Here today, gone tomorrow?

Director George D’Amato will not be joining Imported Artists after all.

D’Amato was negotiating a deal that would have made him Imported’s first domestic director, not counting director Richard D’Alessio, who has, in effect, become one. But over lunch Thursday, Jan. 19, The Partners’ Film Company president Don McLean convinced D’Amato not to make the move.

D’Amato agreed to finish his term with Partners’. He reportedly refused an offer from McLean for a new 18-month contract.

Imported’s Christina Ford confirms D’Amato is not coming on board and says what will happen in June, when D’Amato’s contract comes due, is anybody’s guess.

Wet Concrete

Avion Films is citing lack of support as the reason it severed its corepresentation agreement with Concrete, a Dallas-based production company. Officially, Avion was having a hard time booking Concrete’s directors. Unofficially, the problems between the two production houses began when a Concrete director with loyalties to The Players Film Company took a job through Players instead of through Avion.

Concrete reportedly issued a cease-and-desist letter to Players’ Philip Mellows, but when the same thing happened a second time, Avion ended the corepresentation deal.

According to Mellows, he and the director have a long-standing relationship. ‘You can’t make a director work with your company. The only reason a director would go to someone else is because he likes working with that company better.’

Mellows adds the director’s contract at Concrete has expired.

Concrete is in a transition phase with Canadian representation at Sparks Productions a distinct possibility.

LTB adds two

L.T.B Productions has signed directing talents Vince Misiano and Paul Lynch.

Represented in Canada for the first time, Misiano is a New York director specializing in dialogue. Lynch, formerly with Dalton/ Kessler Productions, is a well-known comedy dialogue director. His long-form projects include episodes of Due South and Liberty Street, and in the past, segments of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Moonlighting.

Latin charm

Apple Box Productions has a joint agreement with an Argentinean production house, Flehner Films. Based in Buenos Aires, Flehner will provide services for Apple Box projects in Argentina. Apple Box is representing director Edi Flehner in Canada.

Apple Box director Jaime Rodriguez is expecting the plummeting peso to draw more business to the Mexican market this year. It’s not often the value of a currency drops more than us$2 in three months.

In the meantime, Producciones L.A., the production company Apple Box deals with in Mexico, is setting up a new shop in Cancun to facilitate shoots in the popular surrounding beach area.

Three strikesÉhe’s in

Award-winning director Bill Irish is adding another to the mantle with first place in the Mobius Advertising Awards for his collapsing barn in ‘Curve Ball,’ a spot for Molson Breweries out of Vickers and Benson, Toronto.

Filmed last May, the spot showed a pitcher aiming to hit the center of a chalk-drawn strike zone on the side of a barn. He hits bull’s-eye with a third pitch, one powerful enough to collapse the barn. Switch to Molson product and a voice-over talking about the power of getting the formula right.

The makeshift barn was built on-site, engineered to fall a certain way and rigged with explosives on some beams. ‘It had to be designed to fall away from the talent, especially when you only have one take,’ says Jane Kessler, executive producer on the spot and head of Irish’s production house, Kessler Irish Films.

The award will be presented at the Chicago Cultural Centre Feb. 2.

Irish is just back from Vancouver where he was shooting for Canada Trust out of Mullen Advertising in Boston.