Mel Odom’s intricately detailed, unmistakably homoerotic work has captivated generations, transforming everything from spank mags like Blueboy and Playboy to classic novels, albums, even a 1989 Time Magazine cover into highly stylized queer art. Now, a short documentary called Eyes of Mel Odom is in development to memorialize Odom’s life and remarkable body of work.
Odom discovered his love of creating art at age three, and by seven had started drawing classes. After completing a BFA in fashion illustration from Virginia Commonwealth University, then studying at Leeds Polytechnic Institute in England and living for a while in London, Odom wound up moving to New York City in 1975, a place he found magical and inspiring.
New York City “captured” Odom as a wonderfully hedonistic fantasy world—one which would sadly turn upside down around 1985, when the AIDS crisis took hold. One of the ways Odom survived and made sense of the horrific destruction of AIDS was through his artwork. As AIDS decimated his friends and fellow artists through the 1980s and ’90s, Odom created beauty from pain, often immortalizing loved ones in his drawings.
“I never separated who I was from what I drew,” Odom says. “This total kaleidoscope of wonderful things, horrible things, disease, creation, death. I mean, it was like all these things happening simultaneously. I just thought, no one’s ever going to believe this. This sounds like a crazy person made the story up, but it was my life.”
One of Odom’s other coping mechanisms for the terrible losses in his life was to dive into designing the Gene Marshall doll modeled after a fictional glamorous starlet of the Hollywood golden age. The doll was a huge hit. But hidden behind its success was that the doll was named after Odom’s then boyfriend who was dying of AIDS during the doll’s creation.
So many gay artists did not survive the AIDS crisis. Odom did, and the producers of the documentary believe his exceptional body of artwork deserves placement among other canonical American illustrators like J.C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell, and included alongside Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring as an important voice from that era of New York City.
Co-director Jörg Fockele, whose previous project Sally memorialized queer trailblazer Sally Gearhart, was asked what compelled him to bring Mel Odom’s life to the screen: “When Michael Economy, Mel Odom’s old friend and my directing partner in crime, first told me about the idea of making a film about Mel, it was primarily his art that fascinated me. I remembered the visuals very clearly but wouldn’t have recognized his name or face. What really compelled me to invest the time and money to make this documentary was the fact that most of Mel’s work was born out of the despair and the pain of the AIDS crisis in the ’80s and ’90s.
“Speaking with Mel in person, I realized how much of the beauty you see in his drawings and in his doll Gene Marshall was the direct result of dealing with the trauma and the deaths of so many friends and lovers. And I think that is the universal story here everyone can connect with: The struggle to not let grief and pain destroy you. Mel’s way of coping was to let the sadness fuel art that immortalized those he lost and that ended up saving him.”
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When presented with the same question, Economy said this about his motivations for making the documentary: “I’ve known Mel for 35 years and over the decades, along with obsessing over our deep love of dolls and the unfathomable beauty of Sylvia Sidney, Mel shared many stories of his close friends and boyfriends that he lost to AIDS during the much mythologized NYC of the ’80s.
“Mel’s story is a window into that very exciting, very different world than the one we live in now. His body of work is a testament to those times and is iconographic to gay culture. Because of that, I often told Mel that someone should make a movie about him, never imaging it would be me, now thanks to my friendship and collaboration with Jörg, it is becoming a reality.”
Today, 50 years after moving to New York City, Odom lives with his husband Charlie in the same apartment he first rented in 1975. AIDS has thankfully become a chronic but treatable disease, and Odom continues to draw, paint, and play with dolls.
The short documentary in development will be experimental in nature, leveraging the fluid, emotive style of a music video. Set to a soundtrack of Odom’s reminiscences, the documentary will tell Odom’s story through a kaleidoscope of illustrations, archival photographs, and original footage. Jörg Fockele, Michael Economy, Hyoung-Ung Kim, and Susan Berston are producing with Fockele and Economy sharing directorial duties. The producers are hoping to raise $25,000 to take the project over the finish line in November 2025.
You can support the film’s creation via the Eyes of Mel Odom Kickstarter here.
