Mark Booker profile picture

Mark Booker

i am long gone....

About Me

The following story appeared in The Reader. I feel like the story accurately portrays myself and what I go through while I try to make wonderful media projects, that's why I've left it as it was printed. However, there are a few comments in the following story that I would like to apologize for. Mostly how I reacted to a question about a previous film I had the esteem pleasure of working on. Please know that just because I didn't agree with the story or subject matter doesn't mean I didn't love working on the the film "Independence." I have nothing but respect and admiration for the hard working people at and with Baby Lion Productions. "Independence" is a film they believe in and that I believe in too. My name is on it as well and I hope nothing but success for them. Also, this apology in no way undermines the ability of Casey Logan or anyone at The Reader. The quotes were mine. Thank you so much to The Reader for publishing a wonderful story.
"Roofing It"by Casey LoganSo, naturally, Mark Booker went to Maine.In late February, the self-styled entrepreneur behind Omaha’s Dropped @ Birth Productions loaded up a rented Cadillac and drove nearly 1,500 miles northeast for the purpose of editing Imitation Life, the story of four friends making a movie about making a movie and watching their lives fall apart in the process.Arriving in Maine, Booker shacked up in the home of a filmmaking friend and began piecing together his cinematic debut, the feature-length film for which he served as writer, director, lead actor and, now, editor.His plan: isolate himself for six to eight weeks, complete Imitation Life, push it through the festival circuit, accumulate honors and awards galore, land a distributor, become known as one of the greatest independent filmmakers in the world and pretty much take Dropped @ Birth to heights typically reserved for unmanned space travel and Zach Braff.If that sounds a tad ambitious — well, Booker is confident. Perhaps as confident as any 23-year-old has the right to be, and yet not entirely without reason. At an age when a lot of guys lose entire months of their lives to Golden Tee, Booker spent a month last fall shooting a film for the low-only-in-Hollywood-terms budget of $150,000 (and counting).It’s an accomplishment perhaps best contextualized by the veteran director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Elephant) in a recent interview with Readymade magazine:“The essence of film is that a good story well told, even if made for little money, can lead to the next project,” he said. “If the first small film is successful, the second film can be bigger.”Long odds notwithstanding, Booker possesses a number of qualities that indicate success could be merely a break away. Determination? Strong. Wit? Quick. Confidence? Borderline scary. Looks? Unmistakably Ashton Kutcher. Altogether, it’s not unthinkable that the culmination of these things just might be enough for him to crack the surface and get his Kutcheresque face noticed by the right people with the right keys to the right doors in the place de rigueur.But first he must complete this first small film.Backyard banterBooker was raised in Ogallala, a town located in that western Nebraska expanse where it’s actually possible for a boy to grow up identifying more with the Denver Broncos than the Cornhuskers, and where Booker and his John Elway-loving buddies passed the time in part by jumping off roofs.“I learned young that if you’re going to jump off something high, bend your knees and roll and you’ll be all right,” Booker told The Reader.Following the natural progression of foolish behavior, the group’s roof-jumping led to the formation of Ogallala’s first and only backyard wrestling syndicate, the Championship Wrestling Federation.Though the CWF website continues to celebrate the league’s fifth anniversary, which occurred in 2004, Booker insists it’s still very much business as usual in backyard Ogallala. Either way, the CWF is already forever enshrined in the dubious sport’s history books — “books” in this case meaning the multi-volume, as-seen-on-on-late-night-TV “Best of Backyard Wrestling” videotape and DVD series, the initial installment of which opened with a brutally foolish snippet of CWF lore.“The first thing you see is Kevin getting hit by a car,” Booker said, referring to Kevin Taylor (aka, “71 Pac”), a longtime friend, writing partner, Dropped @ Birth co-founder and intermittent CWF champion.Due to such antics, the weekly CWF event became a favorite happening for a devoted cross-section of Ogallala residents, among them a 30-something wrestling fanatic and father of eight who wanted nothing more than to throw his hat into the rickety-looking, jury-rigged ring. After deliberating on the matter, Booker and Taylor granted the man’s wish, on the binding condition that he wrestle under the name “Psychogay” (catchphrase: “This show is rated PG for Psychogay”). He agreed, and a legend was born.“He has a MySpace,” Booker said.For a while, Booker himself wrestled under the moniker of “Marc ‘Sellout’ Foley” (catchphrase: “I’m All Up In Your Area”), but even then he realized his interests lay more in production values than in the administration of power-bombs. To this day he has approximately 16 hours of orchestrated mayhem on video, featuring wrestler interviews and pre-event magic shows hosted by the neighborhood’s resident retarded man.“The thing about wrestling is, if you want to be taken seriously, don’t bleed every time,” Booker said. “Have some plot and some story line, then figure out what people are excited to see, like roof-jumping or being thrown through flimsy tables. Then you have yourself an exciting wrestling venture, without too many people getting hurt.”After crossing over from the CWF into the world of Hastings College, Booker began to produce the run of amateur skits, sketches, variety shows, music videos and fake newscasts that formed the foundation for Dropped @ Birth Productions.Ranging from unbearable to moderately humorous to sporadically clever, these shorts led to the no-budget feature College Life, Booker’s 2004 comedy about four slacker buddies and one irritable, slacker clown.In a sense, College Life quietly announced Booker’s entry into the filmmaking world, but it was his experience as a script supervisor on an independent film shot in Cozad the following summer that shaped his outlook as a director.“It was a boring story,” Booker said. “The acting was very sub-par. There were moments where I couldn’t tell what the hell the actor was doing. Plus, it was shot in the middle of a parking lot, in the middle of July, in the middle of Nebraska, so it was hot, and dry, and there were rocks everywhere. It was just a fucking nightmare.”Nonetheless, Independence, set at a functioning fireworks stand staffed by the film crew itself, introduced Booker to several of the crew members who would become involved with his own project the following year, including his director of photography, co-producer, assistant director, main investor, even his fiancée.“So, it was one of the greatest things to happen to me,” he said, “but I had some sour opinions about the scripts and acting.”In characterBooker wrote the script for Imitation Life while perched atop his parents’ roof in Ogallala, during a typically feverish bout of inspiration. On the one hand, the movie tells a fairly common tale of friendships stretched to the breaking point, and yet it also hinges on an unusual and risky storytelling technique so integral to the story that it’s become a central element of Booker’s marketing campaign for it. No spoilers here, but for anyone dying to know the secret behind Imitation Life, plenty of clues exist on the internet.What can be said is that Imitation Life is a movie about friends made by friends. Booker now lives with two of his fellow Imitation Life principals — Chris “Biznuts” Marsh, whom he’s known for 10 years, and Matt “Ben” Harwell, whom he claims to have met and cast while participating in a medical study.Initially, the production plan for Imitation Life resembled that of so many low-budget indie projects, meaning it was to be shot digitally. Then, in July 2005, Booker received a New Filmmaker grant from Panavision, worth an estimated $30,000 in 35mm film equipment — the same package awarded to Jared Hess a few years back to direct Napoleon Dynamite. The award, to borrow a line from Imitation Life, changed everything.“That’s where it went from ‘we can make this all right’ to ‘we can make this something very good,’” Booker said.Shot throughout Omaha, including scenes in the Old Market, Benson and Club Nico, Imitation Life was based out of a west Omaha home crammed at every turn with equipment and prone to sudden outbreaks of song, dance and performance-piece debates — many of them Booker-instigated.One weekend afternoon last November, as crew members prepared the lighting for a kitchen scene, the on-set discussion turned to a number of items on Booker’s mind of late, including his against-the-grain theory of Midwestern rudeness, which posits that people from the Heartland will exert their opinions on any given subject, regardless of importance or whether they’ve even been addressed.It’s a shrewd argument, as any Midwesterner who disagrees automatically becomes an unwitting supporter of its premise. Booker even drew what amounted to a lazy consensus among the out-of-towners on his crew.Over the next half hour, topics shifted from Booker’s thinly veiled crush on Marisa Tomei (he wants to cast her in his next film) to the carnivorous manner in which Jake Gyllenhaal consumes all good roles for 20-something male actors (generally agreed upon by the male actors in the room) to the “cinematic nakedness of Heather Graham” (a concept that’s never really defined), and, most controversially, the disputed legacy of former Portland Trailblazers star Clyde “The Glide” Drexler.One of the most statistically impressive basketball players of all-time, Drexler spent the majority of his Hall of Fame career toiling away in Portland before a trade to the Houston Rockets during the 1994-95 season led to his first and only NBA championship.The Drexler debate provides an interesting glimpse into Booker’s rhetorical philosophy. The reason he dismisses Drexler is because his sole championship had as much to do with Michael Jordan’s nonsensical mid-1990s defection to professional baseball as anything “The Glide” himself did that season. However, the real reason he cares to bring it up in public is because it so clearly gets under the skin of Imitation Life cast member and friend Nick Sanchez.“Nick Sanchez was born in Portland,” Booker explained later, “and that’s a stupid reason to like anything.”Out thereThere was a time when Imitation Life as an item of public consumption would not have existed until the film’s completion — until there was something to see — but in this day of blogging, MySpace and QuickTime trailers, things have changed.Throughout the filmmaking process, Booker issued almost daily reports either through MySpace or the Dropped @ Birth website, creating his own mini-phenomenon even before filming wrapped. The question was whether or not Imitation Life, the finished product, could live up to Imitation Life, the much-blogged-about idea.When filming ended late last year, a cast and crew that had been with Booker every waking moment for a month went in their own directions, leaving him to drive to Maine and edit the film himself. This is where he would perform, as director of photography Luke Eder called it, “the real making of the movie.”Readers of Booker’s blog — “fans” as he calls them — know the solitary environment he found in rural Maine had a strange, quieting, even humbling effect.“Watching the Oscars and hoping someday that it all comes true,” Booker wrote a few days after landing there. “It’s hard to watch the Oscars. It’s there that you realize that in this business a very small percentage of people are recognized for their accomplishments. Am I talented enough? Do I deserve it?“Things are different outside of what you know,” he continued. “And it’s scary, but the lesson is you keep trying. Everyday you keep trying to do what you want. And the only people who fail are the people who give up. And you can make excuses everyday for being stuck where you are, but the fact of the matter is, you try everyday until you die, if you really want to make it happen. If you’re not good enough, you get good enough … you figure it out. That’s how it’s done.”Four weeks later, Booker returned to Omaha with a near-finished version of Imitation Life. He showed it around to friends, family and crew members. Some liked it; others (namely, his father) were less than enthusiastic. He worked on it some more. Fixed the audio, re-edited some scenes, then started submitting it to festivals for consideration.“I have a lot riding on this,” Booker said, his first small film out in the world, the second waiting nervously on deck.
The horizonSeveral months ago now, after shooting wrapped on Imitation Life and before Booker departed for Maine, the young filmmaker returned home to Ogallala and wrote a screenplay called Avery — a complex, ambitious story interweaving a number of characters but based largely on events and situations in his own life.Booker knew what he wanted the story to be, but still he faced a difficult narrative question: How do you take all these people and characters and experiences and make them arrive at a single point of your choosing? How do you make it all work as a story worth telling?Thirty miles from the Colorado border, Booker sat atop his parents’ roof and plowed ahead, confident he had the right answers.“I used to enjoy sitting on my parents roof, watching the sunset, listening to my headphones,” Booker said, explaining his unusual choice of writing space. “Sunsets and starry nights. I know it sounds like I’m trying to pick up a chick, but that’s my thing.”11 May 2006

My Interests

The constant pursuit of what makes everyone happy.

I'd like to meet:

Someone who makes me feel better.View All Friends | View Blog | View Pics | Add Comment

Music:

The Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, Patrick James, Sigur Ros, The Go! Team, Matisyahu, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Wynton Marsalis, Billie Holiday, Coldplay, Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Nico, Elliot Smith, The Good Life, Nick Drake, Bright Eyes (I think), Bjork, The Bloodhound Gang, Anything by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Paul Oakenfold, Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, David Bowie, George Michael, Azure Ray, Marcy Playground, Tenacious D, Underworld, Jack Johnson, Madonna, BT, DJ Tiga, Mistaken, Moby, Kylie Minogue, Dave Matthews Band, The Eels, Pete Yorn, Deftones, Common, Pharcyde, Tom Petty, My Morning Jacket, The Smiths, Snow Patrol, Thievery Corporation, Nirvana, Old Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Josh Rouse, Death In Vegas, The Flaming Lips, Allen Masterton, Norah Jones, Afrika Bambataa, Daft Punk, The Psychadelic Furs, R.E.M., Bruce Sprinsteen, Elton John, U2, Modest Mouse, Red House Painters, Roxy Music, Beach Boys, Nirvana, Prodigy, Jeff Buckley, Peter Gabriel, The Dandy Warhols, Curtis Mayfield, Boston, Lynard Skynard, Ben Lee, Pearl Jam, The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, Mike Errico, Jurrasic 5, Kenna, Beta Band, Ben Folds Five, Rage Against The Machine, Vendetta Red, The Avalanches, Queens Of The Stone Age, Dire Straits, Bush, Mozart, Samuel Barber, Depeche Mode, Martin L. Gore, Jane's Addiction, Baaba Maal, Rob Dougan, David Gray, Handsome Boy Modeling School, Aphex Twin, Geto Boys, Oasis, t.A.T.u, Mazzy Star, Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions, Spiritualized, Beck, The Killers, Dido, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Willowz, and anything really really happy, or really really sad.

Movies:

Dropped @ Birth movies. Anything by Wes Anderson. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Brokeback Mountain, 50 First Dates, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, The Ring, Christopher Guest films, Old School, Wedding Crashers, Anchorman, Swingers, Rocky I-IV, The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, Life Is Beautiful, Trainspotting, Star Wars IV-VI, Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Punch-Drunk Love, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, Tommy Boy, Dumb and Dumber, Last Of The Mohicans, Heat, Bull Durham, For Love Of The Game, Major League I and II, Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, Vanilla Sky, Say Anything, Lost In Translation, Broken Flowers, Groundhog Day, King Pin, Me, Myself, & Irene, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, Alfie, Ghostbusters I & II, The Godfather Trilogy, The Virgin Suicides, Dodgeball, The Cable Guy, Liar Liar, Man On The Moon, Batman Forever, Borat, Babel, something else I'm sure.

Television:

South Park The Office Subterranean Jeopardy!

Books:

American Gods, Good Omens, Slaughterhouse-Five, Still Life With Woodpecker, Life Of Pi, The Lord Of The Rings, Art Of Happiness, etc.

Heroes:

My parents Those who take risks

My Blog

My Blogs

Check out all my blogs at www.droppedatbirthproductions.com.  They're tasty!
Posted by Mark Booker on Thu, 01 Dec 2005 11:24:00 PST