Mark Schoonmaker talks PITCH BLACK HEIST, the ‘90s & How a meeting with Ethan Hawke inspired the story for CASTLEMONT

With GRIDLOCK, his noir crime drama his latest short film entering 2019 film festivals soon, Schoonmaker has been extremely busy with several projects, developing A Touch of Evil, his long awaited coming-of-age drama mystery feature which was originally called “Mordy.” We are thrilled to interview him about his new drama feature, Pitch Black Heist he’s producing and his period drama piece, Castlemont he will direct soon. Mark talks extensively about his childhood growing up in the ’90s, personal experiences, music and a meaningful meeting he had with actor, Ethan Hawke.

Q: Tell us about Pitch Black Heist. What details can you share about this new project?
Mark Schoonmaker: I definitely want to keep a large portion of the story kept under wraps. This will be a silent crime drama about thieves, who execute a heist and witness an unexplainable event far beyond their understanding. The film will have minimal dialogue and the story will evolve and develop mostly through actions. It’ll have a supernatural edge to it infused with sci-fi elements which I think will be really unique. There will be a huge mystery aspect to this narrative and I’ll only reveal things when it becomes necessary to, so your mind can fill in the danger.

I am quite excited about this because it presents an interesting challenge for everyone involved. My friend, Peter Garafalo who was the cinematographer on my latest short, Gridlock, will produce this feature film with me. My cast is pretty fantastical, actors – Garrett Hines (Deepwater Horizon, Trumbo), Steve Wilcox (The Liberator, Night Eyes) and Stefan Rollins (Powers, Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger) have joined the project. David Christopher Pitt will serve as director of photography and Keath Mees will serve as 2^nd assistant camera on this creative endeavor.

Film editor, Kenny Dodson (The Blindside, Broken City) from 20^th Century Fox and Danish composer, Lasse Elkjaer (Midnight Texas, netflix’s Lost in Space) will be part of my post-production team. This will be produced on a low-budget. So it’ll give my team an opportunity to be super inventive with how we shoot this film that’s reliant heavily on dramatic performances and also crafting solid suspense and tension; with the intent to have it look fresh and different while offering something new and thrilling to an audience.

Q: Wow! Pitch Black sounds very intriguing. Tell us about Castlemont? Where did it originate?
Mark Schoonmaker: The story of Castlemont derived from my experiences growing up as a child in the late ‘90s. The story will be told through the perspective of a 10 year old Filipino boy, set during the summer of ‘99. It’s a complex and painful look at youth, loss, divorce, child abuse, and a love for the creative arts with an everlasting impression tackling relatable childhood depiction of choices and consequences. Also how there are a plus and negative sides of disconnect and how it can affect the character’s behavior and the people around him.

Some of these events depicted in this feature are loosely based off people I knew when I went to elementary school. One of my best buds at the time experienced losing his father to a heart attack, another friend experienced his parents separating and another experienced physical abuse. It was heartbreaking to see my friends go through those painful experiences at such a young age. This all sparked an interest to create a fictional story about family tragedy, and a way that central character deals with grief and escapes his harsh reality and discovering how movies are his salvation. I have been interested to tell this story for a long time.

In storytelling I always gravitate to complicated characters who challenge our definition of what good and bad are. I wrote it originally for a college-level creative writing assignment in 2011. It wasn’t until 2017 when I pitched the project to producers, Keri Ann Kimball, Ryan Carnes and actress, Alex Essoe (Starry Eyes, Doctor Sleep) I began to develop the material into a feature film. The film’s title was inspired by the elementary school of the same name I attended in San Jose, California.

The film will never take place at the school and so when you see the finished product, you’ll see in a very meaningful way why I chose to title it Castlemont.

Q: What can you tease and what can we look forward to see?
Mark Schoonmaker: I have yet to go into production on this project, so definitely look forward to go back to a time period when there wasn’t any distractions such as smartphones and social media. Jonah Hill said it best when he made Mid-90s – “The ‘90s was a time where you had to talk to people and you couldn’t hide behind your phone if a conversation became awkward or uncomfortable.” There will be a lot of cool stuff that will feel nostalgic and bring you back to the ‘90s.

You can’t share everything from the ‘90s, but all the cool stuff featured in this will all serve a purpose for the narrative and are loosely based off selective moments from own life that I think will be worthy sharing with an audience. A cool moment I wrote will feature Blockbuster which will remind people the whole experience physically going into a store for hours and the late fees that I am sure nobody misses or renting the correct video jacket and discovering the wrong video tape inside.

The only things I’ll tease because I do not want to give it all away. The story’s primary focus is on broken and damaged characters. In hopes to tug at the heart strings of an audience through deep characterization, reliability and raw and engaging performances from the cast. The movie will follow only five characters and through the perspective of the 10 year old boy, it will also explore struggling and failed artists.

One of the supporting characters is a struggling writer and the other is a failed musician. One of the character will battle a lot of internal conflict, who is dealing with depression and suicide and is haunted by the death of Kurt Cobain and the notion of what it takes to be great. The struggling writer will live a very unhealthy lifestyle. I want to share what people go through personally and emotionally when pursuing a life dedicated to the creative arts; conveying its this lonely journey most of the time, and it’s hard to articulate what it is that we do to people and artists can find solace in being alone with their work.

Q: Why the ‘90s?
Mark Schoonmaker: The 1990s was a very special and meaningful time in my life especially my childhood. So to tell this story is really important to me because this will give me an opportunity to express the stuff I went through whether it was pain, happiness, frustration or sadness I felt, what I discovered and the people I met along the way. I remember those days like they were yesterday and I miss them.

As a Northern California native, I spent most of my time either at the local Blockbuster store on Bascom Avenue or the movie theaters at Santana Row and Winchester Century 21 on Olsen Drive right next to the infamous Winchester Mystery House. I also spent a fair amount of time at the Public Library watching 1930s horror movies on VHS. I had a deep appreciation for black and white horror films so they will appear in this story as movie props which will serve a key role.

Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio were at the epicenter in the stuff I had a huge passion for and dreamed of doing. You’ll see that seep through this narrative and how much I admired my idols and what they truly meant to me. Movies always gave my life this kind of purpose and so at that age I always was interested to discover how movies were made. I remember very vividly when I was 7, watching a behind-the-scenes special on the making of Saving Private Ryan on television and had a name to the face moment.

I always knew Spielberg’s name. It was synonymous with film greatness but I never knew what the genius looked like. 

I want to remain true to myself as possible and authenticity is important to me. I am very much a Filipino-American storyteller and to best represent that the lead actor in this movie must be Filipino ethnicity as well. I have found a great child actor in the form of Deric McCabe I am going to roll with, who was recently in disney’s A Wrinkle in Time. He is the exact age of the character I wrote in my story. It’ll be cool to see him wearing the similar circular dorky glasses and eyewear retainer strap I wore when I was his age.

Also being very authentic to the time is very key. I’ve been consulting with Emmy winning production designer, Julie Berghoff about collaborating on this project. She really excels in the period drama space. Berghoff has done incredible work on James Wan’s The Conjuring,  hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale –Season 1 and most recently on tnt’s I am the Night. Diversity is something that really matters to me, so having two strong female characters included in this that will bring even more perspective, depth and complexity to the film.

Q: This is all fascinating to hear. What was your personal experience like with your parents?
Mark Schoonmaker: It was great. I have so many memories to look back on. I was born in Manila and adopted when I was 2 years old and raised by two loving parents that couldn’t have children of their own and became interested in adopting. I am grateful to them because I wouldn’t be living where I am or the person I am today without them.

I know they love me and I love them both immensely but as a child I had a hard time connecting with them sometimes, especially my father. I had a better relationship with my mother and she introduced me to a lot of awesome things such as Star Trek: The Next Generation,Saturday Night Live, James Bond and took me to the theater a lot to watch big studio blockbusters. 

When I was 8 years old I had a copy of “Resurrecting The Mummy – The Making of the Movie,” a behind-the-scenes book which detailed various illustrations on visual effects used in Stephen Sommers’ 1999 Mummy remake. I ended up getting that book confiscated by the teacher in summer school because I’d never focus on completing my math problems. My parents weren’t happy I wasn’t applying myself in class coupled with going through several babysitters because of my bad behavior at times.

I was just excited The Mummy was coming out that weekend. On the plus side, I had one babysitter that exposed me to a couple rated R horror movies so that was an awesome experience. In regards to my father that relationship was tough at times. I did understand the life lessons he was trying to teach me at the time but the way he chose to go about delivering the messages were tough to process some times. And so not to be exactly on the nose for this film becoming a biopic because this isn’t one. 

A creative choice I made was molding the attributes that made my father from his intelligence, his personality in how he acted, how he talked, the wide range of vocabulary he uses and infused that into the mother character. So there is a sense of truth, authenticity and this sense of realism. 

I remember one time in particularly my brother was shooting a Civil-War reenactment video for his 8th grade history project and ask me to be the film’s make-up artist. At that point in time I was still discovering how movies were made and had no idea how do even do makeup. So I spent time in the public library researching how one does that kind of stuff at look at movies like Titanic and Men in Black for visual examples. I bought makeup prosthetic and fake blood at a Halloween store through the help of my mom. The film turned out okay but my dad was furious and whacked the living daylights out of me for using his fish tackle box as a temporary makeup/effects kit without his permission.

Q: What music did you listen to the most back then?
Mark Schoonmaker: I mostly listened to a lot of alternative music and I still do today. Other times I’d listen to whatever CDs my parents owned. My brother listened to a lot of rap and hip-hop music. My mom listened to mostly classic rock a lot, Diana Ross, Celine Dion, Donna Lewis, Michael Jackson, and Hootie. My dad would always play either jazz music or Bob Dylan when it was his turn to drive me to school in the morning.

Another moment I created in the script, I took drawing lessons with an art teacher who always had Enya music playing on her boombox. So there will be an entire scene devoted to that moment in my life and so I designed a super emotional and intense scene of conflict which will feature Enya’s “Sail-Away” song, involving the protagonist, and a babysitter. 

Another example in regards to music I implemented into the script is a really heartfelt and emotional scene between the protagonist and the babysitter character. The babysitter introduces the child to music by The Cure and I’ll feature the song “Close To Me”. That part will help me express what I felt a lot in high school in terms of loneliness and dealing with depression through the perspective of the babysitter. I think by expressing parts of myself in this will hopefully be really impactful and powerful.

Q: It’s quite interesting to hear you discussing about how you crafted this story based on your personal experiences. We can’t wait to see this film once it’s complete. You have networked with some high profiled actors such as Patrick Wilson, Katherine Waterston, Boyd Holbrook and Frank Grillo to name a few. What was the experience meeting Ethan Hawke?

Mark Schoonmaker: I’ve been very lucky to have met and befriended some stellar human beings which also happen to be stellar actors. It was such a fun experience meeting Hawke. A close mutual friend who introduced me to Patrick Wilson in 2017 asked if I’d like to meet Hawke. I immediately jumped at the opportunity and was very interested. Hawke’s from New Jersey so he was giving a retrospective on his career in the arts and also promoted 2 of his new films – First Reformed and Blazeat Montclair Film Festival. 

In the screenplay for Castlemont I wrote several lengthy monologues for every character. One of the strongest monologues I conceived echoes the wisdom I gained from Hawke which is “Grace and integrity are their own reward, doing something of value. Hard work. If you use your ambition to gain fame or money you’ll only have this. But if you use your ambition to create art and empower others then you’re going to be great.” 

I molded his attitude and infused his outlook into the father character in my story. Hawke really inspired the deep characterization in my story. I’ve been struggling for almost 5 years now to direct my first feature film. So he was a very easy person to talk, a similar experience when I met Wilson. I was very appreciative Hawke gave me his time and was willing to meet me. Hawke really dug my tenacity and drive. So that meant a lot to me.

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Mark is currently in the development stage and is working diligently to bring Castlemont into pre-production soon.

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