About Mike

My Background

I was born and raised in a small town in Oklahoma.

After graduating high school in the mid-1970s I enlisted in the United States Navy where I served as a weapons specialist, overseeing aviation ordinance on land and at sea.

Following my military service, I returned home and enrolled in Oklahoma State University, where I earned a Bachelor of Science degree (1983) followed by a Masters degree (1986).

A year after receiving my Masters I moved to Georgia looking for employment. I happened to meet some of the charter members of IATSE Local 479 who were working on a production and ended up getting hired as part of the crew, eventually gravitating toward the grip department.

I worked my way up from a day player to a department head, learning all the jobs in between.

My Film Credits

  • Warm Springs (Best Boy Grip)

  • Diary of a Mad Black Woman (Best Boy Grip)

  • Who’s Your Caddy (Key Grip: 2nd Unit)

  • We Were Solidiers (Asst. Chief Rigging Electrician)

  • The Rosa Parks Story (Key Grip)

  • Heavyweights (Key Rigging Grip)

  • The War (Grip)

  • The General’s Daughter (Grip)

  • Savannah (Best Boy Grip)

  • The Gingerbread Man (Grip/Stuntman)

  • Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (Rigging Grip/Stuntman)

  • Major Payne (Grip)

  • Twister (Rigging Grip Grip

  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Key Rigging Grip)

  • Consenting Adults (Key Rigging Grip)

  • In the Heat of the Night (Grip/Dolly Grip)

  • The People vs. Larry Flint (Best Buy Grip)

  • My Fellow Americans (Key Rigging Grip)

  • Driving Miss Daisy (Grip)