He had every right to be, but I should have known better.
Word had filtered down the grapevine about 18 months ago that not only had the funding for his movie evaporated but, with the money gone, international stars such as James Nesbitt and Timothy Spall, along with award-winning director and long-time advocate Gillies MacKinnon, had slipped the leash.
This was heartbreaking stuff.
Having progressed the film script through countless drafts in the years since embarking on it in 2002, and having jumped through numerous New Zealand Film Commission hoops - some of which seemed to be a movable feast - the project had finally run into a brick wall.
This surely was the end.
Not a bit of it.
From memory the conversation went something like this.
"How's it going, Mike?" I said.
"Great," he said.
"What!? I heard they pulled the plug on the finance.
What are you going to do?""We're going ahead," he said.
"We're making the bloody film. Rawiri [Paratene, of Whale Rider fame] is still in, we're looking at some others, and we've got a new director."
There was a pause before he continued.
"And best of all, I'm sleeping with her!" He burst out laughing in that infectious, mischievous, chuckling manner that clears away clouds at the darkest of times.
This is a story I've written of before.
It's a tale of being knocked down time and again and getting up, of facing hopeless odds and, finally, beating them.
But the story now has an ending.
A happy one, too.
Mike and Rosemary Riddell shot their feature film The Insatiable Moon, based on Mike's novel of the same name, in Ponsonby towards the end of last year.
From an original budget of $6 million, they downsized.
When faced with the prospect of killing off this insistent baby, this irrepressible child that had haunted their dreams for the best part of a decade - the novel was originally published in 1997 - they turned around and privately raised the comparatively minuscule budget of $300,000.
They persuaded veteran director of photography and advocate of "frugal film-making", Tom Burstyn, to come aboard.
Lead actor Paratene stayed good to his word.
Other Kiwi luminaries such as Ian Mune, Sara Wiseman and Greg Johnson took roles.
Mike became a writer-producer, Rosemary director.
In so doing they were, in fact, reprising roles they had performed before.
In 2003 they did what everybody said was impossible and raised the money to take Mike's James K.
Baxter play, Jerusalem Jerusalem, directed by Rosemary, and with a cast of 13, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
A year or two later, in between running the inaugural Dunedin 48-hour film festival, Mike gave local film-making a fillip by setting up the organisation Screen Dunedin.
Under its auspices he produced local writer Bronwyn Tainui's short film Cake Tin, again with Rosemary directing.
It went on to win a prize at the Moondance Film Festival in California.
The Insatiable Moon is the story of Arthur, psychiatric patient, self-proclaimed second son of God and resident of a threatened Ponsonby boarding house who sets out on a quest, preaching his vision of a just and caring society - a story with heart and soul, if not exactly your typical Hollywood fare.
Mike, who has a PhD in religious studies from the University of Otago, was a minister, community worker and social activist during the early '80s in Auckland, when people like Arthur were abandoned by mental health institutions and ended up on the streets.
His experiences proved the seed for the novel, and the movie.
"Everyone is a little bit mad and a little bit sane," he says reflecting on the character of Arthur, but also, one suspects, on the Everest-like difficulties of getting a film made.
Its release - first in the New Zealand International Film Festival that kicks off this week, then on theatrical release through the Rialto chain - is something of a miracle.
But one grounded in talent, in self-belief, in sheer bloody-minded, never-say-die determination and despite, rather than because of, the efforts of the New Zealand Film Commission.
Sir Peter Jackson has just completed a review of that august body.
To be fair, they have an unenviable task in trying to decide how to cut a cake that's too small in the first place, but almost all agree the review is on to something when it says the organisation should refocus itself to back real talent.
They could almost use The Insatiable Moon as a case study.
The Insatiable Moon screens at the Rialto on Sunday, August 1, at 5.45pm and Monday, August 2, at 1.15pm, before going on general release at Rialto in mid-September.
The novel of the same name has been re-released by HarperCollins, RRP $26.99.
