Ramp named director of talent
MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER, a San Francisco-based ad agency, has appointed Paul Stechschulte to serve as executive creative director, Tanya LeSieur as head of production and Katie Ramp as director of talent.
Stechschulte will report to agency founder/chief creative officer John Matejczyk and oversee day-to-day management of the San Francisco office’s creative output. He joins the agency from his post as a creative director for Airbnb, where he led the “Accept” campaign, championing the brand’s commitment to diversity. He previously held creative roles at agencies including Arnold Amsterdam, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Wieden+Kennedy.
LeSieur will be oversee production for all agency clients, including method home, Audi, and AAA. She most recently served as chief production officer at TBWAChiatDay, working with brands such as Airbnb, Disney, Energizer and Gatorade. Prior to TBWAChiatDay, LeSieur led production departments at Saatchi & Saatchi in Los Angeles and New York, where she worked with current MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER staffer Jay Benjamin, the creative lead of the agency’s New York office. She takes on a role left vacant by Michelle Spear Nicholson and also will report to Matejczyk.
Ramp assumes a newly created role for the agency after working at Heat, where she spent over three years as a recruiter for all full time and freelance staff, and serving as an ambassador for the agency in the advertising community. She will be responsible for recruiting across all departments for MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER, and will work closely on talent development.
The hires come just one year after the agency joined in a creative partnership with global network VCCP in May of last year. Since the partnership was announced, the agency also opened a New York outpost.
“We’re very fortunate to have such a talented trio joining the agency,” Matejczyk said. “Tanya is hugely respected throughout the industry as an innovative, proactive production leader. She and I first worked together at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, and since then she’s led the teams at Saatchi LA, Saatchi NY, and TBWAChiatDay North America.
“Katie has already made herself indispensable here. She is serving up outstanding talent and getting involved with our people here in fresh and exciting ways. Her energy is infectious and everyone around her gets a lift. As for Paul, he’s a massively prolific creative leader. From the heyday of Crispin, to leading Goodby’s wonderful Sprint work, to roaming the globe for Wieden+Kennedy, to shepherding Airbnb’s foray into the Super Bowl, his creative range and steady leadership help brands and agencies alike achieve great things.”
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 โ quite literally โ into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat โ who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival โ 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 โ 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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