#1. So, what's the deal? Well.... ON THE WALL PRODUCTIONS, INC. was begun in 1973 by Robert Fishbone and Sarah Linquist. Relocating to St. Louis direct from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio they were promised a job by a (now former) friend to help open a community video center. Once there, no job...quel supris! One day while delivering newspapers around St. Louis, they read an article about how city officials were trying to get more outdoor murals painted. Linquist and Fishbone looked at each other and said "We can do that!" And they did. Over the past 20 years they've completed over 200 public art projects throughout St. Louis and in select cities across the US. But in 1990 Fishbone had a revelation. Rather than do a great artwork, be paid once, and have people enjoy it over and over again, for free, why not design an artwork that people would pay for over and over again...and the Scream inflatable was almost born. Looking at the large painted cut-outs of figures from paintings they kept in their studio, Munch's Scream kept exciting their creative imaginations: just think if every therapist had one in their office. Patients would look at it and realize that they were not really that bad off. Mental health through humor: now there's a radical concept. But they sure didn't want to paint that figure again. Talking to a friend who manufactures in Asia, it soon became clear that inflatables would be the most economic, and most ridiculous way to produce thousands of 3-d copies. And since 1991, they have sold over 400,000 inflatable Screams worldwide. Today, their product line includes over 40 other items sure to satisfy the artist-comic in everyone. Imagine, Screams in hundreds of thousands of homes and offices, Screams on the floor, on desks, at beaches, in cars, planes, windows, on bikes, in beds (in beds?!!), on chairs, in taxi's, flying out windows on stormy days. Screams poking fun at stress and problems, screams at poetry slams, on Roseanne, Kurk, CBS News, at the White House, in Tokyo, Bangkok, Bogata, Kathmandu, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Guam...it's insidious. And people have been sending us their Scream stories and pictures, and occasional requests to know more about Edvard Munch, the original painting, and its 1994 theft and recovery. So, in answer to your requests and more...Welcome to the SCREAMERIA!! #2. How did you get permission to make your inflatable? Copyright law is grey by its very nature. In the US, the painting 'The Scream' has been in the public domain for a while...but the bulk of Munch's works only came into the public domain 50 years after his death, i.e., 1996. While our inflatable was perfectly legal in the US, it was not OK in Europe, and we never got complete advice from our 'volunteer copyright lawyer for the arts'. So we were busted in the UK by the 'Copyright Police". After a year of hell, and quite a bit of money on our part, we were granted a limited license to sell some of our items in Europe. Still, we could sell all of our Scream line in any country where his works had reached public domain status. Recently, there has been a change of heart on the part of the copyright holders for Munch's works. Now, we have negotiated a worldwide license to sell all of our Scream products anywhere we want. And to top it all off, the Munch-museet in Oslo is now selling our line...quite well I'd like to add!