Name Mike Mills Children Hopper Mills Parents Paul Mills | Role Music Video Director | |
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Books Peace, Love, & Barbecue, Mike Mills Movies Beginners, Thumbsucker, 20th Century Women, Beautiful Losers, Does Your Soul Have a Cold? Similar People Miranda July, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Ewan McGregor, Mary Page Keller | ||
Vice talks film with 20th century women director mike mills
Michael Chadbourne "Mike" Mills (born March 20, 1966) is an U.S. film and music video director and graphic designer. He is perhaps best known for his independent films Thumbsucker, Beginners, and 20th Century Women. For the latter film, Mills was nominated for an Academy Award for his original screenplay.
Contents
- Vice talks film with 20th century women director mike mills
- Air mike mills
- Early life
- Career
- Personal life
- Films
- Music videos
- Record sleeves
- Books
- Commercials
- References
Air mike mills
Early life
Mills was born in Berkeley, California, the son of Janet L. "Jan" Dowd, a draftsperson, and Paul Chadbourne Mills, an art historian and museum director. He graduated from Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan, New York City. His mother died of brain cancer in 1999. Six months after she died, his father Paul came out as gay at the age of 75 and after 44 years of marriage. Five years later, his father died of lung cancer.
Career
Mike Mills has created music videos for such musical acts as Moby, Yoko Ono and Air. Air named the fifth song on their album Talkie Walkie after Mills.
He has also worked as a graphic designer on promotional material and album covers for such acts as Beastie Boys, Beck, Sonic Youth, and Ol' Dirty Bastard. In addition he has created graphics for X-Girl, Marc Jacobs, and currently produces his own line of posters and fabrics called Humans by Mike Mills.
Mills played guitar and performed background vocals with the short-lived indie rock band Butter 08 along with Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto, Russell Simins of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Rick Lee of Skeleton Key. The band released one self-titled album in 1996 on the now defunct Grand Royal record label.
Thumbsucker (2005) was his feature-film directorial debut, for which he also created the film posters. He followed this up with Beginners in 2010. Mills next directed 20th Century Women, starring Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup. The film had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, and was released on December 28, 2016, by A24.
He has released some of his art/documentary photography works with the two books, Gas Book 11 (2003) and Humans (2006). In 2009, the popular Berlin-based culture magazine 032c devoted an issue to Mills. For the occasion Mills was interviewed by Nick Currie, best known for his work as Momus, in a piece called "Getting Through the New Depression."
Personal life
Mills is married to fellow artist and film director Miranda July, with whom he has a son, Hopper, who was born in February 2012.