MICHAEL BUTLER is a screen and television writer with a background in documentary filmmaking. A graduate of Columbia and UCLA, Michael worked for filmmakers Robert Gardner and Haskell Wexler between 1961 and 1974. He began writing for TV in 1972 in partnership with Christopher Trumbo and later wrote several feature films with Dennis Shryack. From 1985 through 2005 Michael wrote TV pilots and movies. Michael’s parents, screenwriter Hugo Butler and actress and author Jean Rouverol Butler, left the United States to escape political persecution in 1951 (when Michael was ten years old) and settled in Mexico City, where they remained for ten years, living next door to muralist Diego Rivera. With the erosion of the Blacklist, Hugo and Jean moved to Rome, returning to the U.S. in 1963. Hugo died in Los Angeles in 1967, when Michael was 25 years old. Hugo wrote the four films screened at this festival.
