Petr Sís: My Amadeus poster was incredible calling card in US
The Czech-born, US-based illustrator and writer Petr Sís has just seen the publication of his latest work, a book of In Praise of Mystery by American poet laureate Ada Limon. In a project years in the making, the poem has also been etched onto a NASA spaceship bound for Jupiter’s moon Europa. In an interview from his home in New York State, Sís discussed the new book as well as his poster for the multiple Oscar-winning movie Amadeus, released four decades ago this year. He also shared some insights into his latest project, which takes inspiration from his own colourful experiences in the US around the same time.
At the start of this month a new book of yours came out, In Praise of Mystery – what is the story behind In Praise of Mystery?
“In Praise of Mystery came to me through the agent and the publisher last November. They said, We think maybe you won’t want to do this. And I had no knowledge about poet laureates.
“This is very interesting, because it’s a poet laureate, a 40-something woman, Ada Limon, who’s very sort of fiery. And she was doing a lot for poetry but also she was commissioned by NASA and the Library of Congress to write a poem for this mission, which is going to the moon of Jupiter.
“It’s a very important mission because the scientists suspect there is water on this moon, called Europa, and it’s water which might be useful for us. This mission will go for the next six years, flying to Europa.
“And because they wanted to make it more popular, more colourful, so it wouldn’t be so scientific, they commissioned this wonderful woman to write a poem.
“That was very, very hard because it’s almost like, how do you write an official poem? She said it was very hard and she then approached it from the position of people, of us people, what we need to live, and we are made of water and we’re looking at these planets.
“And [publishers] W.W. Norton decided to make a book out of it and they asked me. So it sounded great until they said, But we only have two months to do it, because the mission is going in October.
“It’s one thing to say yes, but then you look at it and you see the words and you see it’s very, very difficult. Like it was difficult for her to put it in words, it was very difficult to take her voice and put it in pictures.
“What happened was many, many sketches and working through Christmas and New Year. But I think the editor, Simon Bolton, saw that I needed guidance – and I think in the end we have something very unique which is very humane.
“I think it was important to me, and to her, that in this time of lots of disturbing news in the world, especially if you have kids and stuff, that this is a very positive book about people, mankind, the planet.
“So I like it. It’s a little book, but it’s getting lots of attention.”
In practical terms, did you collaborate with her at all? Did she give you any notes or anything? Or was it more through the publisher?
“I think everyone was afraid how it would all come together. Because there was not just me and her, there was also NASA. And because they were together working on this almost four years, it was almost like I was invading somebody’s home.
“So I did the best I could between the publisher and me. And then the publishers presented it to her and she said, Oh my God, he’s like living in my head – this is how I envisaged it, this is great.
“On purpose I was doing it with hands and with paints, so it would look handmade. Because I look at the photographs from different missions and it’s so technical.
“So this is a very almost naive approach to it, but that makes it very, I think, human. But she loved it.
“We met for the first time two days ago at the New York Public Library and then again in Washington, D.C., and we liked each other very much, because she says it like it is.
“When people asked how she comes up with ideas she said, Sometimes you don’t have ideas.
“She’s very, very appealing – a beautiful person.”
Generally is space a theme that appeals to you?
“Truly I would have no idea, even after this book, how to deal with it. I’ve bumped into it a few times in some children’s book illustrations.
“But I think my vision of space is so limited – it’s from the Czech folk illustrations that I’m stuck with.
“I mean the whole vastness and scientific thinking is not really my kind of cup of tea.”
As well as lots of books that you wrote yourself and illustrated, you’ve collaborated many times on other people’s books. How do those two approaches – working with somebody else of working completely solo – compare for you as an artist?
“Being the product of the art school system in Prague you want to be an artist, you want to come up with your own project, you want to come up with your philosophy, whether the children care or not.
“Being the product of the art school system in Prague you want to come up with your philosophy, whether the children care or not.”
“You want to be smart or whatever, but then I think you look around and see that there are so many people who are much cleverer.
“And also what happened was I ended up as an immigrant in New York and I had to make a living, so I became an editorial illustrator and an illustrator for hire.
“I didn’t like it, because I wanted to be this intellectual force. But it’s so hard to do, and even if you do it then it’s so hard to sell – and then you can find out you were completely stupid.
“So I became proud of being an editorial illustrator, because I had to react to lots of things, in politics, in a cooking magazine as well as a scientific magazine, a business magazine.
“I had to try different techniques and I was many times pleased when somebody would write to me saying I had understood the subject well.
“And I realised that doing books for other people can sometimes be relaxing in the way that you don’t have to invent the story – you don’t have to invent the wheel, you just try to come up with the best solution.
“Normally you come to a story because you have some feelings… I don’t think I ever did it… well [laughs] maybe in the very beginning I did some things for business magazines and I would have a duck flying up and they would say, No, no, this is about the stock market going down.
“So I didn’t understand and the illustration was purely decoration.
“But in this case, for example, I loved the poem, I loved her philosophy.
“It was extremely hard, but it reminded me of animation, which I started with; the whole book in the beginning was like this flow of pictures.
“So it was a pleasure and it was also a relief, because I am working on a book of mine once again and it’s difficult.
“It’s difficult especially when you get older: you go this direction then that direction, then you finish it and they say in one country, This is really neat, and in another country they say, What is this about?
“So this was a wonderful project.”
One of your best known works was the poster for Amadeus, which this year has been around for exactly 40 years. What was the background to you getting that commission? As far I know, you hadn’t actually been in the States so long when you got that job.
“The outstretched hands on the Amadeus poster are me coming to America.
“I remember I was in Prague in November 1982 at home with my father. It was snowing and somebody rang the bell and it was Miloš Forman, Petr Schaffer the playwright and the producer Michael Hausman, who were looking scouting locations in Prague for Amadeus.
“Somebody rang the bell and it was Miloš Forman, Petr Schaffer and Michael Hausman, who were looking scouting locations in Prague for Amadeus.”
“Michael Hausman was pleased that I spoke some English and that I might be helping with the making of the film.
“In the summer of that year I went to make my own film, animation, in America.
“I came to America and got a visa for three months. My projects didn’t work, mostly because Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union boycotted the Olympic Games [in Los Angeles, 1984] and I was called back, even though this was two years before the Olympics.
“I decided not to go and to finish the film – because I was half-way through the film – and once I was working on this I got a phone call, let’s say half a year or maybe a year later.
“I got a phone call from Miloš Forman who said, Do you want to try to make a poster for the movie Amadeus?
“I was flown to Berkeley, to Oakland, where they were editing the film. I was shown the film, the director’s cut – five hours of it.
“I started to do doodles and came up with some ideas, but then I realised that the whole big image the producer, Saul Zaentz, was interested in was the figure of Salieri, the dark figure with the mask, death, and something like that had already been used before in London for the play.
“I came up with versions of it. I filled it up with inside with scenes from the film. I did different skies and things. So in the end it was a very simple picture.
“I had no money so it was amazing when they said, We’re going to give you… whatever it was, it was like if somebody gave you a million.
“Of course it wasn’t a million, and if the producer went to some agency it would be much more. But I was just happy with anything.
“What was my wonderful Hollywood experience was that he just took a napkin on the table in a restaurant and said, Now you sign here; you will get your money, but you will never want to get any rights from any record covers or CD covers or any merchandise.
“So I gladly signed everything because I had absolutely nothing and it was just like joy – and also it was for Miloš.
“And I have to say that until today Americans, if they would know my work and most of them probably wouldn’t, if I say I did the poster for Amadeus then they know it.
“There are like three things which they know because they’ve seen them somewhere.
“I think the poster was for the American and the German markets. I know in France and other countries they had different posters.
“But it was an incredible calling card when I came to New York and was looking for work as an editorial illustrator. This was a power card I had.”
Did you get to in some way enjoy the success of Amadeus? For example did you go to premieres, or meet the stars or anything like that?
“I met most of the stars. We were friends with Elisabeth Berridge, Murray F. Abraham.
“I was also so very happy for Miloš and I realised how finicky it is, how unpredictable.
“When I did the poster for Amadeus I had enough money to buy an old car and at that time, through some coincidence – because I couldn’t get any job, I didn’t have any films, I didn’t dare to go back to Prague – I met this wonderful librarian.
“She said, I will try to get you a job teaching at some art school, but also give me samples of your work, let’s make copies of some of your pictures.
“She didn’t tell me why. I was coming to this library twice a week and all of a sudden I had this phone call; it was a collect call from Maurice Sendak.
“I thought, Maurice Sendak is giving me a clear path to my future – I can do children’s books, he thinks that.”
“I knew the name vaguely, I didn’t know him that well, but then I realised he was the most famous children’s book illustrator and author in America.
“He called me collect in Los Angeles and said, So, I got your samples – and I’m calling collect because if I called everybody who wrote to me I would go broke – and I’m just telling you I like your pictures but if you want to make it in children’s books…
“That was stunning because I had never thought of children’s books, especially in America. But he said, If you want to make it in children’s books you cannot live in that terrible place called Hollywood, that’s like Tinseltown, that’s awful – you have to come to Boston or New York.
“So that was this coincidence, because he said it. I thought, He’s giving me a clear path to my future – I can do children’s books, he thinks that.
“So the money I got for the poster I spent on a second-hand Mustang. I said, Now I’m driving to New York, which is on the other side of America – and without a map or any plan I was just driving across New Mexico, Texas…
“Actually I’m trying to do a book right now about how crazy it was, because I didn’t know how big it was, who I was going to meet, how all the landscapes were changing.
“I had this illusion of America which was far from reality. I thought it was like in Woodstock – everybody’s got long hair and probably plays music.
“But I got to New York and I came to Sendak thinking he’s going to say, You can do books, you can stay, whatever.
“But he said, OK, so here you are. And by the time I got to New York I had no place to stay and Miloš was so nice that he said I could stay at his farm.
“I remember at that time he had like a bunch of T-shirts prepared. The nominations for the Oscars were coming and the T-shirts said ‘Not even nominated’; he wanted to give them to the crew, just in case they never got nominated.
“Instead it was one of the most successful films, so it just shows that he didn’t know.
“Then I sort of enjoyed with him whatever I could, but I was so busy trying to make a life for myself, find a place to say, go to all these magazines and work.
“So I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could.”
I wanted to ask you about Forman as well. Whenever I see any interviews with him or him speaking on stage, or even in photos, he always seems like the coolest guy – somebody who really knows how to enjoy himself. Was he like that?
“I think he was. I was thinking about that also. Because he was always friendly, pleasant, with a great sense of humour.
“I’ve seen him upset just a few times, a little bit. Like once when I was driving him to a tennis stadium and got lost, because I’m a confused person.
“But he was an incredibly kind person, and helpful. I’ve seen him helping people and they didn’t even know.
“Miloš Forman would give me these lessons in how you behave if you deal with producers or whatever.”
“He helped me so much, mostly just recommendations, getting in touch with somebody. When I needed to borrow money he would always support me to the fullest.
“He loved Voskovec and Werich and the songs of Jiří Suchý and he would always be singing some song or repeating some jokes.
“So he always very pleasant. Yet sometimes if you caught him in a more serious moment he had clear ideas – did he like this film, did he like this book?
“I think he had enough experiences in New York. I remember he took me to a very important exhibition and said to me, I have to buy some painting here, but go and find the smallest painting you can, because I have to get one.
“They had refreshments and alcohol and I wanted to get some but he said, No, you don’t eat here – let’s get this painting, say hello to Mr. [Norman] Mailer and we can eat somewhere else.
“So he would give me these lessons in how you behave if you deal with producers or whatever.
“Of course he was on a much higher level with his connections, but he was very professional and very cool about it.
“He was a genius and everything, but he also worked hard on the whole system, I think.”
The final thing I wanted to speak about is what you’re working on now, which you’ve already referred to – you’re doing a book about you coming to America, I take it?
“Right. I’m doing this book about me coming to America and then it’s like a road movie where I go through these stages.
“It’s not just the states I’m driving through, it’s states of mind, and it’s going all the way from Los Angeles to New York.
“The problem, as with my other later books, is always, Who is it for? I can now do things for adults maybe, but it’s very difficult to choose the angle, being now I’ve been living here for 40 years, since Amadeus, so a few years longer than I lived in Czechoslovakia.
“Do I look at as somebody who just came to America and goes like, Wow, this is like the Woodstock festival, this is Canned Heat, this is the Rolling Stones singing this song?
“Then I would have to get into the whole thing about how we used to know the songs but didn’t know the lyrics completely, so only now am I finding out, Oh my God, that song was pretty stupid.
“So is it my observation as this young guy coming from Czech about America, which then turns out to be completely different?
“I remember the confusion of these huge billboards with what I knew was food but I’d never seen food like that.”
“Because the idea of New Mexico, where all these incredible Indian tribes live which we played as boys – the Comanche, Apaches whatever – how do I talk about that now, when there is a more critical view in America?
“So it’s all these things. Are these people who are like hippies all hippies? No, some of them are begging for money.
“There are these completely different cultural changes here... So that’s my problem now – how to be sincere and not to go into that.”
This trip you’re talking about, across America, is 40 years ago. Are your memories so strong? Or have you also had to kind of recreate your memories, or almost do research into where you went? Or is everything still fresh in your head?
“Absolutely not. I wish. I remember just the razzle dazzle, the mess of things which I’d never seen before.
“I remember the confusion of these huge billboards with what I knew was food but I’d never seen food like that – French fries or drumsticks or wings, which is all in Prague now too – but one has to remember we had never seen anything like that.
“Everything was colour, rainbow colours, we thought, This is great. But it’s also what I’m going through – the recollection of what we thought.
“But I also have all my own memories. Like when I did my film in Prague which was called Island for 6,000 Alarm Clocks it was immediately taken out of distribution because it told people that they should leave the island and ring as they please.
“However I have a whole double-spread with alarm clocks, driving somewhere through Kentucky – but then I realise if I do this book now people don’t know what alarm clocks are; what are these things which were ringing in the morning and which you would have to hit with your hand?
“Then I have lots of stuff, because I was a disc jockey, about records, or going to get records from record companies.
“And then the whole thing had a major obstacle: that I was making phone calls this whole trip, because I felt very lonely and I didn’t know what collect call meant – because Sendak called me collect, I thought it’s something very respectful.
“So I was calling collect to Sendak, who didn’t want to spend money, from every gas station to tell him, Mr. Sendak, I’m in Arizona – this is really neat here. And he was going berserk.
“But today I can’t explain what’s a public phone, how do you put a coin in it. Then the operator came on and you said, I’m calling collect [laughs] – will Mr. Sendak accept?
“So these things are little technical snags which mean the book would immediately become a book for the generation of the ‘60s.
“But maybe it’s true, because the music I was thinking to use – sort of like with a road movie – would also be the music of my life then and everyone would say, Who are Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young or Judy Collins?”
