[1] He won the Oscar for Best Animated Short for The Critic (1963), a satire on modern art written and narrated by Mel Brooks.
[2] Born in Watertown, Connecticut, but raised in New York City, Pintoff originally began as a jazz trumpeter who taught painting and design at Michigan State University.
[4] In 1964, he won an Oscar for his direction of the 1963 film, The Critic,[5] which was narrated by co-creator Mel Brooks and focused on a man with a grumpy voice trying to understand abstractions he observes.
Pintoff produced and directed a number of low-budget independent films such as Harvey Middleman, Fireman (1965), Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name?
(1971) and Dynamite Chicken (1972), a film using a collection of old clips from music with appearances by John Lennon, Richard Pryor and Andy Warhol,[7] Nel mirino del giaguaro (1979).