A mind on the move

A guy could get awfully bored in the few minutes of down time that comes before a PowerPoint presentation.

Not Michael H. Cramer.

A labor and employment attorney, Cramer was conducting a training seminar a few years ago at an OfficeMax corporate office, teaching the human resources department about retaliation claims.

As Cramer’s colleague set up the PowerPoint, Cramer — a shareholder at Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C. — walked over to a nearby flip board.

This was a moment Cramer lives for — a chance to blend his legal career and artistic talents.

“While the other guy was pulling up the PowerPoint, (Cramer) whipped up this cartoon about retaliation,” said Allison Zousmer Stein, now of Hospira Inc.

By the end of the presentation, the human resources department knew about retaliation claims, and Cramer — a painter, cartoonist and filmmaker — had a chance to do something fun.

“Making cartoons and acting in movies and writing movies and making movies are a lot of different skills,” Stein said. “He seems to be good at all of them.”

Whatever you do, make it fun

In the late 1990s, Cramer had an idea for a movie.

So he made a movie.

“He’s a guy who casually mentions the film one day, and the next time he brings it up, it’s to invite you to a showing of the film,” said Marsha A. Tolchin of Illinois Tool Works Inc., one of Cramer’s clients.

The movie was a short mockumentary in which Cramer played three artists.

In 2009, the filmmaking itch returned. He now wanted to make a feature about a 12-year-old Detroit Tigers fan’s love for rookie pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych, who in the summer of 1976 was one of the lone bright spots for an otherwise underwhelming Tigers team.

Not coincidentally, Cramer was a 12-year-old Tigers fan in the summer of 1976.

“I sort of naively figured that if we could make a 36-minute documentary without too much trouble, then how hard could it be to make a 90- or 100-minute movie?” he said.

It was harder than he thought. But he did it, releasing “Dear Mr. Fidrych” in 2009.

He followed that with last year’s “Teenage Ghost Punk,” a feature about a family living in a haunted Victorian house in Oak Park.

“When you think of a Victorian house, you immediately think of someone from the late 1800s,” Cramer said.

“But it wasn’t just people from the 1800s who lived in that house before the current occupants. So what if you think about someone from the 1970s or ’80s who was a punk rocker, and that’s who haunts the house? I thought that would be fun.”

Finding something “fun” is a big part of Cramer’s life. His interest in the law stemmed from an undergraduate course on politics that he took at the University of Michigan, which he calls “one of the most challenging classes I had but also one of the most fun.”

He chose labor and employment over commercial litigation because an older attorney told him, “Are you kidding? Labor and employment is so much more fun.”

In law school, when he reviewed his notes at the end of the semester, he could tell the days when he was most alert because his notepad was filled with class notes and drawings.

The days when he was less alert featured only notes. The days when he was not focused on class featured only drawings.

“You can talk to Mike about a case and mid-thought, he will flip into a different language,” said Daniel O. Canales, an associate at Ogletree, Deakins.

“If you have a really boring subject that you’re discussing, he can find a way to make it funny or interesting and just deliver it in a different way.”

Art? Family? Do both

That 36-minute mockumentary in which Cramer played three artists? They’ve all got voices, names and backstories.

As he describes them, he smoothly shifts from one voice to another.

There was Ross Hogan — “sort of an adventurer artist jerk based in Chicago,” Cramer said as he talked his way through the character’s basic traits.

Another was William Lenox Haynes, an openly gay Detroit native who moved to Greenwich Village to make large abstract paintings.

Then there was Duncan Best, he said in a British accent, fully transformed, describing Best from Best’s point of view.

“Duncan was a plumber who started doing silly faces and that sort of thing,” he said, still in accent, riffing on how Best was “fixing the loo” in the home of “some wealthy ladies” who then asked him about his paintings, leading to a career in found art.

Then he flipped to his own voice.

“He was a fun character,” he said, “because he was an accidental artist who was much more interested in the score of the (Manchester) United match than in talking about his artwork.”

Cramer, 51, is always happy to talk about his artwork, or his legal work, or anything else on his mind. A former newspaper political cartoonist, Cramer’s left hand might know what his right hand is doing, but others don’t.

Brent D. Stratton of the Illinois attorney general’s office didn’t. Stratton wrote a play that he is still molding into stage form, and he invited Cramer, Cramer’s wife and others to participate in a reading.

The group was enjoying drinks and conversation afterward when Stratton noticed Cramer’s hand busy on a piece of paper.

“It turns out he was drawing a one-frame cartoon of his character’s role in my play,” Stratton said. “It was on the spot, as he’s chatting away … fully engaged in the conversation.”

And while some attorneys might not spend heaps of time on art for fear of interfering with family, Cramer combines the two.

“We shot most of the movie my spring break senior year of high school,” said Cramer’s son Jack, 19, one of the leads in “Teenage Ghost Punk.”

“I certainly spent more time with my father over spring break than I would have otherwise, which was a very fun experience.”

The younger Cramer fondly recalls the way his father’s artistic nature bled into family life. Cramer painted a cowboy-themed bedroom for Jack and his brother, complete with a dresser covered in a Western landscape.

He also did character voices while reading bedtime stories and invented a serial story with a fictitious country.

“I think a lot of people talk about pursuing creative projects and then put it aside,” Jack Cramer said. “I think it’s really admirable and really cool that he not only wrote the thing but went out and made it happen.

“Now it exists. It’s out there. I don’t think a lot of people achieve things like this.”