Mike Schank Dies: Musician & Actor In ‘American Movie’ Docu Was 53

deadline.com:

Mike Schank, a musician who was featured prominently in American Movie, the cult 1999 documentary that won a big prize at the Sundance Film Festival, has died.

He was 53. His close friend, Jackie Bogenberger, told the Associated Press that Schank died October 13 after a months-long battle with cancer.

Several big-name actors and filmmaker mourned Schank on social media; read a sampling below. Director Doug Smith’s American Movie premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize — the first of several festival and critics’ awards and nominations it would glean.

It centered on aspiring filmmaker Mark Borchardt’s attempts to finance his dream project by completing Coven, the low-budget horror short film he’d abandoned years before.