Meet the Hampton Roads artists who create custom posters for movie classics at The Naro

A team of Hampton Roads artists dedicate their time and talent to make the screening of classic movies at a Norfolk theater a unique, communal experience in an era when streaming services dominate.

Pulling from their encyclopedic knowledge of film lore and pop culture references, they create movie posters for each film of The Naro Expanded Cinema’s Flashback series.

Greg Steele is a Norfolk artist who has designed more than 40 movie posters for The Naro to date. A video editor by day with a background in indie comic books and zines, Steele does his posters on an iPad in his guest room surrounded by inspirations and welcome distractions like his cat, Bippy. His walls are a place for the deep cuts to take center stage, plastered with classic posters and framed panels of comic books (including his own) from a variety of genres. Shelves are filled with a collection of books on which many popular movies are based.

“Time stands still when I’m drawing, I’m not thinking about it,” Steele said of how long he spends on each poster. “If I’m in the zone, then I’m in the zone.”

For about the last six years, Flashback has made an event out of the theater’s showings of classic films of all genres, putting up movie-specific decorations and selling beer for the big-name ones. The promotional power of the posters has been key to the success, said Kate Gooding, a managing partner for Naro.

“It’s something to do that’s not going to a bar, or going to a restaurant or something like that — it’s an actual activity,” Gooding said. “It’s a very immersive experience; we try to have lots of decorations that are for the specific films, and I think the artists really add to that because it’s such a personal thing for each movie, and having everybody local is great.”

The artists, all cinephiles, make the posters for free and sell the prints — signed, if you like — as the audience files into the theater. But it’s not always easy to decide who gets the privilege of immortalizing their love for each movie.

“As far as who gets what poster, it’s just kind of a free-for-all,” Gooding said.

This summer, Steele and fellow Norfolk artist Chris Kozak battled in The Naro’s internal online discussion board over who would create posters for the “Star Wars” series. The showing of the original trilogy, back-to-back-to-back, was the first time the films had been screened at the theater since each original release. Ultimately, both artists made posters for the series and left it up to the fans to decide whose was best.

“I’d do it for free,” Kozak said. “I just really love movies, I really love art, and this is the perfect Venn diagram of that coming together.”

The artists who design the posters each have a unique style, said Kozak, 37, who teaches art online for Connections Academy and is an adjunct professor at University of Maryland Global Campus. While his posters are technically precise and hyper-stylized to resemble paintings, such as his posters for “The Shining” and “The Crow” (1994), Steele’s are often kinetic and drawn in ironic comic book-panel style, littered with “Easter eggs” or hidden movie references that wink at the biggest fans.

Mallory Jarrell took on the popular horror comedy “Beetlejuice” last Halloween season, portraying a scene in which the main character flirts with a bisected woman’s lower half on a couch. Matt Harrison’s posters are often wobbly collages of the movie’s characters with the charm of doodles, and Gooding fittingly described artist Dwight Easter’s as “pop art Americana.” Other artists can join the mix by request.

“They all do such a good job in their own way,” Gooding said.

Naro’s annual Fright Night series in the weeks leading up to Halloween is Steele’s time to shine. Ever since the 37-year-old saw “Evil Dead 2″ in high school, he’s been a connoisseur of cult horror movies from all over the world. His gooey rendition of the abomination from “The Thing” (1982) was a best seller this year, and his posters for the live performance of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” helped the movie sell out three times, earning him the unofficial mantel of being the official poster artist for it.

In addition to drawing the posters, the artists are the go-to resource for movie recommendations when owners Tench Phillips and Thom Vourlas, and Gooding’s fellow manager Theresa Schindler need a little help picking a lineup for the month. The artists campaign hard for their favorite flicks, betting against sometimes long odds that there are enough people with the same interest within driving distance to pack the theater.

“Sometimes they pass the muster, sometimes we’re like, ‘No, way too niche,’” Schindler said.

Steele has had some success pushing through lesser-known films. He fought hard for the fantasy flick “Willow” (1988), a favorite of his wife. He was also able to convince them to show the Japanese cult horror film “House” a few years back, which he considered a major accomplishment.

“They were like, ‘I don’t know Greg, it’s pretty weird,’ and we did it, and I drew the poster and the house was packed,” Steele said.

Illustrating a poster for “The Lost Boys” even earned Steele the honor of meeting a 1980s horror icon. The poster featured an over-the-top drawing of the character known as the Sexy Sax Man, a buff, shirtless saxophone player who is on screen for maybe 20 seconds, but who captured the hearts of horror fans of a certain generation.

The showing of the film at the Naro coincided with a performance by the Sexy Sax Man, a musician named Tim Cappello, at a Ghent restaurant the following week. Cappello agreed to sign some of the posters.

“I might have made him a little more handsome in the face if I knew I was going to meet him,” Steele said.

The Naro’s support of local artists, Steele said, has been a major factor in getting people out of the house to see movies in a time when the pandemic threatened to close cinemas for good.

“It activates the community in a way (The Naro) hadn’t before, or that typically you wouldn’t expect from a movie theater,” he said. “If you watch a movie at home you don’t get a souvenir, you’re not supporting the arts, but if you go to The Naro you get to see a local artist’s attempt at a movie poster ... They go as far as they can to make it a unique experience and an engaging experience instead of just, ‘there’s the movie that you could’ve rented.’”

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com