“I like to have a professional attitude!”

Original watercolor sketches for the ‘living’ magazine covers in the Adult Bookstore set in ’My Own Private Idaho.’ In the film, Mike & Scott (played by River Phoenix & Keanu Reeves,) appear as cover models who come to life and start chatting from one magazine to another on the shelves. We had piles of promotional porn mags from one of the publishers to use as background dressing, and the covers of those were my research. The real covers had fantastic bright palettes, and very witty teaser captions. I did a separate watercolor sketch for each cover and it was a hilarious design project. River Phoenix actually hung out in the art department running his lines now and again, and I’m pretty sure he was the one who came up with the line ‘Go Down On History’ which graced his cover. I’ve recomposed and animated the watercolors here with a Bill Stafford pedal steel track recorded for the film. The title is a line of dialogue from the scene.