Author Robert J. Sawyer has announced on his blog that Canadian author and filmmaker Michael Lennick died Nov. 7 of a brain tumor. For 20 years Michael divided his time between writing and directing kids’ shows and documentaries for the CBC, TV Ontario and PBS, and creating visual effects for numerous film and television projects, including “Videodrome” and the TV version of “War of the Worlds.” MSTies will recall his special video and electronic effects work on the movie in episode K20- THE LAST CHASE. He was 61.
RIP to Michael Lennick. It’s been so sad recently to hear of such creative people passing away so young; I’m reminded of Linda Griffiths, another talented Canadian we lost earlier this year.
I wasn’t familiar with Robert J. Sawyer until recently, but his bibliography looks very interesting, and I’m especially pleased to learn that he (along with George R.R. Martin and other prominent writers) remains a devotee of WordStar, which is still one of my favorite word processors:
http://sfwriter.com/wordstar.htm
Sounds like he was quite multi-talented, very sad.
And love The Last Chase, definitely my favorite KTMA episode.
Nice work on TLC.
He had great hair. If it was real I’m nothing but jealous with my horrible baldness. If it was fake I’d like to know where he got it. I’ll bet Shatner shops there.
(Long time reader, first time comment poster, even though I did write a couple of the Ward E transcripts ages ago. Anyway…)
I’m actually friends with his brother, and I didn’t know about his MST linkage until this post. His parents were long-time members of Wayne and Shuster’s comedy troupe. If you’re familiar with the Julius Caesar send-up “Rinse the Blood off my Toga”, his dad played the bartender, and his mom was Calpurnia. You know, “I told him, Julie, don’t go! It’s the Ides of March. Beware already!”