Robert Wherry, managing director of bicoastal HKM Productions and head of sales on the East Coast for HKM and its satellites The Directors Bureau and Public Works, is leaving the roost on March 31. Wherry said the parting is amicable. After nearly five years as part of the HKM family, Wherry explained that he simply felt the need to pursue new challenges and opportunities for growth, having accomplished much of what he set out to do at HKM in concert with company founders, directors Graham Henman and Michael Karbelnikoff, and executive producer Tom Mickel. Wherry was instrumental in setting up HKM’s New York office….Jennifer Iverson, Jacquie Jones and Debra Roberts Sher have joined forces to launch Necessary Evil, a bicoastal entity designed to manage and represent commercial directors and production services. The new venture’s roster includes Los Angeles-based effects/ graphics house Fugitive and bicoastal WildLife Management… Lisa Cleff has been named director of new business develoment at bicoastal/international design and producton house Attik. She formerly headed San Francisco-based representation firm Lcleffilm, handling such shops as Red Sky Films, San Francisco….Independent rep Barbara Tripoli of Mixed Breed Reps, Dallas, is repping Cuppa Joe Music, Dallas, in Texas….Bicoastal New York Office has signed DP Patrick Duroux and production designer Bruno Hajdaj for national representation….Smith Gosnell Nicholson, Pacific Palisades, Calif., has signed DPs Chris Conway and Sergio Arguello for exclusive representation in spots and music videos….Rhinoceros Editorial and Post and Rhinoceros Visual Effects and Design have hired Barbara Lamon to serve as an account executive. She previously served as an account exec. at MTI/The Image Group, most recently repping its visual effects and graphics division, Blink.fx, New York….Tom Greff has been appointed national sales manager at Audio Plus Video International which maintains facilities in Northvale, N.J. and Burbank, Calif…..
Review: Director Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Starring George Clooney
During his glittering career, George Clooney has played a casino thief, a Batman,a chain-gang convict, an assassin and a high-flying layoff artist. This fall, he's stretching even more, playing an utterly charming and gorgeous movie star. Kidding! Reality and fiction beautifully weave in and out in "Jay Kelly," director Noah Baumbach's love letter to Hollywood that, in other hands, could so easily have become just a love letter to Clooney. The script by Baumbach and Emily Mortimer finds Clooney — sorry, Jay Kelly — in a sort of midlife funk. He's 60, a universally beloved, deeply earnest movie hunk who has worked his way to the top and found, well, artifice. "My life doesn't really feel real," he says at one point, an actor trained in pretending going meta playing an actor trained in pretending. In another scene he muses: "All my memories are movies." A chance meeting with an old acting partner — a brilliant Billy Crudup, whose character was betrayed by Kelly years ago — reveals some unpleasant truths. "Is there a person in there? Maybe you don't actually exist," he asks the star, sending Kelly on a journey of self-discovery that just so happens to lead to one of Clooney's favorite places, Italy. Kelly's careful facade — the stories he tells about himself — soon gets chipped away. On his way up the hills of Hollywood, he apparently left some personal carnage behind. "Jay Kelly" is about those who sacrificed to get him there. Adam Sandler and Laura Dern play Kelly's long-suffering manager and publicist, respectively, while his resentful adult daughters are portrayed by Grace Edwards and Riley Keough. Kelly, we learn, put career first and that meant walking away from things like his daughters' school recitals and making his staff miss... Read More