I was a kid who drew on everything. The corner of the Sunday newspaper, an old notecard left on the dining room table, or the flap of a random cardboard box. I’d set up to play paper football on our dining room table, but I’d spend the whole afternoon making a poster for the game instead of actually playing. I love the peaceful space of drawing and creating. Even though I illustrate and design for a living and love what I do, I’m always looking for spaces to make things that are my own. I never outgrew getting lost in imagining what could be.
Good Movies as Old Books came from an unexpected place. I had the opportunity to work on a commissioned project for my friend and collaborator Ryan Kalil—the idea was to reinvent a potential new movie property as an old book cover in service of a pitch. The work lit a spark in me. That spark became the inspiration for a three-plus-year project with over 250 individual pieces of art.
It’s probably obvious by now that I also love movies. The first movie I ever really loved was The Karate Kid. I remember liking other movies—I had my world turned upside down by the end of The Empire Strikes Back, I was freaked out after seeing part of Halloween at a much too young age—but The Karate Kid was the first movie that really spoke to me. I had just moved to a new school in a new city, far away from where I grew up. I had lost my father a few years earlier and was trying to find my way as an awkward middle schooler in a new place. Seeing a character on the screen in a situation I could relate to that persevered and triumphed—it was formative. It set the path for what a movie could be for me, how I watched them, and what I responded to.
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Excerpted from Good Movies as Old Books: Films Reimagined as Vintage Book Covers by Matt Stevens. Copyright © 2025. Illustrated by Matt Stevens. Published by Chronicle books.