Real Covers on Fake Books in Real Movies
Book Cover Design in Film & TV
I love books more than just about anything. It’s why I design them.1 I also love movies.2
My love of movies extends to, and is maybe eclipsed by, my love of learning about them and how they are made. I love hearing about who almost directed a film, the various black list scripts in Hollywood, or what other films the one I’m watching is referencing. It’s why my podcast feed is filled with shows like Blank Check with Griffin and David, one of my favorites.3
Sometimes, my love for both books and cinema coalesces into what has become my latest obsession: Fake books in films. Or, I should say, real covers on fake books in real movies.
Occasionally, a character in a film writes a book. Or, they’re reading one that cannot possibly be real.4 Either way, somebody had to design it. Naturally, I wanted to find and learn more about these fictional books.
Dream Scenario (2023) — Je suis ton cauchemar
Dream Scenario is a 2023 film directed by Kristoffer Borgli in which protagonist Paul Matthews, portrayed by Nicolas Cage, starts appearing in other people’s dreams. The story, in true A24 fashion, takes many uncanny and bizarre twists and turns. Toward the end of the film, Matthews writes a book for a small, French publisher.
I watched this movie the week I decided to write about books in movies. On a whim, I looked up the film’s credits, found a likely candidate for the book’s designer, googled their website, and shot off a cold email.
Here is an excerpt from my Q&A with Adam Medley, the first assistant art director on Dream Scenario and the designer behind Je suis ton cauchemar.5
What did the creative brief for this project look like?
You aren’t given individual creative briefs for graphics in film production—at least I never have been—so the script is, in effect, the brief. Reading the script and taking notes is the first thing I ever do working on a production, as it’s the graphic designer’s job to help tease out all the potential graphics that may be needed scene by scene.
Another part of this stage of the process is determining how “hero” (i.e. how important or how visible on camera) each graphic will be. There aren’t always a ton of props or set decorations involving graphics written right into a script, but it’s easy to imagine all the things that may need graphics simply from knowing the settings of where the different scenes of the film take place (e.g. a restaurant scene may need menus, artwork on the walls, and signage and a logo if there are shots of its exterior). There’s always more that could be designed than there is time and money to create it, so things in the background and things that are less hero and are as likely as not to never appear on camera anyways aren’t given as much time or priority as the hero graphics, which this book definitely was.
How many options and/or revisions did you make for this cover?
I began with about a half-dozen quick concept designs based on photos of Mr. Cage and book cover reference images I pulled from the internet plus a few book cover references passed on from the director, and from there created a handful of more polished design options once I had received the headshots that were to be used, most of them with the same design but using different photos to see which one worked best.
In the film, Nicolas Cage’s character didn’t see the book until he was at the bookstore event in Paris. This, among several other indicators, communicates the publication was maybe a little less than legitimate, or at least a very small operation. How did this play into the design direction? How did the book being in French play into the direction?
I can’t quite remember the discussions I had with my art director about this, but I knew from the script that it had to be a thin, unsubstantial book and so should really be just a paperback. The gag is that both the book and the book-signing event both fall well short of how it was hyped up to Paul, so the book had to look cheap, though not necessarily as if no care was put into it. I imagined Paul had a relatively small but devout fanbase in France, and so the book should have a small-press feel to it. And when it comes to the language of the book not being English, the main thing that was lost in translation, so to speak, is the very subject matter of the book, which based on the title had changed from the serious scientific matters Paul cares about to a horror story sensationalizing the phenomenon of him appearing in everyone’s dreams. I didn’t initially know how far in that schlocky horror or true-crime direction the director would want the design to go, but it turned out I got it right from the start with one of my preliminary design concepts.
Are you at liberty to share what text went on the back cover?
The back cover text is a blurb followed by a couple short review quotes and a bio for Mr. Matthews, all of which I wrote. Often when working on a graphic you realize, hopefully well ahead of time, that you need some text or a bit of information (e.g. a character’s middle name on a piece of ID) that you can’t simply make up yourself, and so the art director or production designer will put in a request to the writer or director to come up with what’s needed to complete the graphic. In this case the director (who wrote the script) must have been, understandably, too busy at the time to write anything and since I can speak and write somewhat passably in French I took a shot at it and passed it on for everyone’s approval. I’m happy to note that if you’re able to read French and pause the movie at the right moment you’ll find that most of the text is fairly intelligible, especially the bio at the end, which is the part I’m most proud of.
Did you get to keep a copy?
Honestly, I can’t remember! Typically graphics and props leave the art department and are taken to set, never to be seen again by those who designed them. If I have a copy of the book I put it somewhere safe, I’m sure!
Click here to read the full Q&A with Adam Medley.
American Fiction (2023) — Several Titles
American Fiction is a 2023 film directed by Cord Jefferson based on the novel Erasure by Perceval Everett. The story follows academic and novelist Thelonius “Monk” Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright) as he navigates—to put it broadly—family crisis, racial stereotypes in publishing, and an internal struggle with crap writing.
From titles such as The Haas Conundrum, to We’s Lives In Da Ghetto, to FUCK, there are several fictional books in this film—perhaps more than any before it—and they were all designed by Catherine Casalino, a New York City-based designer that specializes in bold, conceptual creative direction and design for books and branding.
“Cord Jefferson and I went to college together at William & Mary in Virginia,” Casalino told Zoe Norvell in an interview for the I Need A Book Cover website. “We were in the same social circles and sometimes in the same classes.”
Cord texted me in July 2022 and said he was working on an indie movie about a novelist. And he asked if I would be interested in designing the book covers. (We had actually randomly ran into each other in New York a few weeks earlier—my husband and I were having dinner at a cafe and Cord walked by!—so I guess my work was top of mind.)
The style of the work Casalino did on the film runs the gamut from academic, Greek retelling to gritty, bold memoir. But, she points out, “it was essential to see all the covers together because each book had to have a distinct look on screen, [yet] also work in concert with each other.” She designed a handful of titles for Ellison—both under his name and his pseudonym, Stagg R. Leigh—as well as several other titles of various importance to the narrative.
Here’s a look at some of the covers Casalino designed for American Fiction:
Fuck was my favorite cover to design by far. It’s such a brilliant choice to have Monk demand that as the book’s title. In real-world book publishing, titles with swears are discouraged, and if a book has a swear in the title you always have to do the visual equivalent of a bleep with an asterisk or something. It felt good to actually swear on a cover! Ha. Plus designers love short titles because you can make them huge.
We tried a few options for the cover … but they were all close in feel—gritty and bold. We considered photography but moved to an all-type solution since we really wanted it to be an instant visual punch.
Click here to read the rest of Casalino’s interview.
The Fault in Our Stars (2014) — An Imperial Affliction
The Fault in Our Stars is a 2014 film directed by Josh Boone and an adaptation of the novel of the same name by John Green. The story follows Hazel and Gus, two teenagers who fall in love at a cancer support group. In both the book and the film, Hazel is obsessed with a book called An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. The book, and the author, have a significant role in the story’s plot.
Here’s author John Green on his website:
An Imperial Affliction is in some ways based on two books I love. The first is David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Most of the references Hazel and Augustus make to AIA are related in some way to something from Infinite Jest, and I wanted readers of IJ to be able to make those comparisons.
But Infinite Jest is not about cancer. Peter De Vries’ amazing and beautiful and hilarious novel The Blood of the Lamb IS about cancer, and most of the broad observations that Hazel makes about An Imperial Affliction—how it is a book about cancer without it being a cancer book, how is is funny and respectful and reflects the reality of experience in a way she has rarely encountered—come from my own experience reading The Blood of the Lamb.
From what I could ascertain, the film prop version of the book was designed by Studio MinaLima, a husband and wife duo that has made a name for itself designing props for the Harry Potter franchise. The studio logo can be seen on the spine and back cover of the book, which was made available as a prize as part of Green’s Project For Awesome fundraiser.
What’s inside the book? “The same four pages I wrote over and over again.”
Beetlejuice (1988) — Handbook for the Recently Deceased
Beetlejuice is a 1988 horror comedy directed by Tim Burton in which the main characters, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, find themselves recently deceased early on in the film. Aptly titled for their new situation, the characters pick up a book called Handbook for the Recently Deceased.
According to a listing on Heritage Auctions, Handbook for the Recently Deceased was “an old psychology textbook with the front cover and spine repainted.” This listing was consigned by a young production on the film named J.C. Bennett. The title page bears the name of the book, and the copyright page notes a list of “printings” with the first being 1620 and the last 1938. The rest of the pages are the actual psychology textbook.
“J.C. remembers there were a few identical handbooks like this that the Prop Department made as more than one was used during filming.”
Bonus: at the end of the film there is also a companion book called The Living and the Dead.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) — The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Grand Budapest Hotel is a 2014 film directed by Wes Anderson in which “a writer encounters the owner of an aging high-class hotel, who tells him of his early years serving as a lobby boy in the hotel's glorious years under an exceptional concierge.”6 The movie opens and closes with a shot of a book with the same name as the film.
This book, along with all of the iconic props for the film, was designed by Annie Atkins, a talented and prolific designer who has made a name for herself working on Anderson’s films. (She has a new newsletter:
)Atkins says this pink book is her most prized prop partly because it’s the only thing that she has designed that bears the name of the film.
“We based the drawing on the drawing of the hotel that the concept artist had produced for Wes,” she says. “And the lettering is the same lettering as you see in the 1930s version of the hotel and, again, that was a reference from a real piece of hotel stationery from the period.”
There are many, many more examples of fictional books in film and TV. Like when you get a new car and you notice the same car everywhere, I have started to notice these books nearly every week. I could—and might, now that I think about it—write an entire book on the subject. But this is email, and it is already too long, so I will leave you now with a handful more images and save the write-ups for later.
From Before Midnight (the books that sparked this idea):
From the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts series, designed by Studio MinaLima:
From Argylle, designed designed by Studio MinaLima:
From Severance (submitted by
):
From Wallace & Gromit (submitted by
):
Any more you can think of? Drop a comment and let me know.
From Arrested Development (submitted by
):
From The Twilight Zone (submitted by
):
From Kendrick Lamar’s Squabble Up music video (submitted by
):
From Donnie Darko (submitted by 🩶Ivory-towerish🩶):
From Field of Dreams (submitted by 🩶Ivory-towerish🩶):
From Sullivan’s Travels (submitted by
):
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It’s certainly not the compensation.
Surprising, right? The 30-year-old white guy loves cinema. I am large, I contain multitudes.
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Or a book that sounds fake but isn’t. In Dream Scenario, Nicolas Cage’s character reads a book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.
In the film, this title is translated as “I am your nightmare.” Cage’s character wanted the title of the book to be “Dream Scenario.”
IMdB
This is a ridiculously fun article. Well done.
Loved this. Thanks for shining a spotlight on this often overlooked role! Graphic design for film & tv is what I do for work. Book covers are one of my favourite things to do. With all the endless hospital paperwork, police files, signage, phone screens etc etc, book covers are a special treat.