“The CIA would love it if you could take him out.” – The Interview (2014)

I approached this quote with wordplay in mind. The actual scene in the movie picks up on this too, a brief explanation of which is below:

Dave Skylark and his producer Aaron Rapoport run the celebrity tabloid show “Skylark Tonight”. When they land an interview with a surprise fan, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, they are recruited by the CIA to turn their trip to Pyongyang into an assassination mission.

The quote starts from 1:27 onwards – the scene is absolutely hilarious.

Initial compositions

I have this mental image of the CIA as being scary men in suits, so my first composition were three men in suits standing imposingly behind a dinner table, dinner being a literal expression of taking someone out.

 

 

I was inspired by this work by Natsko Seki in terms of layout.

 

 

 

 

 

However, while clear, I found the concept of the first composition I made incredibly boring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hence tried to use the CIA symbol instead of men in suits, making a few compositions where I manipulated elements of the CIA symbol.

 

 

 

I used the circular outline as a compositional element here, and. However, when I showed this composition to a hall mate, she didn’t recognize the symbol, probably because we aren’t American citizens. Truth be told, I didn’t know how the CIA logo looked like before googling it, too.

 

 

With the identification of this problem, I worked with the full logo with the “Central Intelligence Agency” words. I noticed that dinner plates have the same circular form as the logo, so I played with that in the following compositions.

However, I couldn’t bring myself to like the words – I found the font off-putting and I felt like the aesthetic of the logo and the illustration/photo I was using didn’t go together. This spurred me to take a different approach.

I merged symbols of a nice dining experience (a table chandelier and flowers you present on a date) with guns, to express the duality of the quote. It is a reference back to the movie where the scriptwriters have fun with wordplay – Dave and Aaron are both confused by what the CIA agent says when she mentions that she wants them to take Kim Jong Un out, and then understand that she wants them to assassinate him.

 

 

I thought, why not combine both the compositions above? Why not add in wine glasses, too?

 

 

 

 

 

Trying different halftone screens: Dots (left) / Crosses (right)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Final composition: Found the space between the wine glass and handle of gun awkward, so I added a wine bottle to link up the elements.

 

 

 

 

Reflection

Ms Mimi commented that it wasn’t clear what the form coming out of the hand was – I definitely agree, and in hindsight, I could’ve made it more clear that it was a gun.