Shutt & Jones to Head Marketing for Participant

Shutt & Jones to Head Marketing for Participant
 

LOS ANGELES, CA, January 8, 2007--Buffy Shutt and Kathy Jones, who have held the top marketing spots at four major studios, will be joining Participant Productions to strategize and orchestrate marketing of all ventures in which the company is involved, it was announced today by Jim Berk, CEO, Participant. 

“Buffy and Kathy are extraordinary executives -- they have worked as a team for years and have earned industry wide respect for their intelligence, their instincts and, most important, their integrity,” said Berk. “In addition to overseeing all marketing services, they will play a leadership role in strategic planning, new business development and acquisition integration as we expand to other media channels.”

“As consultants they have guided us through our first successes with Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana and the global phenomenon of An Inconvenient Truth,” added Ricky Strauss, President of Participant. “We are thrilled that we have convinced them to join our company full-time.”

Each will hold the title of Executive Vice President, Marketing, and will report directly to Strauss.

Their first order of business at Participant will be the marketing of Brett Morgen's Chicago 10, a documentary about the antiwar protests at the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention and their infamous aftermath, which was selected to open the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it will have its world premiere Thursday, January 18.

Two other documentary projects were recently announced by Participant and are now in production: Jonathan Demme's portrait of former President Jimmy Carter, He Comes in Peace, and Errol Morris's unflinching take on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, S.O.P., which is co-financed and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics. Participant is also producing The Kite Runner co-financed with Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, produced by DreamWorks and distributed by Paramount Vantage.

Buffy Shutt and Kathy Jones share a rich and remarkable history, and their professional partnership spans decades. They met in the publicity department of Paramount Pictures, where Buffy worked as a secretary and Kathy as a field publicist at the company's then-headquarters in New York City.

As they rose through the ranks, they forged enduring relationships with such filmmakers as Warren Beatty (Reds), James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment) and Steven Spielberg (The Raiders of the Lost Ark). They were fortunate to be mentored by the company's chairman, Barry Diller, and senior executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Frank Mancuso. By the time Paramount relocated its base of operations to its Hollywood studio in 1987, Buffy had served three years as President of Marketing, and Kathy was head of Worldwide Publicity and Promotion; both opted to remain in Manhattan and formed their own consulting firm, Shutt-Jones Communications.

Dawn Steel managed to convince them to move to the West Coast in 1989 and join her at Columbia Pictures, where Buffy became President and Kathy the Executive Vice President of Marketing. Soon they were responsible for TriStar Pictures as well. In that capacity, Shutt-Jones led the campaigns for scores of movies, among them James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle and Mike Nichols' Postcard From the Edge. When the film divisions split again in 1991, they went with TriStar, where, among many other accomplishments, they worked again with Beatty on Bugsy, with Terry Gilliam on The Fisher King and with Jonathan Demme on Philadelphia.

In 1994, they were recruited by Tom Pollock to join Universal Pictures and took the then-unusual title of co-Presidents of Marketing. While there, they reteamed with Gilliam on 12 Monkeys and Nichols on Primary Colors and also worked closely on many films with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer at Imagine Entertainment including Apollo 13. They defied conventional wisdom with George Miller’s unprecedented Babe and forged an enduring relationship with director-producer Tom Shadyac on the smash hits The Nutty Professor and Liar, Liar, leading to a long-term collaboration between Shadyac and Shutt-Jones.

In 1996, Buffy Shutt and Kathy Jones were recognized by Women in Film with its highest honor, the Crystal Award. Two years later, they ventured into independent production at Universal and, with Imagine Entertainment, produced Blue Crush, starring Kate Bosworth, while continuing to be in demand as marketing consultants for clients including Shadyac and Participant.

Their appointment is effective immediately. They will be based at Participant's headquarters in Beverly Hills.

About Participant Productions--Participant Productions is a Los Angeles-based production company that focuses on socially relevant, commercially viable feature films and documentaries. These projects all center on important social issues that awaken, inspire and empower audiences to make a difference. The company is headed by CEO Jim Berk and President Ricky Strauss. Participant was founded in January 2004 by philanthropist Jeff Skoll.

Participant’s most recent hit is the award-winning, critically acclaimed documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which has become the third-highest grossing documentary in history and has been named Best Documentary of 2006 by many critics’ groups among them the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics and will be honored by the Producer’s Guild with the prestigious Stanley Kramer Award. Past films have included Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana, North Country and Murderball which collectively received 11 Academy Award nominations in 2006.
 

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