MICHAEL CAMPUS
Michael
Campus, President of Journey Entertainment and Birch Grove Films, has a long
and experienced background in the film and television industry. The majority of the television programs he
has been involved with received or were nominated for Emmy Awards, the
televison equivalent of the Academy Awards.
One of his films received an Academy Award nomination.
After his
graduation from the University of Wisconsin, he was commissioned as a
lieutenant in the United States Army, serving as a commander of military trains
going through the Soviet Zone of Germany, dealing with his Russian officer
counterparts in an ongoing series of confrontations. He received the highest peacetime
commendation for his work in this cold war meeting ground.
Returning
home, he became a producer-writer on PM EAST – PM WEST, a groundbreaking news
series starring Mike Wallace, of CBS and Sixty Minutes fame. Mr. Campus
developed individual shows for Mr. Wallace, covering the most compelling and
controversial subjects of the time.
He then
joined ABC Television’s acclaimed Special Projects Division, headed by renowned
documentarian John Secondari, where he worked on twenty-five documentaries as
producer-writer-director. These films,
shot all over the world, represented some of television finest hours of
programming, and were nominated for several Emmy Awards. The shows included the acclaimed INDIA: THE TROUBLED GIANT; RUSSIA: MEET COMRAD STUDENT; and THE TROUBLED
JORDAN. Mr. Campus then produced the
Emmy Award winning program, THE TWENTY THIRD PRECINCT, and was a producer of
the Emmy Award winning series, THE SAGA OF WESTERN MAN, both also for ABC.
Mr. Campus
then joined David Susskind and Daniel Melnick, partners in Talent Associates, and
produced THE AGES OF MAN, starring Sir John Gielgud. Mr. Campus spent several weeks with Mr.
Gielgud preparing the television adaptation of Gielgud’s acclaimed one man
show, spanning the work of Shakespeare from Hamlet to King Lear. THE AGES OF MAN was nominated for several
Emmy Awards and won an Emmy as Best Special Program. It was hailed as a breakthrough program of
its time.
CBS then appointed
Mr. Campus to the position of Director of Special Programs for the then top
rated network. During his tenure at CBS,
he was responsible for over 150 television specials, which garnered many Emmy
Awards and nominations.
They
include the television premiere presentation of Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A
SALESMAN, starring Lee J. Cobb; The first presentation of Mr. Miller’s THE CRUCIBLE;
The Emmy Award winning one man show, Hal Holbrook’s MARK TWAIN TONIGHT; The
Jason Robards starring production of SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY; The acclaimed Barbara
Streisand specials, MY NAME IS BARBRA and COLOR ME BARBRA; A series of specials
under the banner of impresario Sol Hurok, named SOL HUROK PRESENTS; Sir Peter Hall’s famous production of the
Royal Shakespeare Company’s A MID SUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM featuring a very young
Dame Judi Dench; and the multiple Emmy award winning VLADIMIR HOROWITZ AT
CARNEGIE HALL. Mr. Campus spent several
months with Mr. Horowitz preparing the program.
Universal
then signed Mr. Campus to an extensive producer-writer-director contract. He relocated to Los Angeles and began
directing feature films. He has directed
six motion pictures: SURVIVAL, starring
Barry Sullivan, Sheree North and Ann Francis; ZPG, starring Oliver Reed and
Geraldine Chaplin for Paramount Pictures; THE MACK, starring Max Julien and
Richard Pryor; THE EDUCATION OF SONNY CARSON, starring Rony Clanton, Paul Benjamin
and Mary Alice;
THE
PASSOVER PLOT, starring Sir Harry Andrews, Sir Hugh Griffith, Donald Pleasance,
and Zalman King. He has just finished
directing THE CHRISTMAS COTTAGE, in partnership with renowned painter Thomas
Kinkade and The Firm, for Lionsgate.
THE MACK
has become a cult classic, achieving an extraordinary level of fame throughout
the African-American community and the film industry. It has been the subject of many stories on
radio and television, newspapers and magazines.
It now ranks as one of the fifty most requested films on video in
America. The DVD version, released by
New Line Films, is accompanied by a thirty minute documentary on the making of
the film, featuring Mr. Campus.
Entertainment
Weekly’s Special Collector’s Edition named THE MACK one of the fifty classic
cult films of all time. It was ranked
number 20, putting Mr. Campus in the esteemed company of filmmakers such as
Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch, Rob Reiner, Brian De Palma, John Woo,
Tim Burton, The Coen Brothers, Luis Bunuel and John Cassavetes.
The Tribeca
Film Festival (headed by Robert DeNiro) two years ago named The Mack one of its
Peoples Choice Poll top (Guilty Pleasure) classic films, putting it in the
esteemed company of Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner and Easy
Rider.
The Mack
has also received a prominent place in the Quentin Tarantino Film Festival in
the past and opened the 2007 festival.
DVD Talk in
its review, The Mack and Michael Campus, said: “The Mack crosses the line from
being what could be considered a classic B-movie exploitation flick, and enters
the realm of classic seventies cinema.
It should be mentioned along with such films from the late Sixties and Seventies
as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and Mean Streets.”
David
Walker in his DVD article, The Mack and Michael Campus, said: “It is truly one of those rare moments in
cinema history that transcends art imitating life, becoming a dramatic
representation of life, capturing a certain place and time. It is a combination of Campus’ abilities as a
documentary filmmaker, and the socio-political climate of Oakland in the early
seventies that worked to make The Mack the unique film it became.”
The
respected DVD Journal said: “As directed
by Michael Campus, the film showcases a side of the streets that resonates, has
great memorable dialogue and characters.
Such things make a film a classic.”
THE
EDUCATION OF SONNY CARSON is considered to the forerunner of BOYZ IN THE
HOOD. Acclaimed in its own right as a
major motion picture of lasting impact, a scene from SONNY CARSON appears in
the American Film Institute’s book, The
One Hundred Most Memorable Moments in Film History. Mr. Campus was nominated for an NAACP Image
Award as Best Director for SONNY CARSON.
The New
York Times called SONNY CARSON “a Howling Brute of a Film,” with “A primal
energy that imbues it with terrifying eloquence. This film possesses a very real beauty and
power. Rich with the language of the
streets, lyrical in a scene that captures the glowering twilight sky above the
desolate landscape of tenements, pulsating in its documentation of the tribal
rhythms of the gangs, hideous in its depiction of police and prison brutality,
chilling in its revelation of the devastation wreaked by heroin, it derives its
awesome force from what it insists on saying about the American experience.”
Variety
said: “When the historical dust settles
on the first wave of black oriented films, The Education of Sonny Carson should
stand as one of the most outstanding of the genre. A rugged, uncompromising, yet thoughtful and
sensitive film about the early life of a ghetto kid, superbly directed by
Michael Campus.”
Campus, who
directed last year’s successful “The Mack,” has made a film that is in the
great tradition of the 30’s Warner Brothers social melodramas. “
For the
release of the DVD version of the film, DVD Talk said: “An extraordinarily
honest and direct film, The Education of Sonny Carson is one of the most vital
stories ever told about the inner city.
From the tough Brooklyn streets to any ghetto in the world, the
struggles here are universal. What
Carson and Campus did was distill the battle of the soul down to the most basic
elements: Sadness, disappointment, longing and fear.”
In 1987,
Mr. Campus formed Journey Entertainment and acted as Executive Producer and
Writer of THE MAN WHO BROKE 1000 CHAINS for HBO. The film starred Val Kilmer, Charles Durning,
Kyra Sedgwick and Sonia Braga. Because
of the incapacity of the director at the end of production, Mr. Campus directed
extensive second unit filming and completely oversaw all aspects of post
production, including editing, music and sound and mixing.
The New
York Times called CHAINS “Harrowing.” The New York Daily News called it “A
brutal eye opener. A shocking,
disturbing movie.”
Daniel
Ruth, critic for the Chicago Sun Times said: “Now in the grand tradition of
COOL HAND LUKE, PAPILLON and THE DEFIANT ONES comes the gripping cable movie
THE MAN WHO BROKE 1,000 CHAINS. A rip roaring adventure that unfolds at
breakneck, tension-filled pace.”
Peter
Farrell in the Portland Oregonian commented “It is a story that grabs injustice
by the collar and shows its ugliness to the light – and the kind of movie you
have to admire.”
The film
was nominated for eight Cable ACE Awards, including best movie or
mini-series. The eight nominations were
the most ever received by a cable movie at that time.
It has been
the subject of a prestigious History Channel show studying its value. An airing of the film on that Channel was
followed by a round table discussion with leading scholars, analyzing its
importance. HBO has since aired the film
more than fifty times and it has had a long and successful run in syndication.
The same
year, Mr. Campus entered into a partnership with the legendary Dr. Armand
Hammer, Chairman of Occidental Petroleum and a life long friend and ally of the
Soviet Union. Mr. Campus made an all
encompassing deal with HBO to make a massive ten hour mini-series about this
history of Russia from the birth of the Twentieth Century until its end
(1900-2000) as seen through the eyes of two children, one rich, one poor, born,
born on the same estate.
In
association with Dr. Hammer’s film company, Armand Hammer Productions, Journey
Entertainment spent the next three years building the thousand page script written
by three of the leading writers in the world: Ronald Harwood, who won the best screenplay
Academy Award two years ago for THE PIANIST, the illustrious John Hopkins
(HIROSHIMA) and Mikhail Gorbachev’s favorite contemporary Russian author, Alexander
Gelman. HBO and Occidental Petroleum spent over one and a half million dollars on
the project. Dr. Hammer sudden death in 1990
came on the verge of launching the project and ultimately ended its financial
backing. It is again being discussed as
a major mini-series candidate for the 2008 season.
In 1995,
Mr. Campus created and acted as Executive Producer on the Emmy nominated
miniseries HIROSHIMA for Showtime.
HIROSHIMA received unanimously glowing reviews, and was hailed by Daily
Variety as “the best that television gets.”
HIROSHIMA was the first production in American television history
depicting the Japanese side of the monumental events, balancing the action of
both sides surrounding the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
HIROSHIMA
received several Cable Ace and Emmy Award nominations, including the Emmy
nomination as Best Movie or Mini-Series, and was awarded the reknown International
Pen Award. It is also the recipient of twenty
international festival awards, and continues playing on Showtime and all over
the world.
Mr. Campus
received the most prestigious Humanitas Award as Executive Producer of the
program. The prize is only given to the
programs making the greatest contribution to the human condition and “promote
the full realization of humanity, the best instincts and values of the human
spirit.”
In 1996,
Mr. Campus formed a relationship with DAY OF THE JACKAL author Frederick Forsyth
and served as Executive Producer on Forsyth’s CODE NAME WOLVERINE for FOX. Is the story of an ex-navy seal drawn into a
life-threatening incident while on vacation with his family in Italy. The production stars Antonia Sabato, Jr.,
Danny Quinn and Richard Brooks. It
garnered the highest movie of the week rating received by FOX in that year and
in the three years to follow.
Mr. Campus
is currently in discussion with several studios about developing MAKING THE
MACK, a major two hour film about the year in his life that he directed THE
MACK. It is the story of shooting this film on the streets of turbulent 1973
Oakland, as seen through the eyes of the young director.
In
addition, Mr. Campus is in discussion about a big budget, high profile sequel
to THE MACK. As part of this
arrangement, there are plans to build The Mack into the first urban franchise, to
include a Broadway show and a Las Vegas musical review.
Thomas
Kinkade’s CHRISTMAS COTTAGE is part of the recently concluded four picture deal
with Lionsgate. The film opens November
30, 2007 in 2200 theaters.
Birch Grove
has also just concluded a deal with The Shanghai Media Group, the media arm of
the Shanghai government, and Tourism Malaysia, to produce DRAGONFIRE, a
primetime weekly series to be shot in China and Southeast Asia.
This is the
first international series venture for both governments and the first series
ever to be entirely financed and shot in this part of the world.
Mr. Campus
is a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, the Director’s Guild of America,
and is one of only 400 members of the Directors Branch of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences.