{"id":478801,"date":"2026-09-29T00:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T00:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/478801\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T00:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T00:46:16","slug":"tom-cruise-alejandro-g-inarritu-unveil-new-ed-ruscha-digger-poster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/478801\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise, Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu unveil new Ed Ruscha ‘Digger’ poster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro <\/a>Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu<\/a> and Pop artist Ed Ruscha have a long history of admiring each other\u2019s work. Twenty-four years ago, a nervous I\u00f1\u00e1rritu<\/a> visited Ruscha\u2019s<\/a> Venice studio to offer him the role of the gynecologist in \u201c21 Grams<\/a>.\u201d They needed a doctor with noble features and blue, believable eyes. That plan didn\u2019t pan out, schedule-wise, but the filmmaker and the artist finally found a way to collaborate.<\/p>\n

The result \u2014 a Ruscha-designed poster for I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s new film \u201cDigger,\u201d starring Tom Cruise \u2014 was unveiled Sunday at an intimate brunch at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, attended by I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Ruscha and Cruise, as well as \u201cDigger\u201d actors John Goodman, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg and Ross Hatt.<\/p>\n

I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and Cruise laughed as they made a clumsy attempt at a countdown before whipping aside a black velvet curtain to reveal the poster for the first time: a very Ruscha, text-heavy work on a slate gray background with a beige border. A looming ice shelf in the background is surrounded by phrases including, \u201cA Man. A Plan. A Meltdown,\u201d and \u201cComedy equals tragedy plus time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Alejandro <\/p>\n

Filmmaker Alejandro I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and \u201cDigger\u201d star Tom Cruise unveil Ed Ruscha\u2019s new poster for the film. (They just pulled off the black velvet curtain on the floor below.)<\/p>\n

(Kevin Garrison)<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, the movie blew my hair back,\u201d Ruscha said at the unveiling brunch inside LACMA\u2019s new (still unopened) restaurant, with LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan by his side. \u201cAnd not only that, it parted it down the middle. It has since grown back.\u201d <\/p>\n

The crowd laughed knowingly. \u201cDigger,\u201d which opens Friday, is a satirical black comedy that follows oil tycoon Digger Rockwell as one of his drilling rigs in Greenland explodes, dislodging an ice shelf that floats away to cause a global disaster. As a dark parable for the dangers of climate change, the film has already proved polarizing, with early reviews coming in mixed.<\/p>\n

Ruscha noted that he first saw \u201cDigger\u201d at a screening about six months ago, alongside Govan. \u201cI knew I had seen an epic production, an epic product from an epic producer,\u201d Ruscha said. \u201cSo I jumped at the idea of doing the poster. And I thought about it, and I think about this movie, and it reminded me of a kaleidoscope. It\u2019s got so many running-around ideas. It was kaleidoscopic in its message, and its content and its humor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruscha turned his attention to I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, \u201cIt\u2019s got something to offer to the world, and I thank you for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filmmaker loved the poster, and the fact that the ice shelf sat front and center.<\/p>\n

\"Eight <\/p>\n

From left to right \u2014 \u201cDigger\u201d actors John Goodman and Jesse Plemons, filmmaker Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, artist Ed Ruscha, actor Tom Cruise, LACMA director Michael Govan and actors Ross Hatt and Michael Stuhlbarg \u2014 pose with Ruscha\u2019s new poster for the film.<\/p>\n

(David Jon)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe billing is nature: We are human beings, we are in a war against nature,\u201d I\u00f1\u00e1rritu said \u2014 describing what he feels the poster relays \u2014 in a phone interview from Mexico City a day before the event. \u201cWe think that we are different from nature. So nature, in a way, becomes our enemy. We are fighting a fight against nature, and the enemy is an ice shelf going to Europe. And he just put [that] in the center of it, [like] a disaster movie, which is very clever, as he always is.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThose decisions that he made with a very prominent element in a simple way, with one or two words, it just says so much with so little,\u201d I\u00f1\u00e1rritu continued. \u201cAnd then he [put] some lines around [it], very Ruscha, that in a way convey the spine or the character itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The director had the same feelings two years ago, at LACMA\u2019s Ruscha retrospective<\/a>. He said so much with so little, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu thought, and that \u201cless is more\u201d thinking could hold so much power in a film poster.<\/p>\n

I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, too, has been exhibited at LACMA: earlier this year, with the film installation \u201cSue\u00f1o Perro,\u201d a resurrection of lost footage<\/a> from \u201cAmores Perros;\u201d and in 2017-2018, with the virtual reality installation \u201cCARNE y ARENA<\/a>,\u201d which explored the human condition of immigrants and refugees.<\/p>\n

The director\u2019s collaboration with Ruscha is proof of concept for LACMA\u2019s annual Art + Film gala, entering its 15th year, which seeks to highlight and strengthen the connections between film and visual art by bringing the two communities together at a splashy party \u2014 often creating lasting connections between the two groups.<\/p>\n

Both Ruscha and I\u00f1\u00e1rritu have been honored at the gala, the former in 2012 (with Stanley Kubrick) and the latter in 2015 (with James Turrell). \u201cThis is a beautiful encounter of art and film,\u201d Govan said at the unveiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cDigger\u201d has evolved over nine years, I\u00f1\u00e1rritu said. It\u2019s been a long journey of taking note of current events, including where the world is going, as well as people\u2019s obsessions and fears. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe film is a love letter for the young generation,\u201d I\u00f1\u00e1rritu said. \u201cI think it\u2019s kind of a warning, or a wake-up call. But you can have fun about it, because it\u2019s the only way to \u2014 humor allows us to have space and recognize ourselves in that absurdity. So I feel that it\u2019s a human, urgent, now film.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu and Pop artist Ed Ruscha have a long history of admiring each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2308,187839,1043,1924,187840,48,52,51,20633,53953,47,50,49,4287,2268,187837,82827,187838,48116,8843,72],"class_list":["post-478801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-art","tag-digger","tag-event","tag-film","tag-ice-shelf","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lacma","tag-lacma-director","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-movie","tag-nature","tag-nervous-inarritu","tag-poster","tag-ruscha","tag-tom-cruise","tag-way","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}