TV and film writer, director and producer
Mike White is an American writer, director, actor, and producer for television and film
PROFILE
Mike White
Guest
FROM Mike White
The Business
Mike White on 'Brad's Status' In the new movie Brad's Status , Ben Stiller plays Brad, a middle-aged dad who lives a middle-class life in Sacramento with his wife, and teen-aged son, Troy. As the movie begins, Brad sets out with Troy on a tour of prospective colleges, and it's fair to say he's having trouble counting his blessings. His mind is consumed with comparing himself to his own friends from college, all of whom -- at least on social media -- seem richer and happier than he is. Brad's insecurity only grows when he realizes that his son, played by Austin Abrams, has a real shot at getting into Harvard (Brad was rejected from Yale and went to Tufts instead). Our guest today is Mike White, the writer and director of Brad's Status. He's written the screenplays for many movies and created the HBO series Enlightened. While Brad's Status highlights the pitfalls of living a life informed by social media, it's also about the bond between father and son. White has an unusual father-son story of his own: his dad was a minister, heavily involved in the evangelical movement, who specialized in ghostwriting auto-biographies for people like Jerry Falwell. His father later came out as gay and became an activist for LGBT rights. White tells us about competing on The Amazing Race with his dad (twice!), having a nervous breakdown while working on a show called Cracking Up, and why he thinks it's harder to make humanist films like Brad's Status today than when he directed his previous film Year of the Dog 10 years ago.
Recommended
Design and Architecture
Scooter wars, gifting houses, puppets on the move What we learned about the future of mobility at our “Flipping the Bird” design jam at IndieCade this past weekend. Buy a condo in a Bjarke Ingels-designed tower, gift a house to a slum dweller? A Vancouver group applies the TOMS Shoes one-to-one gifting model -- to houses. And the Bob Baker Marionette Theater has been dazzling people with hand-made puppets for 55 years. Will it keep the magic as it leaves its home?
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Jamie Lee Curtis on the #MeToo message in ‘Halloween’ It’s been 40 years since the release of the classic horror film “Halloween,” where Michael Myers attacks Laurie Strode. He’s been locked away in a psychiatric hospital ever since. Now Myers escapes to hunt down Laurie again. We talk with Jamie Lee Curtis about returning to the franchise.
Bookworm
Tommy Orange: There There Beauty and despair woven into their history, twelve multigenerational urban Native Americans find ways to live in Tommy Orange’s There There.
Film Reviews
Wildlife “Wildlife” is just plain wonderful, and I’ll explain the plain part in a minute. This coming-of-age drama is the directorial debut of the actor Paul Dano; he and Zoe Kazan adapted the screenplay from the novel by Richard Ford. The time is 1960, the place is Montana and the hero, a lonely 14-year-old named Joe Brinson, is trying to understand the ways of the world through his suddenly fractured family.