He Jumped the Fence.

Terrence Michael began his film career at Warner Bros. by hopping over the fence and knocking on a random door that happened belonged to Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon). After a lousy interview where the only director’s name he could mention as a favorite was Spielberg, Richard shooed him down the hallway to his wife’s (Lauren Shuler-Donner) office. Terrence ended up spending the summer interning with Laura while she produced Free Willy. “For the entire summer I would go into the office on Monday, collect 10 scripts, go home and do coverage, and turn it in on Friday. That was it. That was all I did. But I loved it.”
When Terence graduated from Pepperdine Business School with honors, he sent out 200 resumes from the Hollywood Creative Directory. “I think that covered about every producer in the book at the time.”
All but two rejected Terence, Island World Pictures and a little company called Cinecorp called him for interviews. “Cinecorp offered me a job starting at $150 a week to be an office boy. I worked there for three months answering phones, reading scripts, organizing files until the two producers who ran the company split up.”
Having nothing to lose, Terence made an offer to the producer Gene Kirkwood (Rocky, Ironweed, Gorky Park) -- one of the producers who took off from the company. Terence posed ”Make me your director of development and I’ll work for free.”
Working for free was a financial burden to say the least. Terence had saved some money from before. He kept his expenses down to a bare minimum by copying late at night at a friend’s office, taking meetings after lunch so all he was buying was coffee and sending out scripts fourth class mail. On top of that he literally painted houses on the weekends and Fridays. “It was financially embarrassing. Here I was calling myself a producer, yet I was working out of the garage of my parent’s house. It wasn’t easy.”
Eventually Terence used his business training and put together a business proposal to raise $40,000 to make a low-budget movie. “After getting rejections from all of my relatives and friends, an accountant called and said ‘yes’, but not to the money.”
The accountant wanted to form a movie company. He would finance the company -- pay the overhead. Terence would find the scripts to develop and find the financing.
After three years and not making a dime, the accountant let Terence go. Now by this time Terence had made considerable contacts. He was starting to know a few agents, studio execs and writers. “I could finally get people to return my calls. I was networking like there was no tomorrow. I joined all the organizations. But I was still ‘a nobody’ -- I had no credits.”
Yet, other producers who were just starting out peppered Terence with questions on the business. Student producers were courting him, picking his brain because they saw him as a success. He became known as young producers’ mentor. “In their eyes, for some reason, I was successful. I had five projects in development. I was working with some high profile producers (Oliver Stone, Harry Ufland). I was pursued and asked by three young assistants to come on board and help them get their film made. I didn’t have credit, but I had the contacts and knowledge.”
Thus, Terence received his first two credits as executive producer. “My career escalated exponentially the minute I had a producing credit. I had done it. I surmounted the first monolithic barrier.”
From then on Terence was able to attract good scripts, good directors, good actors and thus the money, which according to Terrence comes if you have all the above.
Terence Michael Productions was formed where he produced or executive produced independent feature films. This included the TriStar release of the Sarah Jessica Parker and Elle MacPherson feature, If Lucy Fell, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996. Terrence recent releases include US Films and Universal Focus release Never Again with Jill Clayburgh and Jeffrey Tambor and Dream Entertainment release According To Spencer with Jesse Bradford and Adam Goldberg. To this day Terrence has produced or executive produced 18 films.
Currently Terence is producing the new MTV Series Duets in conjunction with reality TV executive producer Yann Debonne, with whom he also produced The Skateboard Show for Warner Bros.