He was born and raised in suburban Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating summa cum laude from UCLA with an MBA in entertainment management, he entered the movie business as a favor for his former college roommate, aspiring director Tim Schmierer (no office, single, white). Mike produced Tim's first and only film, the sci-fi comedy Poodles from Mars, which went straight to airplanes and destroyed the careers of all involved except Mike, whose organizational skills (he'd helped bring the picture in ten days ahead of schedule and 35% under budget) drew lavish praise from studio heads. He quickly became one of the hottest independent producers in Hollywood, helping shape such worldwide hits as Silver Snow and the Hip-Hop Alien franchise. Eight years ago he founded his own studio, Apogee Pictures West, which has released even more profitable hits (not counting merchandising tie-ins and home video): Cybervampire, Puppy Dog, Shoot Me Twice, Cybervampire Reborn, Puppy Dog 2: The Journey to Wonder Valley, Starvixen, etc. He's president and chief executive officer and always ranks in the top five of MovieScoop Monthly's prestigious annual Hundred Heavy Hitters list. His former brother-in-law, Walter B. Morris (much smaller office, twice-divorced, black), is vice-president of international development and has never made the list.
Mike's office at Apogee is 200' x 200' x 12.5', slightly larger than the Santa Monica bungalow he'll end up living in 14 years from now. In his office he sits in an imported Italian black leather recliner behind an imported Italian black hardwood desk. He bought the recliner three years ago to alleviate (most likely psychosomatic) lower back pain, to no avail. His office also contains (among many items) a digital widescreen TV; two VCRs; a DVD/CD/CD-ROM/DVD-ROM player; a red Macintosh iMac; a framed color photo (taken seven years ago) in which his daughter, Antonia "Toni" Kipperman, now 12, smiles with gapped teeth before Cinderella's Castle at Disneyland; an amorphous green ceramic candy dish (a birthday gift made six years ago by his daughter) filled with three stale grape jellybeans; the eight Golden Sprocket statuettes Apogee has won at the annual corpflix.com awards ceremony; four condoms (unused); the latest issues of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Variety, Maxim, and MovieScoop Monthly; seven paperclips he's twisted into spermatozoan shapes (a nervous habit); and, somewhere in his desk, the full-color prayer card (a luminescent Jesus holding a lamb) Mike had his assistant bring from Tim Schmierer's funeral in 1983 (Tim had hanged himself at a West Hollywood homeless shelter) and an empty matchbook from the now-defunct cigar bar where Mike met his first mistress seven years ago.
Since his divorce six years ago, he's lived in Brentwood in a small Spanish-style mansion (complete with cactus garden and Latina maid) far from O.J. Simpson's house but near the site of the infamous Naughty Mailman sex killings of the mid-1950s. Mike's one of the first non-chauffeuring black men ever to live on his exclusive street, along with that corporate media enhancement specialist from Des Moines and that superstar chiropractor with the cable-access show. A studio limo takes Mike everywhere, though he does own a red 1964 Porsche 356 Cabrio that he drives with his daughter, close friends, or potential sexual partners; the police have stopped him only twice for Driving While Black, waving him off with a smile each time once they see his license and discover his identity.
He's 48 years old, 5'11", 176 pounds. He works out for an hour five times a week at his home gym (barbells, Nautilus, Stairmaster) and has 17% body fat. He has a full head of short gray hair. No facial hair. He'll die 35 years, 2 months, 5 days, and 19 minutes from now in relative obscurity from pancreatic cancer, in a semi-private room at TransHealth Medical Center in San Francisco, surrounded by a rasping emphysema patient in the next bed, a near-catatonic male nurse changing the patient's bedpan, and a TV with the sound turned off airing the Wimbledon finals.
� 2004 David V. Matthews
Author's note: 7/26/05
You've just read yet another of my unfinished stories. Well, I hope you've read the story and haven't just skipped down to this author's note hoping I'll apologize for everything I've ever written, including that comic strip I'd drawn in 1993, "Emma/Emmett Embryo," in which a hermaphroditic embryo turns into the embryonic version of a pale punkish woman I'd hoped to copulate with, as if that story (which I printed in an eight-page, cheaply-photocopied zine I sold to maybe 18 people) would have convinced her of my X-rated expertise. (She didn't copulate with me, by the way.)
I did extensive research for "Michael Kipperman"--i.e., looking on the Internet to see what Porsche models existed in 1964. I might finish this story someday, or I might write separate stories about Mike's ex-wife, his daughter, and his fomer brother-in-law.
Black, white, brown, yellow, red, caf� au lait--everyone loves Fiction and Home.
� 2005 David V. Matthews