 Hello everybody, welcome to my show Friday PM. My name is Luigi Scarcelli. I'm here today with filmmaker Mark J. Parker. Hello. Thank you so much, Luigi. This is a great place. I'm loving everything. So thank you. And thank you very much for coming in here, making the time. So you're located, let's just talk about where you're at now. You're located in. I moved to Kiddery, yeah, right at the start of COVID. It felt like the right time to finally get out of New York. So yeah, we're in Kiddery, right by Portsmouth. Love it. We used to own a vacation cottage that we would Airbnb out in a gun quit. So I had known the area for a few years before moving. Yeah, in Southern Maine. Cool, cool. And so you do some filmmaking. You're also a teacher, is that correct? Yeah, I'm actually in between teaching classes today over at Yarmouth. There's a local theater there that I'm teaching on-camera acting workshops today. So yeah, every now and then, teaching kids, teens, adults, yeah. So let's just jump kind of right into your biography. Like you're born in New Jersey. Yeah, grew up in a town called Morristown, New Jersey right across the bridge from Philadelphia. So when I say Jersey, people think of Jersey Housewives or Jersey Shore. That's a different now. Like I'm a suburb of Philly. But yeah, went to school there and went to Temple University in Philly for my freshman year only because, so I acted a lot as a kid and I was one of the five leads of this new, it was supposed to be a new, my so-called life Dawson's Creek type show for a channel that doesn't exist anymore, Noggin. Yeah, I have never heard of that. It was like the older version of Nickelodeon. I think it was on Nickelodeon then with cable. Anyway, so I had done some work for them and then we did a pilot and I was in the pilot and then I had a re-audition for a whole year once New York people got involved. And so yeah, so my whole senior of high school, I had no idea if I was gonna go to college or shoot the show. So I was like, let me just go to Temple, it's right there. I can do film and communications. And then like the first week of class, I get the call, sorry, Mark, you're not in the show anymore. So, but it happened to four out of five of us. I still worked on it as an intern in Philly. But yeah, long story short, that's why I went to Temple but only for a year. But then you jumped to Fordham. Yep, so I knew, and also because I was still going to New York for auditions anyway. So I just knew like it's either New York or LA. I had gotten into Fordham and I got into Chapman University in Orange County, which is beautiful, but I was like, I don't know. And I had gone to New York so many times since like five years old for auditions. I was like, I already know it, my friends are there. So I went to Fordham. Yeah, you're kind of picking a little bit for those of the folks out there that don't know a lot about the industry. I mean, you kind of picked the New York side of it. Chapman's out there. I don't know if that part of California is more conservative, you know, it's kind of like Orange County or something. I know it's a good school. It's pretty far out there, but had you gone there, you probably would have been stayed in the LAC. Probably, and every now and then, I have no regrets about New York City. Everyone should live there when they're young, but everyone should get out and know when to get out because a lot of people don't get out and then there are those people who are screaming and going through the trash. So there's an expiration date out there, but everyone should go because it really, and I say this in the best way, it knocks you down, which is good because a lot of people need that. But yeah, if I had gone there, I actually sometimes wonder like, man, I think then I would have gone the executive route and been more, which that's obviously the real power. It's not the real work, but that's where all the decisions are. When I was a kid and interning in New York, I skipped all those internships. I was like, no, I want to be on set. Like I interned at Sesame Street, Regis and Kelly. I mean, I did so much production, but I'm kind of kicking myself that I didn't do more of the development because that's where- So you were at Florida, you did three years of Florida. Yeah, I was able, luckily, I don't even know how I did it, but I was never really a student. Like I ran my film club, my junior year of high school, put so much effort into it, I was like failing classes junior year of high school because I was like, no, no, no, this is way more important. But yeah, so I was able to graduate early from Fordham. I did it in like two and a half years there. So I just took summer classes and, you know. And so that gets us to where you were in New York and you were working there, doing a lot of stuff kind of. This is where you kind of learned the filmmaking side of it. Totally, yeah, I spent a lot of time in daytime TV. Never need to go there again, but I worked on a lot of shows. It was a lot of fun. I mean, at that time in my early 20s, I was greeting Beyonce, all these famous people, which is exciting. But that's no shade, but that's not art, you know? And I don't want to sound like that guy, but I just knew I was like, I'm not really around like creatives. I'm around people who kind of come up with ideas, which is great and fun, but they're just sort of moving things around. So I spent a lot of time there, got sick of it, and then that, I kind of accidentally fell into casting. And that's then what really, and I still do that to this day on smaller projects here, but yeah, I fell into casting and then got really into the indie world, which I already knew about as a child actor working in indie film and Philly. So I was like, oh yeah, this is what I was missing. I should have just, you know, stuck with that. So at what age did you move to Maine again? So that was two and a half years ago. So I was, I think we moved right, the weekend I turned 33, I guess, yeah. So that was like perfect. That was my first third of my life. So now here's the second third. We're gonna jump in the next section of our conversation into kind of your filmmaking style, but you're teaching in a Gunkwit and Yarmouth. Yep, and I mostly do online. A lot of my New York studios. Were you, at what time in your kind of career and life did you start the idea of writing your own stuff? Cause you've been doing it all the time. Since, like I still, luckily my dad, thank God, my mom would've burned them, thrown them away, but my dad kept a lot of papers that I was writing. You know, I was like basically stealing movies I loved. You know, like I remade Twister, Scream, you know, but I was making, with the help of my dad, like videos with the neighborhood kids in like fifth grade. So I was writing in like elementary school. I'm sure it was absolutely awful. But yeah, like watch a movie and then like get inspiration and then I made like a whole franchise, I think inspired by like, it was like a G version of Hellraiser. I was a weird kid. But yeah, so I knew from the get go writing and then actually Scream in 1996, I was written by Kevin Williamson. When I saw that at a young age, I was like, oh, those people are me. Like that was a love letter to not only horror lovers, but to movie lovers. You know, it's a movie talking about movies. And that really made me say, oh, I need to like really create stuff like that. Self-referential. Absolutely, yeah. So let's get into that section right after we take a quick break. We'll talk a little bit about your style of films and kind of go from there. So we'll be right back, stick with us. Thanks. Everybody, we're back with Mark J. Parker. He has a podcast also. We want to make sure to mention that again. Oh, thank you. Yeah, release date rewind, super nerdy. I like to sell it. I've always, again, ever since I was a kid, well, maybe not a kid, but teen I'd like to rewatch movies on, you know, special anniversaries just to see how they held up, you know, nostalgia. So it's a very nostalgia loving podcast, all different genres, which is probably a problem because, you know, it's not very niche, but all kinds of movies that turn 20, 30, 40 years old, you know, yeah. And it seems like it's always films that you and whoever is a guest on there are enthusiastic about, which is always exciting because that carries over to the listener about it. Absolutely, yeah. I like to bring on a different friend or coworker or, you know, we just did, and I like to do a different theme each month. That's two episodes a month, two different movies. So June was 80s horror month because in June, 1982, 40 years ago, we had Poltergeist and we had The Thing. And then we also had E.T. and Blade Runner. I mean, it was a big, big actual, you know, month for movies. But so we talked about those two and I like to find, you know, I put it out on social, who likes these movies? And then I go from there. You're doing mostly still horror movies? Yeah, that's like, that's really, I have other ideas, but I really love, I mean, my first horror film was, I was Freddie Krueger for Halloween at six years old. So I was that kid. My dad showed me stuff that I probably shouldn't have seen, but I loved it. So horror has always been something I've just loved. I love the thrill. I love how there can be some comedy to it. So that's, yeah, sometimes it might be more of a dark drama, like family history is horror, but it's also a kind of just twisted family drama, you know, so all mixed genres. But yeah, I like the scary. But right now, let's take a look at your first film that got a lot of attention was the film Sticks, is that correct? Yeah. So let's take a look at a clip from that and we'll come back and kind of talk a little bit about the themes, some ideas from that. So stick with us. Thanks. I get that. Lock it, please. How long do you guys think that guy was there for? I don't know, like a minute? I mean, he had directions to wherever he was going. Do you think that he was watching us? Guys, look, we're fine. Plus, even if we weren't in any real danger, we have this. Whoa, whoa, whoa, holy shit. Is that real? No. Yeah, of course it's real. Is that loaded? Yeah. Luke, put it away now. Okay, okay, Jesus guys, the safe is on. I'm shaking. I almost just pissed my pants. Me too. Surprise. Jesus, Luke. Oh, I forgot when I came inside to get the wine opener and shut and lock the door, someone's cell phone ringing somewhere. I don't get any service here. Mine's dead. Mine is upstairs. Oh, okay, that was probably it. Did you put your ringer on? Yeah, I don't think so. So that was the clip. So let's get a chance to kind of understand what that meant to you. Totally, yeah, so Sticks was actually inspired by a real road trip to the woods of Pennsylvania. We shot it in Belfast, Maine at my mother-in-law's house. But so, yeah, that specific clip is towards the end of the film. After these friends have reunited, they're college friends, it's the summer. They're visiting someone's family house in the woods. I wanted a very typical horror movie setting that we've seen before, but I wanted to always play with expectations. So by that moment in the story, they've all told scary stories around the fire, their imaginations are going crazy. I knew I didn't wanna just have a film of four people around a fire. You have to cut to what they're thinking, especially the lead character, and how, wow, what if someone's actually in the house right behind us? And so by that moment in the story, things are getting actually kind of creepy and there really is someone on the property. So now they're really all panicking in a fun way. You know, it's all kind of lighthearted. But like, should we like check the house? Like, what's going on? Now, the reveal of a gun. So things are getting very serious when we don't know if they're just on edge or if there really is someone, you know? So I wanted to really play with it's a house in the woods, what we've seen a million times, but is there someone actually there? And you'll have to see. And it feels like there's themes in the film that are screem, that type of theme. Definitely some self-referential stuff, talking about movies, but especially scary stories, you know, like old urban legend type stuff. And the whole theme is intruders, which I find horrifying, right? So, you know, oh, did you ever hear about that girl in the house and the guy was there? You know, so they're talking about intruders and meanwhile there might be an intruder ready to act out these stories, you know? And so your second film, that one was Family History. Family History, yeah. Family History to me seems, is it personal at all? Nope, no, mm-hmm, yeah, I'm glad you asked. Cause some people are like, was that like your experience? No, not at all. But yeah, Family History started with, we shot it at my co-producer, Tom's condo, beautiful place in Danbury, Connecticut. And as soon as I saw pictures of like the lake, I was like, we gotta shoot something there. And he's a fellow horror lover as well. Also a gay man. So we immediately, there aren't enough queer characters in, I mean, luckily now with TV, I feel like we're in a good place with queer characters. But with horror, especially the horror genre has always been so beloved by the queer community, you know? Just obstacles and thrills and it can be campy or it can be like, you know, you just see a lot in the, usually it's a female, you know, but someone who has to overcome the knife or the monster or some usually male, conservative, you know, oppressive, you know? So that's kind of where I'm going with that. But yeah, Family History, we both knew it's gotta have a queer element. And I just thought, what if it's this weird twisted lady of the lake scenario? And yeah, it's kind of dark. I don't really know where it came from, but. Well, and let's take a look at a clip of that. So that then we know what we're talking about with that clip, we'll be right back. So formal. Am I gonna get to see your room? Yeah, yeah, I'll give you the tour. Hi, Mr. Thord. I'm Evan. Yeah, hi. Thank you for inviting me. Lunch is almost ready, come on in. Great, thank you. This is so beautiful. Oh, look at that view. Yeah, looks really great, Dad. I was just saying to Sam earlier, the lake is so beautiful. It's so nice that you have it right here. Mm-hmm. Oh, hey, let me show you my old room. Dad, is that okay? This way. Did I upset him? No, no. So let's talk a little bit more about that clip now that we've seen it. Yeah, I'm really proud of this film. We, it was a really good group of people, my friend from high school, and also who went to Fordham, Brendan H. Banks, he has made great feature films. Just shot beautifully. This is a movie that like I really am proud of. But so in this clip, I again wanted to play with expectations because I was very influenced by Michael Hanukkah who did funny games. He's an Austrian filmmaker. Constantly, like a lot of stuff is not really seen, but it's really got you on edge and you're really not sure where this is going. So I knew what this story, I want Dad to be not, you know, it's never explicitly said for the most part, you know, but he's pretty conservative. He's very standoffish with his son and his new boyfriend, right? So in that scene, son hasn't seen Dad in a while, a few years, or at least a year. And is introducing new boyfriend and it's very cold, not the warmest environment. Dad is now with a knife, you know, I wanted people to immediately think something is up with the dad. So, and something is, but there's much more to it. And yeah, I just kind of wanted, that was an idea where, because with sticks, no one is outwardly queer, but I kind of modeled the lead character Justin on my own kind of personality. So, you know, but with family history, a gay couple is front and center and being gay is very much, I don't want to say the problem of the story, but it's because of that, things have happened to this family. Yeah, yeah. So it's more complicated. Yeah. And by the way, just for anybody tuning in, you can see these films mostly on your channel and Vimeo is the best way to do it. Yep, Vimeo, yeah. Sticks is available for free. Family history now, luckily has a lot of distribution. It just hit Revry, a queer, an LGBTQ site where it is free to watch there. It's on Vimeo to rent, they're on prime, so yeah. Yeah. And that's Mark J. Parker, that's the channel. Yep, yep, on Vimeo, yep, yep. Absolutely. And so the third film we'll talk about, and then we'll get into a little bit about, you know, bigger picture theory on LGBT films and themes and horror, because I think a lot of people will find that very interesting and things they didn't know about the history. The third film that you did most recently, because you are shooting another one coming up soon. Yeah, shooting another one, yeah, I shot a twin and then a Scream fan film that was my most popular film, has like 50,000 views on YouTube, so fan films are where it's at, so. But my next film, shooting next week in Biddeford, will be another horror film, of course. Let's take a quick look at a clip from twin. We'll come back, we'll talk a little bit about that, and we'll see you in a second. Okay. I don't know why the owner wouldn't run this out more, she'd make him coming. Yeah. Hey, look, there are two beds. Do not use broken, creepy. I think I just removed it. I mean, that woman said she helped when the bed was gone, right? Maybe they just had an accident or something. So we're right back here with Mark. So let's talk about twin. This was the most recent. This was in a film festival that we had here at PMC. Yes, thank you, yep. For Halloween films. Very interesting, kind of like a ghost. Yep, absolutely, and that's the cottage we used to own. So that cottage was our Airbnb place that we had for a few years. And I knew as soon as we bought it, I was like, I gotta shoot something here. This is so cute, but like it's on the edge of York and at Gunquit, and it's one of the many Southern Maine kind of cottage communities. So at night it always was a little creepy. I'm like, this is so weird. I wonder what's going on in everyone's cottage. So I knew I had to do something. So with twin, with that clip, this young couple, again a gay couple, a queer couple at least. I wanted them to be front and center, but this time being LGBTQ was not the core issue. I just wanted to take a fun, I mean it's dark and twisted, but I wanted to take kind of your standard sort of traditional ghost haunted house and just put a queer couple because we have seen so many straight couples. Let's just have two young women who are dating. They're on a vacation at the end of the season, when things are cheaper. It's still nice, but it's a little dreary. It was, we shot it right before Halloween in 2020. So before vaccines and everything. So I was super careful. Everyone was very great and very safe. But yeah, so this is when they discover there is an extra bed, the twin bed that was not in the listing. So they don't really, oh, okay, that's weird. And it says do not use. And this is right after a neighbor who's a little suspicious even asked awkwardly, do you, is there the second bed still in there? And they're like, we have no idea what you're talking about. So yeah, there you go. Yeah, and I liked how it was, it was two women that were a couple, but it really wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like a big deal. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I wanted. It's like literally there's not even any, there's not much affection. It's just, it's a normal couple entering their vacation spot. You know what I mean? It doesn't need to be super romantic. I wanted supernatural, just a couple, like any other couple. Right, supernatural and supernatural. Yeah, there you go. Oh, I like that. So let's talk a little bit about, I mean, how did you, it sounded like you talked before about that you found your way into horror movies when you were a young guy. But was there, is there bigger themes? Cause I mean, you and I talked about that before that, you know, kind of in the, in the 1950s, it was very conservative. So a lot of times, you know, the outsider was, was the, was the creature. Whether it was King Kong, which was kind of the savage or Frankenstein, which I think was kind of somebody who might not be mentally all there. Or, you know, there's a lot of anti-Semitic tropes to the Empire films. So that kind of bled through all the way into the 80s where we were talking about was a conservative type of films. It's like, if two teenagers were having sex, that's always when they were in the field. It got a little better in the 90s. I mean, it's interesting how all movies evolve with time, but it was still a lot of problematic stuff we talked about with trans issues in a lot of these movies. So I mean, where did, what's kind of your take over all the themes of? Absolutely, and all those are great examples of the other, right? And like how, even if they're not the killer or the monster, they have to be killed, right? Cause they're different or they're doing something wrong. The sex stuff is always just so funny. And, you know, movies like Scream in the 90s change that because of course, yeah. And, you know, Jason and Friday the 13th, once you took your clothes off, everyone knew, all right, well, you're dead. So luckily, you know, other movies really gave us more surprises because that got stale, of course. But yeah, you know, even with Nightmare on Elm Street 2, which is very accidentally very gay and has a lead character who is not, you know, your typical macho man and all that stuff. I mean, I have always found it so interesting, but the queer community has always loved horror, you know? Other queer people that I've talked to throughout my whole life, it's like, oh, we could go talk for hours about these horror movies because it's a major obstacle, right? Trying to survive, trying to be yourself and survive and not be oppressed in some way, not be hurt, you know? Whether you're a man, woman, anything, you know? And I think a lot of gay men, you know, see themselves in the final girl, you know? Running away from the men who maybe wanna have sex with them or want to kill them, right? So, yeah, and all those things about these characters being the other, I just wanted to really, I don't know what it was, just one day I woke up, I was like, yeah, I kinda wanna always have, if not an outwardly queer character, some queer actors, you know? Just like a queer essence, because I know, obviously, there's me, but there needs to be even more that we see on screen. You know what I mean? So, yeah. Well, it's interesting because a lot of film noir, a lot of those undertones as well, and there's a lot of folks in kind of the film academic world that they don't really think it was accidental. They think it's because there's always been a lot of gay people in Hollywood, and they have to kind of subtly add things in. Totally. And so it's there, and it gets past the squares at the, you know, the MPMA or the different folks are. And so, but it's very interesting how a lot of that's always been, it's subtext. Yeah, oh, definitely. In film. Yeah. And so, do you wanna tell us a little about the new film you're working on? Sure, that's cool, yeah. So my next film that I'm about, I just finished writing it, I'm constantly revising it, but it's called Casting Kill. So instead of casting call, Casting Kill inspired by my time casting. Yeah, it's, you know, I'm realizing now, I never actually realized this, but every one of my shorts, I've made five, I guess, professional shorts, they're all kind of about the dangers inside, you know? And so here, you know, I think there already has been a recent short film about a casting director doing the bad stuff, but I had this idea long ago where, no, like that to me has been there, done that. Cause casting people already, even as a male acting teacher, like I was just teaching kids, parents look at me and are like, okay, so I just, I go, I'm like, it's safe, trust me, I don't really wanna even be here with your kids. You're good, I'm not gonna do any, you know? But so teaching and that as the casting person, they're actually the least dangerous. Yeah. We wanna get the job done, we want you to be good, and like, I got my own life to live. So the whole casting couch thing, I thought, yeah, I've been there, done that, that's one angle. No, the danger is an actor, because lots of times when I've cast, especially when I was at ABC and, you know, the idea is a last minute shoot is happening tomorrow. So the casting director has to work late, it's around nine o'clock in the office, and there are no security checks, you know? I just look online, I'm like, okay, yeah, you look good. Oh, an agent submitted you, sure, yeah. Okay, come in, there, I have no idea what could happen. Right. And so I was realizing that when I was traveling around the country, cause I would do casting nationwide, and I'm like, I'm all alone in this studio. I mean, anything could happen. Right. Luckily, nothing ever did. I was scared once when a woman came super late, don't ever do that guys, came super late, I'm like packed up and her boyfriend or husband was very aggressive saying, please, we drove hours to get here, pull your camera out and he wouldn't leave the room. So I think that's just, you know, in the back of my mind, like, yeah, the casting people, of course, some are predators, but no, no, no. The real danger is that one visitor who you have no idea what he has in his pocket. Right. And as a tour, have you, by the way, have you ever directed anybody else's scripts or only your own script? I've been asked every now and then. I almost did one, but it fell through. I was asked just earlier this year, but it was short, long story short. No, I haven't, I'm open to it, but I've learned, especially with indie filmmaking, writers are, were very protective of our work. So if you're not gonna direct it and someone else will, it kind of can't fully be your work anymore. And so, you know, like the last time I was asked to do it, I really thought about it, but the writer-producer already got his DP, already had people that I would not have worked with. So let's just make sure that we plug all of your stuff. You have the podcast again. Release date rewind. Yes, films that are on Vimeo already, and the upcoming film, definitely check that out. When can people see that, maybe in a couple months? Yeah, I mean, it always takes me like at least like six to eight months in post, because then I'm working on other stuff and, you know, money's very little. So it's like, yeah, of course, you know, but yeah, hopefully next year, you know, I really have high hopes for this one. I haven't been able to get into any of the higher tier festivals. I'm probably naive, I think, at least on paper, I think we can get it somewhere. But yeah, definitely festivals next year, somewhere. Well, look for all those things. Thank you very much. Thank you, Luis.