Biography
Michael Miner received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Theater, and a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he wrote and directed LABYRINTHS, which won a Focus and Cine Eagle Award, ALIAS JANE DOE, which was exhibited at the Deauville and Bilbao film festivals, and COSMOGRAPHIA, which was exhibited at Filmex. While at UCLA he was also a cinematographer of ten student films including SCARRED, which was exhibited commercially and FOOL'S DANCE, which was produced by PBS.
Mr. Miner's professional career includes time as a director of photography and director/cameraman of twenty music videos. As co-writer of ROBOCOP, the iconic action story about the part man/part machine law enforcer of the future, Mr. Miner received the SATURN AWARD for Best Science Fiction Screenplay and a nomination for Best Screenplay by the Mystery Writers of America. He is also the co-writer of the pilot for ROBOCOP: THE TELEVISION SHOW, produced by Sky TV, ANACONDAS: SEARCH FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID, the action adventure sequel about humans battling deadly snakes, and LAWNMOWERMAN II, the science fiction sequel to the virtual reality story about an idiot savant trapped in a computer program. Mr. Miner made his debut as a writer/director with DEADLY WEAPON, a drama about a teenager who finds a prototype Star Wars weapon and uses it to take a desert town hostage. Most recently, he directed THE BOOK OF STARS, magic realism about the troubled relationship between two sisters and the memory book one of them keeps that has the power to anticipate future events. Mr. Miner discovered the script while teaching a writing class at the Maine Photographic Workshops.
Mr. Miner has written screenplays for Oliver Stone, Sylvester Stallone and Michael Douglas. He is currently developing a feature film based on the true story of a friendship between a Franciscan priest and a gangster living in a ghetto in Kingston, Jamaica, an erotic thriller situated on the campus of Harvard University, and two television series, one about Juvenile Justice in America and the other about the dystopian aspects of digital information. He has taught screenwriting at the Maine Photographic Workshops, the University of Hawaii, the Southeastern Media Institute, the Praxis Center for Screenwriting in Vancouver, the University of California at Santa Barbara, California State University at Los Angeles and the InsideOUT Writers Program for incarcerated juveniles. Mr. Miner has embarked on a second career as a large format landscape photographer. He spent the month of January, 2010, working as an artist-in-residence at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon for the National Park Service. His images are in hundreds of private collections and on display in galleries in Monterey, California and Durango, Colorado.
