The idea behind the 1995 MTV Awards Program Guide was to evoke the glitz and drama of 1940s-era Hollywood in a humorous and slightly surreal parody of the old movie posters.
In fact, the book was largely inspired by a set of trading cards, based on movie posters of the pre-war era. We were particularly amused by their use of classy but cheesy typography and hyperbolic, somewhat lascivious language. Due to more conservative social mores of that era, Hollywood posters had the capacity to be shocking with content that now seems in retrospect, to be quaint and tame by 1990s standards. For the Movie Awards Program Guide, we wanted to write a story that strung together all of the sensational language of those old movie posters, subtly intertwining the narrative with references to the history of golden age of Hollywood. Juxtaposed with contemporary attitude of the illustrations and the terse, acerbic tone of the language, the Program Guide was an attempt to poke fun at nostalgia while simultaneously indulging in it.
The printing style of the Program Guide was intentionally off-register, so that it would recall the look of 3-D movies, and also so it would recall the amateur, corner shop printing of the sort seen on old, pulp fiction novels. (The film Pulp Fiction was current at the time and we also wanted to reference the zeitgeist the movie had tapped into.) We chose newsprint for paper stock for the same reasons.