Mike Hardy is a former Army officer and government media producer who has jumped into fiction filmmaking with both feet.
His travels around the world as the son of an Army soldier and his own adventures in the Army left him with a rich imagination and many stories to tell. Tours in Fiji and Yugoslavia as an Army attaché and combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan were particularly rich in future movie scenes. In particular, his time in Serbia during the Kosovo Crisis documenting war crimes and being and intermediary between the two warring sides was extremely stressful and left indelible memories about the horrors of war. His time in Serbia also provided great comedy, however, stemming from a government that considered America its great enemy while the Serb people themselves loved anything and everything American.
Immediately after finishing a second tour in Afghanistan in 2010, Mike entered American University’s film school, where he trained as a writer, director and producer. His very first teacher was Professor Claudia Myers (October 2011 Filmmaker of the Month), who taught screenwriting. After attending a screening of her film, Kettle of Fish, Mike volunteered to help on her next project, Fort Bliss, which was at that time just a script. Mike initially made some minor but important script suggestions concerning military accuracy and gradually accumulated more responsibilities with the film.
Mike served as an associate producer for the film and was instrumental in the scenes filmed in El Paso, Texas on the actual Fort Bliss Army post. There he served as production coordinator and military advisor for the crew. Mike also supported the post-production of the film by commissioning and helping produce the final song in the film, “The World Keeps Turning”, by Claire Wyndham and producing and editing the Electronic Press Kit “Making of” video for Fort Bliss. The film stars Michelle Monaghan and Ron Livingston and had a limited release in September 2014 in New York, NY; Fort Bliss, Texas; Los Angeles, CA; and Washington, D.C. The film has gained critical acclaim for its honest portrayal of life in the military as a single parent.
Mike finished his military career in 2013, which allowed him to focus full-time on Fort Bliss and film study. Mike’s graduate thesis short film, a comedy, Saving Mr. Yamamoto, was awarded best fiction film, graduate division, by American University’s School of Communication for 2012-2013. Further advanced film study at the Art Institute of Washington yielded another successful short comedy, The Ticket, which won best narrative short film at that school’s Visually Wired Film Festival in 2014. Mike also contributed production assistance to several projects with colleagues, including fellow DC filmmaker Harold Jackson’s Under the Bourbon Moon.
Mike just completed a summer in LA film program where he met several leading producers and worked on the short film, Preggers. Mike is currently working as crew on a Hollywood feature film due for release next year. Mike is also working on a couple of television projects that has received some attention from Hollywood and also is developing a feature script. Mike’s long-term goal is to eventually become a television showrunner while continuing to make independent feature films. Mike lives in Northwest Washington in the U Street area near Malcolm X Park.
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