By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Lost Jules Feiffer Script Set For Production

Posted Thursday, June 4th, 2015 - Comments Off on Lost Jules Feiffer Script Set For Production
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Bugeater Films and director Dan Mirvish announced today that they have acquired the rights to Pultizer/Oscar/Obie winner Jules Feiffer’s screenplay “Bernard and Huey” and are launching a Kickstarter campaign to generate early support for the film.  Mirvish is attached to direct, and is producing with Mike S. Ryan and Dana Altman.  “Bernard and Huey” is a comedy about two old friends and the women who complicate their lives.  It is based on characters that Feiffer first introduced in 1957 in his eponymous cartoon strip in The Village Voice, who also appeared as a recurring cartoon in Playboy Magazine in the 1980s.  

Link to the Kickstarter page is here.
“My two downtown playboys from Playboy, Bernard and Huey, one of them always making out, the other,  often striking out, find themselves ambushed by the advent of middle age, marriage, fatherhood, and the unsettling fact, that, in the passage of time, women have changed and they haven’t,” said Feiffer. “So what’s the answer? Younger women, half their ages. Except, dammit! This presents a whole new set of new and even worse problems. The search and the struggle continue.”
A WGA Lifetime Achievement Winner, Jules Feiffer is known for writing the screenplays to such films as “Carnal Knowledge” directed by Mike Nichols, “Popeye” directed by Robert Altman, and “Little Murders” directed by Alan Arkin, based on Feiffer’s Obie-winning play. “Carnal Knowledge” garnered an Oscar® nomination for Ann-Margaret for Best Supporting Actress, and two Golden Globe nominations for Jack Nicholson (Best Actor) and Art Garfunkel (Best Supporting Actor). Feiffer is currently working on a prequel to his 2014 bestselling graphic novel “Kill My Mother”, and a compilation of his artwork called “Out of Line: The Art of Jules Feiffer” was just released by Abrams Books and author Martha Fay. Feiffer won a Pulitzer in 1986 for editorial cartooning, and his film “Munro” won the Oscar® for Best Animated Short in 1961.
“It’s a true honor to work with an American legend like Jules,” said Mirvish, co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival. “I know how much the characters of Bernard and Huey mean to him and to the generations of fans who have enjoyed them for the last half century. Now we’re looking forward to reintroducing them to a new generation through the film.”   Mirvish’s last film was the award-winning “Between Us”, starring Julia Stiles and Taye Diggs. Also produced by Ryan and Altman, the film screened in 23 international festivals, was released theatrically in the US, and sold to 144 countries.
“I’m a big fan of Carnal Knowledge and of Jules Feiffer, who I think is one of the wise sages of mens’ wily ways,” said Ryan, who has produced such films as “Junebug”, “Palindromes”, “Fay Grim” and “The Comedy”.  “I was on the set of ‘Popeye’ when I first met Jules,” said Dana Altman, grandson of Robert Altman. “I’d encourage folks to look at Jules’ unique space in life and then match that up with Dan’s capabilities and unique perspective on film.”
“It’s taken three years to track down the script from when we first heard about it,” said Mirvish. “From the Academy® Library in LA to the Library of Congress in DC, and from a turkey farm in Nebraska to a bus stop in the Hamptons, it’s already been an exhilirating and gratifying journey just to find the screenplay. With the Kickstarter campaign, it’s our chance now to get more people involved in building momentum for what we know is already a timeless classic.”
The deal was negotiated by Gail Hochman, of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agency, on behalf of Feiffer, and the Law Office of Robert L. Seigel on behalf of Bugeater Films and Mirvish.  Mirvish is repped by Eli Perle of Provocation Entertainment.  For more information, contact Bugeater Films atinfo@bernardandhueymovie.com.
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

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And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

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My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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~ David Simon