SAG and AFTRA are scheduled to send out strike authorization ballots to union rank and file on March 7. SAG and AFTRA members will be asked to give their negotiating team the authority to call a strike against the advertising industry if ongoing talks for a new commercials contract fail to produce an agreement. Formal talks between the unions and the Joint Policy Committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers began on Feb. 14 in New York. The current spot contract for actors expires March 31….Bicoastal film production and development company Basecamp Entertainment Group has named Bryan Farhy executive producer of its commercial division. The spot operation has a directorial roster that includes stateside residents Leonardo Ricagni, David Nutter and the directorial duo Untamed Cinema. Additionally, select U.K. directors from London-based production house Great Guns are being repped for the first time in the U.S. ad market, including the directing team known as Who? Great Guns managing director Laura Gregory is a founding partner in Basecamp Entertainment….Errol Morris was nominated by the Directors Guild of America (DGA) for outstanding directorial achievement in documentaries on the strength of his Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred Leuchter, Jr. This is the first DGA Award nomination for Morris, who’s repped for spots via bicoastal/international @radical. media….Actor/director Scott Baio has signed for exclusive spot directorial representation with 30 Second Films, Santa Monica. The former Happy Days star has TV series helming experience, including episodes of Malcolm and Eddie, Guys Like Us and The Jamie Foxx Show….Pat Weaver, former executive producer at Santa Monica-based AdMusic, has been named to serve in the same role at Musikvergnuegen, the Hollywood music house founded by composer Walter Werzowa….
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