FilmL.A., Inc.–the Los Angeles region’s private, nonprofit film office charged with facilitating on-location production–has elected entertainment industry and labor relations veteran Bryan Unger to chair its 2007 board of directors.
Unger, who serves as Western executive director of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), led his first FilmL.A. Board meeting this month. He joined FilmL.A.’s board shortly after it was restructured in ’03, and replaces outgoing chair Jean Prewitt of the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA).
FilmL.A.’s board comprises 24 members representing L.A.-area neighborhoods, major studios, independent production companies, entertainment industry guilds, unions and vendors. The nonprofit’s services include one-stop on-location permit coordination, neighborhood notification, troubleshooting and data gathering/analysis.
FilmL.A. president Steve MacDonald noted that Unger’s experience in entertainment production and labor negotiation makes him well prepared to work with FilmL.A.’s diverse board and constituencies.
“Bryan is uniquely adept at building consensus,” said MacDonald. “He also brings a deep and nuanced understanding of the production process and the challenges the Los Angeles region faces in today’s global, highly competitive production marketplace.”
Unger is responsible for contract administration and enforcement of the DGA’s film and television agreements with major studios, as well as the Guild’s agreement with talent agencies. After working in film and television production, he began his career as a labor executive at Local 15 of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET). He then served for five years as international representative with the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) before joining the DGA in ’94.
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