Film & TV / Comedy
Mike Binder
born 1958 · filmmaker, stand-up comedian, actor
Birmingham-raised comedian and filmmaker whose directing debut, Crossing the Bridge, turns his teenage years in suburban Detroit into drama.
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Mike Binder was born in Detroit on June 2, 1958, into a family descended from Russian-Jewish immigrants, and grew up in the northern suburb of Birmingham. As a young man he headed to Los Angeles and became a stand-up comedian, part of the Comedy Store scene of the late 1970s and 1980s, and earned an HBO special in 1990. His home turf became his material: his first feature as writer and director, Crossing the Bridge (1992), follows three friends from the Birmingham–Detroit area in the late 1970s who agree to smuggle drugs from Canada and must come back across the Ambassador Bridge from Windsor; it was inspired by his own circle of friends and shot partly in Michigan. He went on to write, direct and act in Indian Summer, The Upside of Anger, Reign Over Me and Black or White, and created HBO's The Mind of the Married Man.
Highlights
- Wrote and directed Crossing the Bridge (1992), set around Birmingham and Detroit
- Indian Summer (1993), inspired by his boyhood summer camp
- The Upside of Anger (2005) and Reign Over Me (2007)
- Created HBO's The Mind of the Married Man (2001–2002)
- HBO stand-up special (1990)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Related place · 1992
Ambassador Bridge
The Detroit–Windsor bridge crossing is the tense climax of Binder's Crossing the Bridge.