About

Who is Michael Rose?

Brooklyn born and raised, but a California dude for the last 31 years.

Married for 39+ years to Judy, my college sweetie.

Started professional life as an underage (14) jazz musician and aspiring college music professor and conductor. Received Ph.D. from University of Michigan at 25, “retired” in disgust from academic life at 29. Came to Hollywood to start over in showbiz in 1977.

Author of unpublished novel, The Passion of Billy Ray Culver, in which I explore the psychological consequences — on the individual and on the polity — of the Doctrine of Original Sin.

Avid No-Limit Texas Hold’em player, called “Mr. Mikey” by the LA locals in deference to (their perception of) my advanced age.

Here’s my sense of life:

The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well, and having done it well, he loves to do it better.You see it in his science. You see it in the magnificence with which he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery. The monuments are supposed to commemorate kings and religions, heroes, dogmas, but in the end the man they commemorate is the builder. (Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man)

…a self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters. (Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead)