Mike Messier’s entertainment resume

SKILLS

Playwright, screenwriter, producer, filmmaker, Actor, Acting Coach, Director, Live Event host, podcast host, Pro Wrestling personality historian, and interviewer. Very comfortable with public speaking and being on camera.

EXPERIENCE

Avalonia Festival of Short Films etc., Creator/Director

2017- current

Created, Produced, and Directed Avalonia Festival, which has been named one of FilmFreeway’s Top 100 Best Reviewed Film Festivals by submitting Filmmakers several times.

Screenwriter/Actor

The Manor feature film, distributed by Lionsgate, and produced by Woodhaven Media

July 2015 – November 2016

• Acted in a five-minute promotional video to promote the project, Summer 2015
• Subsequently hired as the lead Screenwriter; helped flourish and edit the story, add and develop characters and streamline locations.
• Acted in the finished film; scenes with Christina Robinson (Dexter) and Kevin Nash (Wrestling champ Diesel) and played brothers with Pro Wrestler Mike Kanellis and Sully Erna (Singer of Godsmack).

Script Consultant

Wrote many of the voice-over narrations as read by Dr. Dre on Lennox Lewis: The Untold Story.

Play in a Day series, Natick, MA – Writer, Director, Event Host January 2017 – April 2017

• Wrote six original ten-fifteen-minute short plays that were produced over the four live events.
• Directed one of my own of those six plays and two written by other playwrights.
• Hosted the last three of those events for the live audience.

Actor (Reel)

Film – Worked in scenes with Meryl Streep & Elisabeth Shue (Hope Springs), Cybill Shepherd (as her son), Mario Van Peebles & Wesley Snipes (Hard Luck), Frances McDormand & Richard Jenkins (Olive Kitteridge) among other experiences.

Stage – Murder on Us Dinner Theater – many ensemble lead roles.

Barstool Stories II – As brother Elvis in Haters Gonna Hate (also wrote and directed)

Barstool Stories III – Ivista’s Blind Date as Carlos (also wrote and directed)

Dalmatian – a one Act play / short film Playwright, Director, Producer Sep 2017 – July 2018

• Developed the piece first as a stage play, performed in both Wickford, RI, and Boston, MA in the same week in September 2017.
• Filmed the piece in Stoughton, MA in December 2017.
• Enrolled post-production & composer to complete the 36-minute film.

Acting Coach

C.O.R.E. A.C.T.I.N.G. Private and Group Classes 2009 – 2014

TAO ZEN ACTING – 2014 -2018

Theater Critic

Spring 2017 – Fall 2019

• Wrote and took photographs for about twenty-five Theater Reviews of stage plays from Granite Theater

Education

Rhode Island College, Providence, RI — BA English, Creative Writing Concentration

Maine Media Workshops, Rockport, Maine – Actor in Residence

Worked with many great professionals such as Barry Primus (Actor from Cagney & Lacey), Tom Kane (Producer, Kramer vs Kramer), and Steve Fierberg (DP, Love & Other Drugs, Entourage)

Awards

49 Awards in Film and Video, including a regional Emmy nomination and a regional Associated Press Award, ElevenAwards for Disregard the Vampire – A Mike Messier Documentary, and several for the feature film screenplay Fight or Play Basketball

TV interviewer and Host 

TV show host and producer of about 125 episodes of the long-form interview program titled Messier Mantra, each episode lasting 30 or 60 minutes.

Mike Messier Bio Part two (Click here to read part one!)

Early in his Acting career, Mike traveled to LA for an audition for an HBO series produced by Jay Roach (Director of Austin Powers and Meet the Parents)  and R.J. Cutler (Producer of The War Room). That story is chronicled in Re:jected by Reality, a documentary Mike produced about his various experiences in the reality TV trend which eventually received a rave review from Film Threat a hipster film website that also praised Mike’s animated Schtick Man.

Mike’s filmmaking accolades include two screenwriting awards for  Fight or Play Basketball,   three awards for his short films So, You’re the Guy?, Thanksgiving and Breakfast with Kurt from Nassau Film Festival, and a Regional  Associated Press Award and a Regional Emmy nomination as an Associate Producer on Haiti: Triumph, Sorrow and the Struggle of a People.

In 2016, Mike co-wrote and co-starred in the Lionsgate-distributed horror film  The Manor (aka Anders Manor). In the film,  Mike plays roughneck hunter Ole Bayton with brothers Brett and Darsaw played by Sully Erna (singer of Godsmack) and Pro Wrestler Mike Bennett Kanellis.  A few years later, Mike worked as a script consultant, providing much of the text for the voice-overs read by Dr. Dre, on Lennox Lewis: The Untold Story. 

In 2017 and 2018, Mike reconnected with the world of theater with the Boston-based Play in a Day Festival as a contributing Writer/Director/Host as well as BarStool Stories guerrilla theater out of Boston.

One of Mike’s short plays, Who’s Your Daddy?, was later produced and staged by The Orange Players of CT, from information Mike obtained from Play Submissions Helper, a website Mike now works with and that he recommends to all playwrights, with the promo code MIKE giving new users their first month for only 99 cents.

In collaboration with Tim Labonte of Stand Still Pictures, among many great collaborators, Mike filmed three of these short plays as short films: Dalmatian, The Impeccable, and So, You’re the Guy? . The Impeccable’s Naira Zakaryan won  2nd Actress Universe 2022 Award and Best Supporting Actress Award from the Shawna Shea Film Festival while Ashley Shea won a Best Actress Award from  Alternative Film Festival for the same piece.

Mike’s TV show Messier Mantra features Mike as an interviewer and host for fascinating guests from the worlds of Entertainment, Sports, Environmental concerns, and Holistic medicine including Buried screenwriter Christopher Sparling and Shalini Kashyap, Mrs. India New England 2017-18.

Messier Peace Theater  – a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a short film titled That Night –  recently won Best Web-Series/New Media Short from the Alternative Film Festival and can be found on   1 Man and a Camera Films YouTube Channel Mike also recently won the Super Short Category, also in the Best Web-Series/New Media division, from the same festival for his Life Lessons learned from Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance.

Mike’s acting 

Meryl Streep. Cybill Shepherd. Elisabeth Shue. Famous? Talented? Gorgeous? And, perhaps most importantly, all three of these icons have had “Mike Messier Moments”.

Mike Messier has worked as an Actor In Residence at Maine Media Workshops, providing his talents and gaining valuable experience with experienced instructors such as cinematographer Steve Fierberg (Entourage), director Alan Meyerson (Laverne & Shirley), and actor/director Barry Primus through his class Acting Techniques for Directors. Mike cites Robert De Niro, Nicole Kidman, Denzel Washington, and Vince Vaughn as inspirations, and earned the nickname “Magic Mike” for his willing talents.

Early on, Cybill Shepherd, star of The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver, and Moonlighting, saw talent in Mike and hand-selected him to play her son in the USA Network film Hard Luck. Mike (as “Eugene”) has scenes with Cybill, Wesley Snipes, and the film’s director Mario Van Peebles in the gangster redemption action film.

See examples of Mike’s early acting work in Sleeping on the Job (Dylan Calder, 2010),  Bloody Mary (Jacek Laskus, 2010), The Mortified (Michael Zammito, 2012), Wakeless (Dana Goodman, 2012), along with some outtakes of Wakeless on YouTube.

Contact: mikemessiermoviemaker@gmail.com
 Mike’s IMDB (Internet Movie Database) page

A more recent example of Mike’s acting is here in the Award-Winning Seduction of Distance:

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