Biography

Mike spent his first years in the countryside across from Huggins' Farm, now a tract housing development in East Concord, New Hampshire. After camping across the country during a summer vacation, his family decided to move to the California beach community of Capitola and lived two blocks from New Brighton Beach. They soon moved again to the East San Francisco Bay area town of San Ramon, where he attended the newly completed and aptly named "California High," an experiment giving 6 grades of students the opportunity to mix in "open classrooms," "pods," and with other ideas of childhood development born of the 1960s revolution in liberal California education. The school had a fantastic photography program, as well as an accelerated learning curriculum which helped Mike graduate early, and he spent his free "senior year" concentrating on his radio show at a 100-watt station in Bellevue, Washington, where his family relocated a third time. On Monday afternoons he honed his skills as a DJ and producer of small "Radio Mystery Theater" hours, complete with his own homemade sound effects. Mike attended the University of Washington for his BA in Finance and while there wrote program notes for the quarterly film series. He worked as an apprentice film editor, then 2nd and 1st assistant, on local projects, before making his first short "Il Paesano" (1985) about an immigrant local who owned a ten table pizzeria. After graduating, he hooked up with the traveling road show of Ulli Lommel and his independent movie troupe, made up primarily of formers from the "anti-theater" group of deceased director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Mike later moved to New York, attending the Tisch School of the Arts for his MFA. He met several collaborators including Bernard McWilliams, and Alan Taylor at film school and now makes a living as a location producer/director, sound mixer & videographer based in New York City. His company, Skyward Pictures, Inc. produces music, industrial, and family films for corporate and private clients.
- IMDb mini biography by: Julie Keenan

Using wind-up Bolex as kid, he made his own black & white Dr. Pepper commercials and sent them in to Young and Rubicam.

One of his first jobs was to sleep underneath the grip truck at night to guard the equipment set up on location.

His sister Julie designed most of the modern Starbucks coffee bags and her hand drawn designs for 7up cans and Frappuccino bottles are still in production today.

Don't stare at the actors, don't open 2-litre bottles of Coke on the set, and try not to use 'wonderful' to describe this film if you can help it.