Mark Valenti is an American writer best known for family-oriented television programs and YA novels. His credits include: Menno's Mind, Like Father, Like Santa, Rugrats, LazyTown, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, ', Back to the Future: The Animated Series, Gaspard and Lisa, and Olivia. He also wrote the script for the 2011 Hallmark Channel movie The Christmas Pageant starring Melissa Gilbert. In 2019 his film ' aired on the Lifetime Channel.
Career biography
Valenti began his entertainment career as an actor with the famed St. Louis theatrical troupe, The City Players. Moving to Los Angeles, he studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute under Sally Kirkland and Marc Marno. During this period, Valenti appeared in several LA stage productions, and took roles on sitcoms and soap operas, including NBC's The Facts of Life. Shifting gears from acting to production, Valenti became a production assistant for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. Spielberg had initiated a program whereby assistants would be given an opportunity to learn as much a possible in two years, identify a career path, and then move into their chosen field. Valenti segued into a role as Vice President of Development for John Hughes. During his three-year tenure, Hughes produced ten films, including Home Alone, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and Uncle Buck. Having been intimately involved in Hughes' screenwriting process, Valenti left the executive ranks and began writing film scripts himself. His first produced movie, Menno's Mind, starring Billy Campbell and Robert Vaughn, was filmed in 1998 and was seen on the Showtime channel. The script was based on a short story he had written as a high school senior. This was followed by a flurry of screenplay spec sales to DreamWorks, Nickelodeon Movies, ABC Family, Hallmark, and many more. Valenti was Creative Manager for a team tasked with re-imagining Disney's California Adventures theme park in Anaheim. He also served as Creative Manager for Disney Interactive. In 1999, Valenti was recruited as Story Editor at Nickelodeon Studios, working with the writing staff of shows like Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, CatDog, Angry Beavers, and Rocket Power. In 2000, Valenti was awarded a Platinum record for writing the spoken-word portion of Mannheim Steamroller's "The Christmas Angel," signifying over one million units sold. By 2003, he was back in the role of screenwriter, becoming Head Writer for the Nickelodeon TV show LazyTown. Shot in Iceland on a sound stage in the middle of a lava field, LazyTown debuted as the #1 show for Nickelodeon, and went on to produce more than 75 episodes, seen around the globe. Valenti also wrote and co-wrote lyrics for many of LazyTown's popular songs. Since then, Valenti has continued to write extensively for outlets like PBS Kids, Netflix, NBC, CBS, Disney and CBeebies. In his role as Creative Consultant for the international children's television market, he advises companies from China to Columbia, focusing on translating and enhancing properties for the North American market. Currently, Valenti is Executive Producer for TV movies at the Lifetime Channel.
Books
In 1995, Valenti published "The Wonderful Wisdom of Oz - A Stupendous Compendium of Adages, Aphorisms and Axioms," a collection of curated quotes derived from the work of Oz author L. Frank Baum. His next book was "The Hannibal Twist" featuring a now-adult Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in their continuing adventures. In 2004, he wrote Mannheim Steamroller's "The Christmas Angel," a novelization of the NBC Christmas special of the same name. 2010 saw the publication of the coming-of-age dark comedy, "Last Night at the Monarch Motel," which was optioned by a film production company. In 2018, Valenti wrote the YA novel trilogy, "The Wolf and the Warlander," published by Chip Davis' American Gramophone. It captures the incredible adventures of two unlikely friends – Seti the wolf and Ghost the Warlander horse. Brought together by unusual circumstances, these natural enemies grow up alongside one another, facing the challenges that arise from their opposing instincts. Somehow, through the hardships of life in the wild and vicious attacks by predators, they forge an unforgettable, inspirational alliance.
Charitable works
In 1992, Valenti and his wife Kristen created a fundraiser, "Heart of the Matter," held at Pasadena's Ambassador Auditorium, for their friend Barbie York, then-wife of acclaimed classical guitarist Andrew York. Barbie had suffered a severe head injury in an automobile accident, sending her into a months-long coma. The concert they produced was a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of the classical guitar world's greatest players, among them Christopher Parkening, the LA Guitar Quartet, Leona Boyd and The Romeros. The concert netted $25,000 in one night. In 2016, Valenti's friend and colleague Stefan Karl, who played the villain Robbie Rotten on LazyTown, was diagnosed with Cholangiocarcinoma. Stefan was forced to cancel all work-related activities during his treatment, so Valenti created at GoFundMe campaign which eventually raised nearly $170,000. Valenti also engineered an AMA on Reddit, featuring Stefan - with the help of his wife Steinunn Olina - which led to a live YouTube event in December of that year. The video featured Stefan and others singing "We Are Number One," the song that had become a worldwide meme. The video has subsequently been seen millions of times, and Stefan's YouTube channel has generated more than a million subscribers.
