Biography
Mark is a screenwriter, director, producer, and makeup expert with over 35 years of experience in film and television. He fell in love with motion pictures after seeing Dr. No and How the West Was Won on the big screen at age six. Growing up in Hong Kong, his fascination with films—monster movies in particular—was further deepened by meeting Boris Karloff's widow there in 1970. Four years later, he experienced filmmaking for the first time, spending an evening on the set of a James Bond film, The Man With the Golden Gun.
After a childhood and teen years all over Asia, Mark returned to the US for college and started thinking about makeup as a career. In 1976, he began corresponding with Planet of the Apes makeup designer John Chambers, who encouraged him but also advised that he consider other areas of filmmaking. In late 1979, Mark arrived in Los Angeles ready to dive into the film business. He had a suitcase, $300, and didn't know anyone in the city. After being rebuffed by the makeup union, he phoned Chambers and asked if he could show his meager portfolio. Unknown to Mark, Chambers was secretly working for the CIA on Argo at the time, but met with Mark on several occasions and generously gave him his first contacts and assistance in the business.
Answering a Dramalogue ad in March 1980, Mark began his career at the American Film Institute on the Oscar-winning film Violet ("My high school in filmmaking"). He cut his teeth on half a dozen AFI shorts, working with cinematographers Frederick Elmes and Robert Richardson, and producer Michael S. Murphey, also in their early careers. After a stint assisting Rick Baker on the pre-production for Videodrome, Mark dived into "film school college" hands-on with three movies at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and five for producer Sandy Howard. Within a few years, he became one of the premier FX artists of his generation, helping genre directors Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon, Don Coscarelli, Sean Cunningham, and Tobe Hooper to realize their celluloid nightmares. Mark's creations on Raimi's Evil Dead 2 are highly regarded today (and often copied) and he still gets fan mail about this work.
Trying his hand at directing, Mark designed, storyboarded, and co-directed the Tall Man's famous melting scene in Phantasm II, and the pivotal mid-story scene sequence in
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (in addition to creating the makeup effects for both). After a recommendation from cinema legend Dick Smith in 1988, Mark directed Laurel Entertainment’s TV show Monsters! This led to an offer from Hellraiser producer Christopher Webster to direct Mindwarp, Fangoria Films' first foray into moviemaking. Mark considered but ultimately declined that film, electing instead to come up with his own material. He coauthored a neo-noir script with Bram Stoker-nominated novelist Philip Nutman, an experience which took his creative life down an entirely new path.
In 1989, Mark embarked on an ambitious writing project:
to find and interview people from L.A.'s most infamous unsolved crime, the 1947 Black Dahlia murder. For three years, he turned down all work except short-term jobs which would finance his quest. Using only phone books, libraries, and a landline, he tracked down 23 detectives, reporters, and witnesses, afterwards generating a screenplay which would take another three years.
By 1993, Mark became eligible to join the makeup union. Seeing this as a way to fund his writing, he started assembling the paperwork. He met Michael Westmore (the Westmores of Hollywood film royalty) who told him to call the moment he got in. Mark did, and was thrust into designing for the Star Trek feature film Generations and TV shows Deep Space Nine and Voyager simultaneously. "Graduate school in filmmaking" was 67 episodes of Voyager in three years, working with countless directors and writers to creatively push the show to new bounds. For his efforts there and on The X Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mark received four Emmy nominations in four years, winning with three of them. In his film work, he won a Sitges Award and garnered four Saturn nominations, as well as making major contributions to the Oscar-winning/nominated makeups in Dick Tracy, Life and Men In Black. Around this period, he lectured to the graduating class of Producing Fellows at the American Film Institute—where he had started in 1980.
Mark's immersion into union projects was a double-edged sword: good for finances, not good for writing time. On-set commitments meant 80-hour weeks non-stop for months. During his final year on Voyager, Mark bought his first Mac and hired a friend to type his Black Dahlia screenplay text into it (from 16 word processor disks). He spent two months polishing the script, Black Sleep, and three days before the deadline entered it in the 1997 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Despite being 50 pages longer than a normal script, it placed semifinalist—in the top 1% of 4,011 entries.
In 2002, Black Sleep also made semifinalist in the Chesterfield Writers Film Project, based at Paramount Pictures and originated at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.
Amid these writing projects and film/TV productions, Mark devoted himself for many years to volunteer work with CAST-LA (Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking), Pasadena Humane Society, and the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles—and returned to college at 44 to re-study Chinese.
He took a break from films to teach makeup from 2005 to 2010. Working normal hours for the first time in decades enabled Mark to finish more screenplays and a few of them came close to getting made. Actors and directors began using scenes from his scripts to train at the Bernard Hiller Acting Studio and the Actors Playpen cold reading workshop. Three of his scripts became Second Rounders at Austin Film Festival’s 2016 Screenplay Competition, making him one of only six writers in the history of the festival to place three in a single year.
Outside of movies, Mark is a multi-instrumentalist, published photographer, accomplished chef, global nomad, and devoted cat lover. When not engaged in those pursuits, he can usually be found creating another screenplay. He speaks proficient Mandarin, swears fluently in Cantonese, reads and writes Chinese, and is currently learning Indonesian and Spanish.
Most recently, he executive produced Shudder’s Behind the Monsters with Fangoria Editor-in-Chief Phil Nobile Jr. and Kelly Ryan of Stage 3 Productions. He is currently in development on three of his films.
Mark is a screenwriter, director, producer, and makeup expert with over 35 years of experience in film and television. He fell in love with motion pictures after seeing Dr. No and How the West Was Won on the big screen at age six. Growing up in Hong Kong, his fascination with films—monster movies in particular—was further deepened by meeting Boris Karloff's widow there in 1970. Four years later, he experienced filmmaking for the first time, spending an evening on the set of a James Bond film, The Man With the Golden Gun.
After a childhood and teen years all over Asia, Mark returned to the US for college and started thinking about makeup as a career. In 1976, he began corresponding with Planet of the Apes makeup designer John Chambers, who encouraged him but also advised that he consider other areas of filmmaking. In late 1979, Mark arrived in Los Angeles ready to dive into the film business. He had a suitcase, $300, and didn't know anyone in the city. After being rebuffed by the makeup union, he phoned Chambers and asked if he could show his meager portfolio. Unknown to Mark, Chambers was secretly working for the CIA on Argo at the time, but met with Mark on several occasions and generously gave him his first contacts and assistance in the business.
Answering a Dramalogue ad in March 1980, Mark began his career at the American Film Institute on the Oscar-winning film Violet ("My high school in filmmaking"). He cut his teeth on half a dozen AFI shorts, working with cinematographers Frederick Elmes and Robert Richardson, and producer Michael S. Murphey, also in their early careers. After a stint assisting Rick Baker on the pre-production for Videodrome, Mark dived into "film school college" hands-on with three movies at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and five for producer Sandy Howard. Within a few years, he became one of the premier FX artists of his generation, helping genre directors Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon, Don Coscarelli, Sean Cunningham, and Tobe Hooper to realize their celluloid nightmares. Mark's creations on Raimi's Evil Dead 2 are highly regarded today (and often copied) and he still gets fan mail about this work.
Trying his hand at directing, Mark designed, storyboarded, and co-directed the Tall Man's famous melting scene in Phantasm II, and the pivotal mid-story scene sequence in
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (in addition to creating the makeup effects for both). After a recommendation from cinema legend Dick Smith in 1988, Mark directed Laurel Entertainment’s TV show Monsters! This led to an offer from Hellraiser producer Christopher Webster to direct Mindwarp, Fangoria Films' first foray into moviemaking. Mark considered but ultimately declined that film, electing instead to come up with his own material. He coauthored a neo-noir script with Bram Stoker-nominated novelist Philip Nutman, an experience which took his creative life down an entirely new path.
In 1989, Mark embarked on an ambitious writing project:
to find and interview people from L.A.'s most infamous unsolved crime, the 1947 Black Dahlia murder. For three years, he turned down all work except short-term jobs which would finance his quest. Using only phone books, libraries, and a landline, he tracked down 23 detectives, reporters, and witnesses, afterwards generating a screenplay which would take another three years.
By 1993, Mark became eligible to join the makeup union. Seeing this as a way to fund his writing, he started assembling the paperwork. He met Michael Westmore (the Westmores of Hollywood film royalty) who told him to call the moment he got in. Mark did, and was thrust into designing for the Star Trek feature film Generations and TV shows Deep Space Nine and Voyager simultaneously. "Graduate school in filmmaking" was 67 episodes of Voyager in three years, working with countless directors and writers to creatively push the show to new bounds. For his efforts there and on The X Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mark received four Emmy nominations in four years, winning with three of them. In his film work, he won a Sitges Award and garnered four Saturn nominations, as well as making major contributions to the Oscar-winning/nominated makeups in Dick Tracy, Life and Men In Black. Around this period, he lectured to the graduating class of Producing Fellows at the American Film Institute—where he had started in 1980.
Mark's immersion into union projects was a double-edged sword: good for finances, not good for writing time. On-set commitments meant 80-hour weeks non-stop for months. During his final year on Voyager, Mark bought his first Mac and hired a friend to type his Black Dahlia screenplay text into it (from 16 word processor disks). He spent two months polishing the script, Black Sleep, and three days before the deadline entered it in the 1997 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Despite being 50 pages longer than a normal script, it placed semifinalist—in the top 1% of 4,011 entries.
In 2002, Black Sleep also made semifinalist in the Chesterfield Writers Film Project, based at Paramount Pictures and originated at Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.
Amid these writing projects and film/TV productions, Mark devoted himself for many years to volunteer work with CAST-LA (Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking), Pasadena Humane Society, and the Chinese American Museum, Los Angeles—and returned to college at 44 to re-study Chinese.
He took a break from films to teach makeup from 2005 to 2010. Working normal hours for the first time in decades enabled Mark to finish more screenplays and a few of them came close to getting made. Actors and directors began using scenes from his scripts to train at the Bernard Hiller Acting Studio and the Actors Playpen cold reading workshop. Three of his scripts became Second Rounders at Austin Film Festival’s 2016 Screenplay Competition, making him one of only six writers in the history of the festival to place three in a single year.
Outside of movies, Mark is a multi-instrumentalist, published photographer, accomplished chef, global nomad, and devoted cat lover. When not engaged in those pursuits, he can usually be found creating another screenplay. He speaks proficient Mandarin, swears fluently in Cantonese, reads and writes Chinese, and is currently learning Indonesian and Spanish.
Most recently, he executive produced Shudder’s Behind the Monsters with Fangoria Editor-in-Chief Phil Nobile Jr. and Kelly Ryan of Stage 3 Productions. He is currently in development on three of his films.