Production company JOJX has brought Kirby McClure, aka Radical Friend, aboard its directorial roster. McClure had previously been represented via production house Partizan.
Radical Friend started out as a duo consisting of McClure and Julia Grigorian. The directing partners then split up with Radical Friend becoming McClure’s solo venture. McClure and Grigorian under the Radical Friend banner worked with artists such as Skrillex, Yeasayer and Black Moth Super Rainbow. Rolling Stone recognized the filmmakers with inclusion in its rundown of “50 People Who Will Change the Future of Music.”
When McClure took over the Radical Friend mantle as an individual director, he proceeded to assemble a diverse body of work spanning performers such as HO9909 and Britney Spears, a four-minute cinematic trailer for the Netflix series Elite, ad assignments for such brands as KFC (the buzz-generating “Comeback” commercial introducing Colonel Sanders as the company’s mascot in the U.K.), AT&T, Taco Bell, Honda, Adidas, Chase Bank and Converse, as well as the feature film Spaghetti Junction which is currently available for viewing on Amazon Prime. McClure also wrote Spaghetti Junction which follows a disabled teenager in the Deep South who comes into contact with a cosmic traveler.
Jackson Morton, partner and executive producer at JOJX, said, “Radical Friend’s films are hypnotic on multiple levels. His incredible attention to detail and artistic nature engage all of your senses. He’s a director we knew would be immediately at home with JOJX—we have very similar values as filmmakers. He’s an innovator by nature, and we’re very excited to have him on our roster.”
McClure added, “Jackson [Morton] and Joe [Care, JOJX partner/EP] have an obvious passion and fire for making great work. I think we’re going to make some cool stuff together. I’m thrilled to join the JOJX family. I know I’m in great hands there as I continue to devote more time to my individual directing career.”
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More