mark A couple of Mark’s newer short screenplays have reached the finals of two prestigious competitions. The first is a Western called The Tale of Tin Can Kade, which is a finalist in the Cowpokes International Film Festival over in Texas.
The second is a fantasy called There’s Something Inside, which has reached the finals of the UK Film Festival.
We asked Mark what was his inspiration for both screenplays.
“The Tale of Tin Can Kade came from a one-week screenplay challenge over at Simply Scripts. I was going stir crazy during the lockdowns, so focusing on writing these challenges really helped. This particular one was to write a short Western in 5 days which had to feature a leather belt, a pharmacist, an observatory and be based on the theme of ‘The Hero is the Villain.’
I’d never written a Western before and had a blast writing this. I received such great feedback on my efforts so I searched around for Western-themed competitions and found Cowpokes. I just wish I could fly over to Texas to attend the festival!”
“There’s Something Inside came from another one week challenge. This one was a bit more straightforward in that we had five days to write a story based on any Twilight Zone episode. I chose one of my favourites, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet and re-wrote the story from the point of view of the Gremlin. You may recall this creature caused William Shatner such hassle in the original, but I wondered if we ever got the full story? The name of the script is the reverse of William Shatner’s famous line, “There’s something… on the wing!”
The Tale of Tin Can Kade can be read here.
There’s Something Inside can be read here.
