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There is no sun quite as hot as at the equator. On the set of JAVA HEAT (2013).

Biography

Mark Shostrom

Overview

  • Born
    May 1956

Mini bio

  • Mark grew up in Hong Kong during the 1970s. He became interested in makeup after seeing Bride of Frankenstein (1935) starring Boris Karloff. In Hong Kong, Mark became friends with Karloff's widow Evelyn, who encouraged him to pursue makeup. He corresponded with John Chambers, makeup designer for Planet of the Apes (1968) during 1976-77. After moving to L.A., Chambers gave Mark his first contacts in the film business. He began his career in movies creating scar makeup on Didi Conn for the Academy Award winning Best Short Film Violet (1981) and as a lab assistant to Rick Baker on Videodrome (1983). Mark opened his own studio in 1985, designing and creating special makeup effects for numerous cult films of the 80s such as Evil Dead II (1987), A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), From Beyond (1986) and Phantasm II (1988). He was a staff sculptor and makeup creator for Michael Westmore on Star Trek: Voyager (1995) for three years.

    Turning to writing, Mark's first screenplay placed Semi-Finalist in the top 1% of the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition, as well as Semi-Finalist in the Chesterfield (Paramount) Writers Competition. He has also been a Quarter-Finalist in the Nicholl and three other times made the top 10%. Three of Mark's scripts became Second Rounders in the Austin Film Festival's 2016 Screenplay Competition.
    - IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous

Trivia

  • While living in Hong Kong in 1975 during the end of the Vietnam War, Mark and his mother signed on as volunteer chaperones for the maiden flight of Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children and war orphans. A few hours before departing for Saigon on 04 April, they were put on hold due to North Vietnamese Army rocket fire shelling Tan Son Nhut air base, where they were to land. Cathay Pacific then cancelled their departing flight because of the danger. The plane in Saigon they were to be on, a US Air Force C-5A Galaxy, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 138 of the 314 people on board.
  • Speaks decent Mandarin; reads and writes Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified). Swears fluently in Cantonese.
  • Mark's movie blood formula is used at USC School of Cinematic Arts and by US Army training camps in California.

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