Michael W. Dean

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Michael W. Dean.
Michael W. Dean.

Michael Wareham Dean (born May 1964 in Westfield, NY) is a filmmaker, novelist, non-fiction author, tech writer, musician and podcaster who lives in the Conejo Valley in Southern California.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Schooled K-7 at Westfield Academy and Central School. Parents divorced when he was 9. Was sent off to all-boys boarding school Church Farm School in Paoli, Pennsylvania. Kicked out of the school in 11th grade for "Calling the headmaster a 'fat, bald, overtly-Christian old fart'." Dean summered 1969-1983 in Chautauqua Institution.

Dean skipped 12th grade and went to Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York along with members of 10,000 Maniacs. Dean flunked out during his second year, in 1983.

Dean is often described as a high-school drop out, but actually received a high-school diploma from Westfield Academy and Central School from attending Jamestown Community College.

Dean lived in Washington DC in 1983-1984. He was homeless for the first half of that time, living in an abandoned factory in Georgetown. He lived in Charlottesville, Virginia from 1984-1986, San Francisco from 1986-2001. Moved to Los Angeles in 2001. Moved to Conejo Valley in Southern California in 2006.

Dean married paralegal, podcaster and author Debra Jean Dean in 2006.

Michael W. Dean's only child, blogger and musician Amelia Laine Worth, died of Leukemia at age 22 in November of 2006.

[edit] Career

Dean has been interviewed by NPR, BBC radio, and featured on NBC, VH1, and in Variety Magazine. He has been invited many times to lecture at colleges, museums and youth centers around America and throughout Europe. Was a speaker at 2007 Podcast and New Media Expo.

Dean podcasts under the pseudonym "ThornDaddy" on the Submission and Coffee BDSM podcast.

Dean blogs under the pseudonym "ThornDaddy" on the Submission and Coffee BDSM blog. He has written a book under this name.

He was the singer with Warner Brothers recording artists, Bomb. They put out four albums, two EPs, a single, and toured the US and Europe. Michael was also the singer in the band Baby Opaque, with guitarist Todd Wilson and drummer Michael Berube.

Dean sang and played guitar in the band Slish with Michael Urbano. Currently sings and plays in virtual band, Deal Machine.

Dean is a writer (and occasional guest podcaster) for the O'Reilly Digital Media site.

[edit] Filmography

Dean directed the movies D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist and HUBERT SELBY JR: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow, and produced the DVD Living Through Steve Diet Goedde.

Dean put the entire D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist movie up on YouTube in October of 2007, and has announced on his blog plans to give away high-quality downloads of the film on Zune Marketplace and Zune.net in November 2007. This is the first-ever instance of a copyright holder giving away a film in its entirety while it is still actively selling DVDs.

[edit] Books

Dean wrote the how-to books $30 Film School, "$30 Music School", "$30 Writing School" (ISBN 1-59200-171-8), as well as the novels "Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women" (ISBN 0-9705392-0-7) and "The Simple Pleasures of a Complex Girl". He edited the book "DV Filmmaking: From Start to Finish" (ISBN 0-596-00848-1). He has written for Make magazine.

In April of 2007, he re-released "Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women" as a free Internet download through his podcast website, "Clone The Homeless".

On 7/7/07 Dean released "Digital Music – DIY Now!" (book co-written with Chris Caulder, ISBN: 0-9705392-4-X) as a free eBook under Creative Commons. Dean also made the Quark and image files available free for people to remix. "Digital Music – DIY Now!" was originally commissioned by Que Publishing, but dropped after completion due to downsizing of the book's editor at Que.

He is currently writing a book called "$30 Life School"


[edit] Quotes

"Whosoever dies with his art on the most hard drives, wins."

"I remember when sex was safe and music was dangerous."

"Computers are an interesting mixture of science and voodoo."

"Expectations are appointments with resentments"

"The best ideas cannot be stolen, because the best ideas include yourself as an integral part of the formula."

"Behind every great man is a good woman he steals all his ideas from."

"Everything that can be done, has been done. Being a great artist today consists simply of being a great editor."

"To be a successful writer, you only have to be a little smarter than your audience, but a lot more driven."

"The only tiny positive spin I can put on my daughter's death is that there is no longer anyone on the planet I am afraid of embarrassing by speaking my mind all the time. I previously held back some stuff in public, out of respect for her. But since she died, I've made a decision to lay it out from here on out. Fuck it."

"Either life isn't fair or it's just ironic. I do know that many good people I love are dead, and every single smarmy fucker I wish dead is still alive."

"I love people but I'm fairly anti-social these days. I often go days without seeing anyone but my wife and the cats. I rarely leave my yard unless it's to fly somewhere."

"Film studios are obsolete. The film studios in ten years will be Google, Amazon, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard. And probably Wal*Mart."

"Digital filmmaking is the new punk rock."

"Filmmaking is the search for truth, but editing is all lies."

"Movies are obsolete. The future will be all about spoken audio."

"The world is going to hell my dear, and I wish to step out of its way."

"Social networking provides Websites to people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a computer."

"I'm not rich or famous; I'm poor and popular."

"I can still satisfy two women at once, but my back hurts the next day."

"I hope I get old before I die."

"Dating seven women isn't seven times the fun, it's seven times the hassle. And one of them always feels like killing you.

"It's all about art. Whether you're painting the ceiling of the chapel, or banging out three shaky chords in the garage: You are declaring your intention to smear your soul onto the veil of the infinite."

Source: Quotes are from the books "$30 Film School", "Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women" and "The Simple Pleasures of a Complex Girl"; and from Dean's blog: http://www.stinkfight.com

[edit] References and footnotes

Latest updates culled mostly from Dean's podcast "Clone The Homeless" and recent Verbicide magazine interview. Also from Dean's curriculum vitae.

[edit] External links