| Tony Mark (producer) | |
|---|---|
| Born | Tony Mark USA |
| Other names | Anthony Mark |
Tony Mark (also known as Anthony Mark) is an American film producer, director and screenwriter who has produced films by filmmakers such as Kathryn Bigelow and Robert Rodriguez.[1][2]
Tony Mark received an Emmy nomination for the HBO 2003 telefilm And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself which he shared with producers Larry Gelbart, Mark Gordon and a list of others.[3] He won the 2004 Imagen Award for producing ("Best Movie for Television And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself") by the Imagen Foundation (established to encourage and recognize the positive portrayal of Latinos in media).[4]
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Tony Mark grew up in Manhattan, New York where he would find work as a vacuum cleaner salesman, taxi driver, and line cook before he found his true passion, filmmaking. When Tony Mark first saw François Truffaut's Day for Night it was a sealed deal. Mark attended prestigious Carnegie-Mellon University and spent years working in regional theatre as an actor and as a behind-the-scenes manager. The young thespian won the best actor award at the New England Theatre Festival for his performance in Girl on the Via Flaminia. />
Creative and scrappy, Tony Mark was also a photo journalist and fashion photographer who did work for the New York Times, The Daily News, UPI, and a variety of local newspapers. Marks fashion photography clients included: Zegna, Kathleen Detoro, Members Only, Ben Kahn, and CBS Apparel. A jack of all trades, Mark also spun records as a radio disc jockey at WEOK-FM, hosting a late-night jazz/blues program.[1]
Tony Mark would first sharpen his producing skills when hired to produce television commercials for Wakeford-Orloff and Dick Miller Associates (which included spots for IBM, GE, Texaco, Coca Cola and others).[1]
Mark went on to produce films that range from art house to commercial studio fare. Films that Tony Mark has been involved with as a producer have been nominated for Academy Awards (The Fisher King), Emmy Awards (HBO's Witness Protection) and have been featured at film festivals such as the Venice Film Festival (The Hurt Locker), the Toronto International Film Festival (The Hurt Locker), the Sundance Film Festival (Zelly and Me), Billy Galvin), Telluride (Go Tell It On The Mountain) and others.[1]
He has also written scripts for MGM, ABC, NBC, Showtime and USA Networks and has directed second unit on numerous films for HBO, CBS and Dimension. Mark directed a documentary for the Guggenheim Foundation of the art collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and their joint exhibition in Rome.[1]
For the demanding shoot of The Hurt Locker (for well known action director Kathryn Bigelow), producer Tony Mark would assemble an international crew made up of professionals from all over the world. The film was shot on location in Jordan, within a few hundred miles of the actual ongoing war in Iraq. Although the cast and below the line crew was made up of Americans, British, Canadians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Australians, Egyptians, Irish, Palestinians, Lebanese, Germans, Icelanders, Libyans and others, the crew got along fabiously and there were no incidents. Helping prevent mishaps (in the previously dangerous Middle Eastern country where a few terrorist events had occurred in the past) the film's crew was additionally protected by armed Royal Jordanian Army members. Jordanian-based Iraq war military contractors/mercenaries were also hired for security (and who also played parts in the film alongside professional actors, Jeremy Renner and Ralph Fiennes).[5] During filming as many as five or more hand-held super 16mm cameras were used to film scenes in guerilla-docu style. Nearly two hundred hours of footage was shot at an astounding 100:1 shooting ratio (a higher ratio of expended film than the notorious Francis Ford Coppola epic, Apocalypse Now)[6]