Bill Sumner Interview like the athlete was there even though they weren ’ t . This poster was a tongue-in-cheek knockoff of the famous James Dean shot in Times Square . In fact , we got sued for that shot . It didn ’ t affect me much because I ’ m just the photographer , but James Dean ’ s people contacted Nike ’ s legal department . We shot McEnroe in the studio , and my assistant was very excited because we had to make it rain . I found a studio in New York with a drain and we got a hose to shoot water up in the air . We also shot him in very flat light , like it would be if he was outside in the rain . So basically , my assistant was making the rain fall on John .
How did you convince McEnroe to let you hose him down ?
I hung out in New York for a few days and stayed with some friends I hadn ’ t seen in a while . The forecast was for bad weather , so I just waited for a good , shitty day and went to Times Square to do the shot . At that point , computers were really new . Ideas would come up and then we would say , “ Well how the hell are we going to do that ?” Our problem was trying to work out how to get McEnroe outside in Times Square during a rain storm . The logistics were just too much . That ’ s when we started trying to figure out another way . We had a retoucher in Texas who was married to a computer wizard . They put the images together and did a great job . A lot of the shots got way too tricky , like Dr . K ( Dwight Gooden ) with the smoke coming out of the baseball . There was also Gary Carter catching an apple with the New York City skyline in the background . Today it happens all the time because retouching is so easy to do on the computer . It ’ s not easy to do it well though . There are some guys doing it very well , whose work I greatly admire , and I keep trying to figure out how they do it .
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