A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
Michael Andranik Goorjian
Michael Goorjian
Michael Gourjian
Birthplace:
San Francisco, California, USA
Born:
February 4, 1971
Michael A. Goorjian (born February 4, 1971; San Francisco) is an American filmmaker, writer and actor. Goorjian won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special for his role as David Goodson in the television film David's Mother (1994). He is also known for his role as Justin, Neve Campbell’s love interest on the series Party of Five (1994–2000), as well as Heroin Bob in the film SLC Punk! (1998) and its sequel, Punk's Dead (2016). As a director, Goorjian achieved recognition for his first major independent film, Illusion (2004), which he wrote, directed and starred in alongside Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas. Goorjian was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. His father, Peter, is Armenian, with his paternal grandparents being survivors of the Armenian genocide; his mother, Sarah, is of Scottish-American descent. Goorjian grew up in Oakland, California, and attended Bishop O'Dowd High School, which had a strong drama program. At the age of 14, he decided to audition for a local theatre company, thinking it was a ‘cool way’ to skip class; after successfully landing the lead role in a 'not-so-cool' play called Computer Crazy, Goorjian soon found out that the rest of the cast were all senior citizens and that he would have to perform the play at his own junior high school. Despite this seemingly rather humiliating experience, Goorjian stuck with acting, eventually training at UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film and Television. Goorjian’s first big Hollywood break came as a dancer when, in 1992, he was cast as ‘Skittery’ in the Disney film Newsies (starring Christian Bale and Robert Duvall). What followed were roles in numerous subsequent films, including Chaplin (with Robert Downey Jr.), Forever Young (with Mel Gibson), the Oscar-nominated Leaving Las Vegas, Hard Rain (with Morgan Freeman and Christian Slater), SLC Punk! (with Devon Sawa), The Invisibles (with Portia de Rossi), Broken (with Heather Graham) and Conversations with God. Goorjian made his first real foray into directing with the mock-documentary Oakland Underground, a comedy about an underground occult music scene in Oakland, CA. From there, Goorjian made Illusion with Kirk Douglas, which was released theatrically in 2006 after racking up over a dozen festival awards, including Best Screenplay at The Hampton’s International Film Festival, Best Feature at the Lake Tahoe International Film Festival and The Audience Award at the Sonoma International Film Festival. With Illusion Goorjian was critically lauded for his ability to blend great filmmaking with philosophical depth. Soon after Illusion, Goorjian began collaborating with the publishing company Hay House to produce and direct a number of films including the documentary You Can Heal Your Life (2007), starring metaphysical author and teacher, Louise L. Hay and The Shift, starring author Dr. Wayne Dyer, along with Michael DeLuise and Portia de Rossi. His most recent work with Hay House is an original film anthology called Tales of Everyday Magic, which explores meaningful philosophical ideas through intimate character-driven stories.
Associate Producer:
2011 Part Time Fabulous
Director:
1991 Blood Drips Heavily on Newsie Square
1997 Oakland Underground
1998 Call Waiting
2004 Illusion
2006 Players' Club
2007 The War Prayer
2007 You Can Heal Your Life
2009 The Shift
2011 Part Time Fabulous
2012 Entanglement
2012 My Greatest Teacher
2012 Painting the Future
2012 Tales of Everyday Magic
2012 The Magic Hand of Chance
2022 Amerikatsi
Editor:
1991 Blood Drips Heavily on Newsie Square
1997 Oakland Underground
1998 Call Waiting
2004 Illusion
2006 Players' Club
2007 The War Prayer
2007 You Can Heal Your Life
2009 The Shift
2011 Part Time Fabulous
2012 Entanglement
2012 My Greatest Teacher
2012 Painting the Future
2012 Tales of Everyday Magic
2012 The Magic Hand of Chance
2022 Amerikatsi
Producer:
1991 Blood Drips Heavily on Newsie Square
1997 Oakland Underground
1998 Call Waiting
1999 The Invisibles
2004 Illusion
2006 Players' Club
2007 The War Prayer
2007 You Can Heal Your Life
2009 The Shift
2011 Part Time Fabulous
2012 Entanglement
2012 My Greatest Teacher
2012 Painting the Future
2012 Tales of Everyday Magic
2012 The Magic Hand of Chance
2022 Amerikatsi
Screenplay:
1991 Blood Drips Heavily on Newsie Square
1997 Oakland Underground
1998 Call Waiting
1999 The Invisibles
2002 The Mesmerist
2004 Illusion
2006 Players' Club
2007 The War Prayer
2007 You Can Heal Your Life
2009 The Shift
2011 Part Time Fabulous
2012 Entanglement
2012 My Greatest Teacher
2012 Painting the Future
2012 Tales of Everyday Magic
2012 The Magic Hand of Chance
2022 Amerikatsi
Technical Supervisor:
1991 Blood Drips Heavily on Newsie Square
1997 Oakland Underground
1998 Call Waiting
1999 The Invisibles
2002 The Mesmerist
2004 Illusion
2006 Players' Club
2007 The War Prayer
2007 You Can Heal Your Life
2009 The Shift
2011 Part Time Fabulous
2012 Entanglement
2012 My Greatest Teacher
2012 Painting the Future
2012 Tales of Everyday Magic
2012 The Magic Hand of Chance
2022 Amerikatsi
Writer:
1991 Blood Drips Heavily on Newsie Square
1997 Oakland Underground
1998 Call Waiting
1999 The Invisibles
2001 Amerikana
2002 The Mesmerist
2004 Illusion
2006 Players' Club
2007 The War Prayer
2007 You Can Heal Your Life
2009 The Shift
2011 Part Time Fabulous
2012 Entanglement
2012 My Greatest Teacher
2012 Painting the Future
2012 Tales of Everyday Magic
2012 The Magic Hand of Chance
2022 Amerikatsi
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.