Mark Turner

Married in a shotgun wedding two weeks after my 17th birthday to a 21-year-old woman, I leaped out of the dysfunctional family frying pan into a completely dysfunctional fire! Four years later, I became a divorced single father with two small children supporting myself through college. Not really the life I had envisioned, but it does make for great television.

Just as songwriters draw from personal experiences, my trials, tribulations, and near-death experiences have created the writer I am today – and I’m better for it.

A graduate of the University of Missouri at Columbia with a BA in T.V. & Film, my storytelling career began as a Photojournalist for NBC creating numerous award-winning narrative vignettes garnering record high ratings and winning two spot news Emmys before joining Playhouse Pictures in Hollywood.

As an Animation Producer for the legendary Playhouse Pictures, I supervised the production of commercials from concept to air, writing and preparing scripts and storyboards for several animated projects.

I studied television and screen writing at AFI and UCLA Extension. I also wrote and performed in a stand-up repertory company to polish my joke writing skills, but it wasn’t until I was a part of Sheree Guitar’s Writer’s Room continual workshop that I knew becoming a television writer was my destiny. I loved the “room,” the table reads, the camaraderie, competitiveness, pitching jokes; everything about it was great, even the long hours.

My attempts to break through also involved writing, directing, and producing several evocative projects, including writing and directing a critically acclaimed dark comedy, “Take Care Of Daddy,” an Academy Award considered short, also featured in several film festivals across the country including, Breckenridge Festival of Film, where it was an audience favorite.

Over the years, my scripts garnered top accolades, most notably:
- Top 12 finish at the Austin Film Festival screenplay competition.
- Top 10 in the South Carolina Underground Film Festival.
- Two different FILMMATIC Screenplay top 10s.
- Top 10 Table Read My Screenplay
- Top 10 Table Read My Screenplay Genre Competition.
- Two Unique Voices awards, among several others.

Now, as an older man formed by hardships and many years of adversity, my writing pulls from a deep reservoir compiled by those experiences and the wisdom gained from my successes and failures.

My writing continues -- it makes me happy. It would be wonderful if people “saw” my work someday and were entertained.