Jules Feiffer, a screenwriter, playwright and cartoonist perhaps most famous for contributing the screenplay to Mike Nichols’ “Carnal Knowledge,” has died at the age of 95. His wife confirmed the news to The Washington Post on Tuesday.
When Feiffer was 17, he became the assistant to cartoonist Will Eisner, often helping with writing and drawing on strips. This included working on Eisner’s groundbreaking comic, “The Spirit.” In 1956, he started drawing a comic strip for the Village Voice, which he would do for the next four decades. In 1986, Feiffer won the Pulitzer Prize for his cartoon work and, in 2004, was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame.
In the 1960s, Feiffer started writing plays and movies, including “Little Murders” (which he later adapted into a movie directed by Alan Arkin) and “Carnal Knowledge,” a project that was meant to be a play until Nichols decided to make it a movie in 1971. In 1980, he wrote “Popeye” for Robert Altman, based on the classic comic strip character, that was a co-production of Paramount and Disney. Initially thought of as a disappointment, it has become something of a cult artifact in the years since, with Paul Thomas Anderson using a song from the movie in his film “Punch-Drunk Love.”
As an author, Feiffer penned one of the very first graphic novels, 1979’s “Tantrum”; did illustrations for “The Phantom Tollbooth” and had one of his books, “The Man in the Ceiling,” purchased by Disney to be turned into a movie. In 2010, he wrote a memoir called “Backing Into Forward: A Memoir.” In 2014, he released a graphic novel called “Kill My Mother” that was named the best book of the year by Vanity Fair.
Feiffer lived in upstate New York with his wife JZ Holden and their three cats. At the time of his death, he was working on a visual memoir of his life.
