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Mike Stutz - Bio
Mike began his career on
the stage, careened into television
and then wobbled over to documentary filmmaking where he now happily
resides.
In
the early days there was a
lot of tap dancing and smiling on the community theater stages of San
Diego. Then Shakespeare and wannabe
avant-garde work (twenty years after it was avant-garde) at UCLA
Theater Film
and Television. Then off to New York for
a healthy mix of musicals and downtown experimental work (see UCLA
training)
with a company he has now headed for over twenty years called
Hoffenrich. Working with the incredibly
talented actors
and actresses in Hoffenrich, Stutz began to see that if you create
something
new and different some folks will actually come see it and a few might
even
like it.
He
also learned that it’s hard
to live on fifteen thousand dollars a year in New York City for eight
years. Thus came television back in
LA. He did some good work that he was
proud of, directing some really funny comics and actors on Comedy
Central, TBS,
Nick at Nite and other networks. But he
also did some pretty bad work. Please
don’t make him recount it here.
Suffice
it
to
say
like some artistic Prodigal Son he reached a point that he
needed
some forgiveness for his televised transgressions.
He was either going to make something he
could be proud of and really cared about or he was going to die trying. So, wanting to live, he created Don’t Change
the Subject, a darkly comedic documentary about suicide. The movie is a
very
personal project. Suicide and denial are
a not so proud tradition in Mike's family. It's
been
in his head for a very long time and he's
glad to finally let
it out. It was taking up far too much
space that could otherwise be used for trivia and petty grudges.
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