Michael Hall was born in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC. He spent the early years upstate, and in many towns throughout New England. Despite his grandmother Winnie being a Radio City Rockette, by the time Michael came around there was no money in the family. They got by on odd jobs, welfare checks and food stamps.

It was discovered that his father had been put up for adoption – by Polish/Ukrainian parents with the name of Zaiko – which translates to “little bunny”. Michael took this on as a second surname.

His wayward youth was spent self-studying oil painting and photography. After learning that his mother’s father directed three silent films in Belgium from 1919 to 1921 (“500.000 Francs”, “Arthur fait du film”, “L’héritier”), Michael took an interest in filmmaking.

Before long, his parents went their separate ways – his mother a Traditionalist Catholic and his father a pot smoking hippie who belonged to a meditation ashram. Another member of this ashram was the actor Roberts Blossom, who inspired Michael on many occasions to take an interest in movies.

Michael and his now single mom moved around the country, eventually landing in Colorado. It’s here that he met Giuseppe “Bruno” Bossio, who was Federico Fellini’s personal driver in the 1960’s. 

Having moved from Rome, Bruno was now living in the same apartment building under the Flatirons as Michael. The building incidentally bared a close resemblance to the “Arapahoe Street” Boulder apartments shown in the beginning of The Shining.

Bruno ran a community film program at the public library where he would screen Film Noir and Classic Italian movies on a weekly basis. Michael, a latchkey kid, spent almost every day at the library and lived for this program. Bruno took Michael under his wing with the intention of teaching him about cinema.

Bruno naturally showed a preference to his old boss Fellini, while Michael preferred Antonioni. But both agreed nothing could top American and British films of the 1940’s. Michael’s favorite movie then and now, is The Third Man.

Through Bruno, Michael was introduced to the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage – who was a professor at the local University. Stan instilled in Michael the notion that “filmmaking” was a literal term, meaning the assembly of film strips. Gluing sound and pictures together to manipulate an emotional response.

Another friend of this circle was Roger Ebert, who would come to Boulder annually with his Movie Yearbook. Michael Z. Hall – the teenager and school dropout – now found himself watching and discussing films with Roger, Stan and Bruno. 

There were debates. Michael adored Blue Velvet and Roger detested it. They watched Fargo and Pulp Fiction as part of Roger’s “Frame by Frame” film discussion program.  This went on for multiple consecutive years.

At the age of 16 Michael tried and failed to get his first film going – a noir called The Backwater Deadline. Disillusioned with the experience, he moved to California – to live with his father. During this time Michael started working in video games, having gotten a foot in the door based on his art background, before moving on to visual effects for movies. The work increased in scale, eventually putting him on such films as Planet Terror, Cloverfield, Prometheus, and Pacific Rim.

Michael next found himself a staff artist at Pixar, where he became immersed in their storytelling process. It was here that he hoped to learn, as a counterpoint to Brakhage’s experimentalism, how commercial films were constructed. This continued for some years, with Michael becoming increasingly interested in the idea of independent cinema made without committee from a singular, idiosyncratic perspective – and no commercial prospects.

Feeling that he had at last found his voice as a filmmaker, Michael spent considerable time working to get a film made called Kamikaze Butterfly – which intended to juxtapose a Japanese aesthetic against the backdrop of a dangerous ghetto. The film was storyboarded, voice work was done, a large amount of concept art was painted, and footage was shot with a full crew in an infamous part of Detroit called “Del Ray”. Like his first attempt at directing, the financing fell apart.

As a way to stay in motion and practice, Michael started directing micro budget films – his first envisioned as an experimental “Giallo” film, entitled Carrion – made with Robb Gardner, a fellow film buff from ILM. 

This led to their second feature, Hotel Dunsmuir – a supernatural road-movie inspired by the early 80’s, starring the fabulous Jet Jandreau – who Michael would collaborate again with on his third feature…

Peter Five Eight, an “absurdist noir”, inspired by 1940’s melodramas, with Kevin Spacey, Jake Weber, and Rebecca De Mornay.

Michael is currently at work on his fourth film, which takes its influence from early 1960’s American and British cinema.