Biography

Mark Bacus worked at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for 36 years and now enjoys the occasional opportunity to edit someone's script or co-write new ones with fellow writers and directors.

He has won a number of writing awards including the New Century Writers and CITA for "Sometimes a Light Surprises" and "Slow Takes the Dance Floor," St.Louis Int'l Film Fest's Cinemaspoke for "Harlan Poe," Tiburon Int'l Film Festival, and WorldFest Int'l Film Fest's Silver Remi for "Win Each Way." "Sometimes a Light Surprises," (Bacus' biopic regarding the life of slave trader turned Anglican vicar, John Newton) was one of the original ten "seed" scripts at Francis Coppola's virtual studio workshop, American Zoetrope. Originally invited there by Coppola (who had adjudicated a play of his during the New Century Writers Competition), Bacus was recognized as a prolific writer by "The Independent," a magazine devoted to the process of independent film making. His screenplay "Slow Takes the Dance Floor" was distinguished as one of the top three most read/reviewed scripts during the first two years of Zoetrope’s Writers Forum.

Through Coppola's workshops, Bacus met Jeff French [together, they wrote "Win Each Way" and "Squeak"] and filmmaker Wayne Baimbridge of Elysium Studios [together they have written the feature length western, "Rock Creek" and a short, "A Familiar Face]. Through Zoetrope, Bacus also met his longtime writing partner, Martin Nowak. Together, Bacus and Nowak developed a number of short and feature length scripts, including Harlan Poe, If You See Kay, A New Star, Pregnant Pause and a film adaptation of Bacus’s play, "Sometimes a Light Surprises."

Bacus has also written a number of stage plays including "Two Hours Before the Ford," "A More Perfect Union," "Stealing In," and "It's a Living." He was the writer, director, and project coordinator for C-SPAN's seventh Lincoln-Douglas Debate re-enactment which was broadcast live (six hours of interviews, discussion, and live re-enactment with a cast of hundreds) in Alton, Illinois in October 1994. Bacus was hired by Word Records to write the liner notes for "Hymnsongs," an album by world-renowned, virtuoso guitarist, Phil Keaggy (released by Word, Inc., 2002). In 2024, Bacus wrote, illustrated and published a children’s book called "The Ceiling Stars" and a lyric, narrative book-in-verse called "The Closet Wall."
- IMDb mini biography by: Mark Bacus

Bacus dropped out of college for a while back in the seventies and went to work, first on the railroad [as a tower operator], then on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers [as a second mate]. He used to bring a duffel bag full of books to read while on his 30 day stints aboard his towboat (the M/V Frank H. Peavey.) His captain once caught him reading a book on watch and growled at him, "Don't give me no shit, Shakespeare; you won't git none." That nickname stuck and is still used today by certain friends.