Like several other Hollywood realists, Mike Gray comes from a documentary film background. His Chicago-Based Film Group chronicled the political violence of the 1960's, including the award-winning feature documentaries, American Revolution II and The Murder of Fred Hampton.

Gray grew up in the small farm town of Darlington, Indiana, and after graduating from Purdue University with an engineering degree in 1958, he worked in New York as an editor for Aviation Age.

In 1965 he joined with Jim Dennett and John Mason to form The Film Group, a Chicago based production company. Their work in TV commercials provided the foundation for a series of theatrical and television documentaries. The three men have worked together on more than fifty film and television projects over the last two decades.

After moving to Hollywood in 1973, Gray began writing the screenplay that was to become the eerily prophetic China Syndrome. His years of research were confirmed less than two weeks after the movie's release by the accident at Three Mile Island.

Gray went to Harrisburg to cover the TMI story for Rolling Stone magazine and collaborated on  The Warning, (W.W. Norton) a definitive account of the accident based on 200 hours of exclusive interviews and 50,000 pages of transcripts from 5 government inquiries.

In 1981 Gray wrote and directed the theatrical feature, Wavelength, a science fiction thriller starring Bobby Carradine and Keenan Wynn (New World).

John Mason also rewrote the screenplay for Code of Silence (Orion), and a pilot for ABC based on the film Starman. They were hired by Columbia as writer-producers for the Starman series (1986-87) and Gray directed the pilot and three of the 22 episodes.

In 1988 Gray and Mason were hired as writer/producers for the Paramount "Star Trek" series.

Gray's second book, Angle of Attack, Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon, (W.W. Norton) was used as a source for Tom Hanks' TV series, From the Earth to the Moon.

After six years of research and writing, Gray's latest book, DRUG CRAZY: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out (Random House, 98) has already had a major impact on the drug war debate. The paperback was released in the spring of 2000.

Gray's next book,The Death Game : Criminal Justice and the Luck of the Draw, will be released next spring.

Mike Gray lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Carol, a reporter for public radio. Their son, Lucas, is an animator for The Simpsons.