Friday I attended a screening of Eileen Yagoobian's Died Young, Stayed Pretty — a documentary about rock poster culture.

Nothing like being shoehorned into a tiny theatre with a leaky ceiling on a Friday night to take in a few rambling screeds by the best practitioners of a dying art.

I hate it when people claim that poster art is dying, or has died, or might die. It's only dead as a functional piece of popular communication in places like Seattle, where people are technologically advanced, socially disconnected, and city government seems to be on a cultural suicide mission.

Eileen Yaghoobian's documentary gives us a fractured and dirty window into the faceless and nameless world of popular artists, famous only in the circles of awkward design shut-ins (Do we have circles?). The film should have been better edited to make a more concise point, however, having a temporary ticket into the minds of these particular individuals was almost like going to design CandyLand — leaving me excited, overstimulated and in serious need of a grain of salt.

I cannot recommend Died Young, Stayed Pretty to the general public. This bizarrely cut, awkward and myopic snapshot into the underbelly of graphic design should probably remain an obscure and fascinating document, studied only by initiated geeks eager for access to the thoughts of like-minded individuals.

I personally enjoyed almost every minute of it.

Yaghoobian provides no context or background information about the featured artists or posters. Various threads discuss gigposters.com (newfound community vs destroyer of regional culture), selling out, politics, punk-rock, and the underground. Yagoobian allows multiple points of view to stagger over one another, drunkenly swinging for final supremacy. Personally, if I have to hear another geriatric punk-rocker with a crappy attitude complain about the state of music and 'kids these days', I may freak. Update: Intergenerational disrespect is NOT REVOLUTIONARY. Don't sound like every old geezer on a park bench that can't get used to horseless carriages. It's trite.

Other than the fact that she allows most of the interviewees to ramble on a little too long, most of the footage is really fantastic. It could certainly be reedited into a more culturally useful film for the general public. Having access to artists' sketchbooks and raw, unpolished thoughts is always fascinating to me, but most people simply can't digest it. Art Chantry's sarcastic, yet precious rants provide a nice stabilizing force throughout the documentary. But I know who he is and his cultural importance. Furthermore, over the years I've heard multiple versions of his signature rants, and enjoy his pompous dedication to theme and variation.

Lacking in the entire film, excepting the filmmaker and one half of a canadian duo and one half of a southern duo, was any feminine point of view. There are no female graphic designers that make posters? I don't want to believe that all rock posters that aren't sensitive indie masterpieces by Patent Pending (and their admirers) are shallow teenaged diatribes railing against 'the man.' Somebody help me out here?

On a side note — for being a film about graphic design — the title graphics and credits were embarrassing.

Afterwards, Yaghoobian, Jeff Kleinsmith and Jesse Ledoux (of Subpop and Patent Pending, both) joined us for a little Q&A. Yaghoobian (I understand she had a cold and probably wasn't feeling super) proved to be as rambling and incoherent in person as she is a documentary film maker, which is part of her charm I suppose. The beginning was awkward because none of the three seemed to want to take charge of the discussion (I fault Yaghoobian here because it was her spotlight). Groups of adults, especially passive Northwesterners, need guided discussion as much as schoolchildren.

For some reason every time I see Jeff Kleinsmith talk I want to hug him, which doesn't have anything to do with his (relative) celebrity. He always seems slightly uncomfortable with speaking in public, and I want to make him feel better. I find the Patent Pending fellows particularly sweet. They don't come off like egoists and are interesting and engaging to talk with.

Huge thanks to everyone who participated in this film. I really appreciated it.

Forgive me for my own hypercritical diatribe.

Designers: go see it.