Frazetta: Painting with Fire (2003)

Director:

Lance Laspina

Genre:

Documentary

Plot:

For the last half century, Frank Frazetta has dominated the art world with his images of fierce warriors...

Plot Keywords:

Art | Artist | Painter | Barbarian | Pop Art

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Eleanor Frazetta	...	Herself
Frank Frazetta	...	Himself
Heidi Frazetta	...	Herself
Forrest J Ackerman	...	Himself
Simon Bisley	...	Himself
John Buscema	...	Himself
Glenn Danzig	...	Himself
Bo Derek	...	Herself
Kevin Eastman	...	Himself
Joe Jusko	...	Himself
Dave Stevens	...	Himself
Ângelo Torres	...	Himself
Al Williamson	...	Himself
David Winiewicz	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Neal Adams	...	Himself
Ralph Bakshi	...	Himself
Mike Kaluta	...	Himself
John Milius	...	Himself
William Stout	...	Himself
Bernie Wrightson	...	Himself

Runtime:

USA:93 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

USA:Not Rated

Filming Locations:

East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Company:

Cinemachine

Movie Connections:

Features Fire and Ice (1983)

Interesting topic suffers from fawning

Frazetta is one of those artists who's forceful creativity and technique overwhelms the field he's in and everyone labors in the shadow for years. Comics and fantasy illustration will never be the same because of this man and it will probably be a long time before someone steps into his shoes. A good analogy in films would be Hitchcock in the suspense thriller genre. Nobody has surpassed his mark yet. That said, this documentary partially succeeds in explaining the man behind the work. A lot of time is spent exclaiming about how great Frazetta is. This comes from friends, fans, fellow artists and, amusingly, Frazetta himself. Unfortunately the conceit here is that Frazetta spontaneously burst into his style and that hurts the film more then anything. Anyone with a smattering of 20th century illustration art history can see the influences that Frazetta took from. N.C. Wyeth immediately comes to mind with his color Verne illustrations. Extend that history into 19th century mythological paintings and you'll see more.

What is missed under all the fawning over a bunch of naked barbarian women paintings is that Frazetta was one of the best "realist" painter of the 60's and 70's. Unfortunately that style was out of style and he probably would have never made a living if it wasn't for the paperback books and magazine covers. The documentary fizzles out about an hour in when it spends a great deal of time with the opening of the Frazetta museum. The rest of the film is good for hard-core Frazetta fans but not for anyone else. The constant mixing of live-action with Frazetta's work gets tiresome and there some flimsy contextual editing. At one point, when the film discusses Frazetta's illness (strokes) and how he trained his left hand to draw and paint, the film makers cut to some very odd drawings of naked women with male munchkins who sport large genitals. Sure he did them with his left hand but I'm sure there was something else they could have shown. A film that the typical male fantasy art fan can really enjoy. Everyone else....I'm not too sure.