The Association of National Advertisers’ and the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ Joint Policy Committee on Talent Union Relations has reached an agreement on a new three-year collective bargaining contract with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) covering the production of music tracks in U.S. TV and radio commercials.The previous AFM labor contract expired on Oct. 16. The new agreement, which is subject to ratification by AFM membership, is retroactive to Oct. 17 and extends to Oct. 16, 2004….Directors Scott Burns and Peter Berg have signed with bicoastal HSI Productions. Burns was previously partnered in bicoastal Tool of North America, while actor/ writer Berg had most recently been repped as a spot director by now defunct Shooting Gallery Productions….From private to public and back to private again. That’s the journey of Steve Shore, the long-time president/executive producer of Shelter Films. First a privately held company, Shelter was bought last year by the publicly traded, New York-headquartered Paradise Music & Entertainment (SHOOT, 7/7/00, p. 7). About a month ago, Paradise announced that Shelter had ceased all operations. However, Shore kept many of his Shelter colleagues together and has now resurfaced with them in the just launched bicoastal, privately held production house Public Domain. Among the former Shelter folk at Public Domain are directors Tim Abshire, Rent Sidon, Melissa Bolton and Ned Ambler….Director Richard Sears has joined bicoastal Coppos Films. He had been at bicoastal HKM Productions…..Biscuit Filmworks, Hollywood, has signed director Brian Baderman, who comes over from bicoastal/international Believe Media……Park Pictures, New York, has signed director Ramaa Mosley….New York-based Curious Pictures has added Australian director Nick Donkin for U.S. representation….Comtrack will relaunch on Nov. 1 under the new leadership of equal partners and composers Larry Pecorella and Bryan Rheude. The Chicago-headquartered music house will also be changing its name to Comma….Charlex, New York, has added designer/director Jeet Tailor….The industry is mourning Don S. Maurer, president/CEO of McKinney & Silver, Raleigh, N.C., who was killed in a car accident on Oct. 20….
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