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Arts & Entertainment

Cartoonist Celebrated at Cinema Arts

Jules Feiffer signs copies of his book and receives literacy honor.

 Award-winning cartoonist, screenwriter and author Jules Feiffer was at last week to sign copies of his new book “Backing Into Forward” and to take questions from the audience after they watched the 1971 film “Little Murders” for which he wrote the screenplay.

Most of the questions he took related to his long running cartoons in the Village Voice and his childhood.

“I grew up on film and comic strips,” Feiffer said. “Like all kids I had dreams and I tried to act on them. Some people give up their dreams. Cartoonists in part never grow up.”

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Feiffer also answered questions from the evening's moderator, Dr. Jud Newborn, the CAC's special projects curator.

“He is a renaissance man, a master cartoonist, a playwright, screenwriter and children's book illustrator who has been awarded the most exalted prizes,” Newborn said of Feiffer.

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Newborn was also responsible for introducing Feiffer to the executive director of the Walt Whitman Birthplace, who offered Feiffer one of their highest honors.

“I am here thanks to my relationship with Jud and I was lucky enough to have dinner with Jules before tonight's event,” said executive director Cynthia Shor. “The Walt Whitman Birthplace has selected Jules Feiffer 'Champion of Literacy' for 2011. We offered it to him this evening and we feel truly honored that he accepted. He will receive this award at our annual benefit ceremony at Oheka Castle in October.”

“Little Murders" was originally written as a play for which Feiffer won an Obie Award. He also wrote the screenplay for three other films: “Carnal Knowledge” starring Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen from 1971, “Popeye” starring Robin Williams from 1980 and “I Want To Go Home” starring Gerard Depardieu from 1989. Feiffer also wrote the 1961 Oscar winning short subject animated film “Munro”. Other highlights of his long and varied career include being the first cartoonist for The New York Times op-ed page and a children's book author and illustrator (“Bark George”, “I Lost My Bear” and “The Man in the Ceiling”).  His cartoons in the Village Voice earned him a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award.  He is currently on the faculty at Stony Brook Southampton.

Feiffer's success as a playwright almost did not happen.

“'Little Murders' opened on Broadway on a Tuesday and closed the following Saturday,” Feiffer said. “Then it became the first American play picked by the Royal Shakespeare Company in England and it was a big success.”

Cold Spring Harbor resident Marlene Winter, who is a psychoanalyst, particularly enjoyed one angle of the movie.

“My favorite part was the girl's parents are therapists, and they keep using all these psychological terms but did not realize what was going on in their own family,” Winter said with a laugh. “I loved it.”

Feiffer, who turned 82 in January, said movies were an important part of his childhood, and despite the era he grew up in, he remembers getting a different message from the movies that he feels is missing today.

“I loved the movies and back then everyone saw the same movies in black and white,” Feiffer said. “The movies didn't discount the Depression but surrounded it with humor, class and an illusion of where we were going. I saw it as documentaries of my future. They were wonderful repositories of hope. There was no sense of hopelessness, no fear. There is more fear today than there was then.”

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