's just a picture of a smiley Jim Carrey, wearing a perfectly respectable tie and carrying a perfectly respectable briefcase. But there's something decidedly off-kilter about this poster for I Love You Phillip Morris, which co-stars Ewan MGregor. Maybe it's just funnier the more you know about the movie.

If you've been following the saga, you'll know that the film, by the writer/director team behind Bad Santa, is the story of a married cop from Texas (Carrey's Steven Russell) who comes out of the closet and then turns conman to fund his new flamboyant lifestyle. Eventually imprisoned, he falls in love with his cellmate, McGregor's titular Morris.

It's a true story (the eagle-eyed Collider have spotted "this happened. It really did." in the poster's small print). Russell ended up with a jail sentence of more than a hundred years after repeated escape attempts.

But the film, the gay content of which is apparently rather strong (Variety describes a "spectacular ride-'em-cowboy sex scene" in the first ten minutes), caused something of a panic among potential distributors, causing numerous jittery recuts. At one point it even looked as if the film would be buried straight-to-DVD in the States.

Reasonable word-of-mouth from Sundance helped though, and the film was in (crowded) competition for this year's Camera D'or at Cannes. Consolidated Pictures eventually picked up distribution, and we'll finally see Jim and Ewan going at it early next year.

And back to that poster, which we're really starting to love. An all-American Norman Rockwell image for a film that bits of the American establishment already hated and feared months before its release. Priceless.

Source: EmpireOnline