Trail Head, the Santa Monica-based production/post house, is shifting its primary focus to the post arena, building around resident editor Patrick Fraser. Two of Trail Head’s production mainstays have left the company: executive producer Gary Buonanno, who has returned to freelancing as a producer/assistant director; and director Barry Young, who’s joining Cognito Films, Santa Monica….Director Mark Voelpel has joined New York-based production/visual effects house Black Logic. He was formerly the director of CGI at R/GA Digital Studios, New York….At press time, SHOOT received word that director Gregg Snazelle, a stalwart of the San Francisco production scene, had died. Snazelle was instrumental in helping to establish the Association of Independent Commercial Producers on the West Coast….In line with its recently announced restructuring plan, Tewksbury-based Avid Technology has laid off nearly 200 employees, and has also hired Chas Smith as VP/worldwide sales and marketing, a position he held at Avid’s audio division, Palo Alto-based Digidesign….Just Write, the feature film debut of director Andy Gallerani, makes its cable debut this month on Cinemax. The movie, which stars Sherilyn Fenn, Jeremy Piven, JoBeth Williams and Wallace Shawn, is also slated to run on HBO, Showtime and Encore in the near future. Gallerani continues to helm spots via Venice, Calif-based Mohr•Gallerani & More Films….
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More