Jim Haight has joined Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P) as head of production and associate partner.
Haight will lead the agency’s production department, while partnering with GS&P Films and Elevel, the agency’s in-house production arm, to foster GS&P’s maker culture. He will develop partnerships that continue to provide clients with content solutions across all mediums—from TV to video to experiential events—and re-engineer how production can work further upstream in the creative process to build production models that help elevate the creative output and execute against client objectives.
Haight brings 17 years of diverse production experience to his new roost. Prior to joining GS&P, he served as the first U.S. head of production at Edelman, overseeing its production and in-house maker teams in the U.S. and Bogota and focusing on social, digital and earned creative campaigns. Haight was an executive producer at Facebook (now Meta), where he oversaw content for the Blue App, as well as at creative agencies such as 72andSunny and Deutsch LA, where he produced and oversaw brands such as adidas, Target, Truth, Google and Volkswagen (including VW’s 2011 Super Bowl hit “The Force”).
“Jim is the perfect partner to guide the agency toward the future at a time when production is going through rapid change,” said Margaret Johnson, chief creative officer at GS&P. “His experience as a storyteller and a production innovator–combined with his track record within agencies and brands–will help shape the future of GS&P production. He will open up opportunities in lower-cost productions and help us to execute at the speed of culture.”
Jeff Goodby, co-founder and co-chairman at GS&P, said, “The idea that the entire world is a media opportunity is truer today than ever. Our work is incredibly diverse–from large-scale Super Bowl spots to putting Lunchables in toy aisles to a VR experience for the Dalà Museum to an augmented-reality experience for the BMW Art Car. Jim has the experience to reinvent and make the seemingly impossible a reality.”
Haight shared, “The opportunity to lead production at GS&P, an agency with a rich history of iconic storytelling, alongside Margaret Johnson, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein is truly special. I’m looking forward to helping this team push the boundaries at all altitudes of production, across an ever-evolving landscape of mediums and formats. I’m excited to strengthen existing relationships, forge new ones with our external production partners and foster a true maker community with the expanding internal resources that we have within GS&P.”
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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