# Mark Valenti

Mark Valenti is an Emmy-nominated American writer known for movies, TV series and novels.

## Career biography

Valenti began his entertainment career as an actor with the St. Louis theatrical troupe the City Players. He moved to Los Angeles and 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.
In 1986, 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, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, 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 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 (Planet Fred), Nickelodeon Movies (Bob the House), ABC Family (Like Father, Like Santa), and Hallmark (The Christmas Pageant).
Valenti was creative manager for a team tasked with re-imagining Disney's California Adventure 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, The 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, it 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. For some of the episodes, Valenti was credited as "Noah Zachary", a name he used in honor of his two sons.
In 2022, Valenti was nominated for an Emmy award for STEM Explorers, a PBS show aimed at bringing science concepts to young viewers.

## 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, The Hannibal Twist, featured 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 Gramaphone.

## 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, Liona 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. Karl was forced to cancel all work-related activities during his treatment, so Valenti created a GoFundMe campaign which raised nearly $170,000. Valenti also engineered an AMA on Reddit, featuring Karl - with the help of his wife Steinunn Olina - which led to a live YouTube event that December. The video featured Karl and others singing "We Are Number One", the song (written by composer Mani Svavarsson) that had become a worldwide meme. The video has subsequently been seen millions of times, and Karl's YouTube channel has generated more than a million subscribers.

## Credits

| Film | Year | Cast |
| Menno's Mind | 1997 | Billy Campbell, Bruce Campbell, Robert Vaughn, Corbin Bernsen |
| Like Father, Like Santa | 1998 | Harry Hamlin, Megan Gallagher, William Hootkins |
| The Christmas Angel | 1999 | Olivia Newton-John, Dorothy Hamill |
| The Christmas Pageant | 2011 | Melissa Gilbert, Robert Mailhouse, Edward Herrmann, Candice Azzara |
| My Wife's Secret Life | 2019 | Kate Villanova, Jason Cermak, Matthew MacCaull |
| Santa's Squad | 2020 | Aaron Ashmore, Rebecca Dalton, Michael Therriault |
| A Honeymoon to Remember | 2021 | Edward Ruttle, Rebecca Dalton, Brendan Taylor |
| Deadly Debutantes | 2021 | Angelina Boris, Revell Carpenter, Natalia de Mendoza |
| The Heiress of Christmas | 2023 | Katerina Maria Vitkoff |
| Series | Year | Episode |
| Back to the Future | 1992 | "St. Louis Blues" |
| Totally Spies! | 2002 | "The Soul Collector" |
| Rugrats | 2003 | "Gimme an A" |
| LazyTown | 2004 | 75 episodes |
| Kid Fitness | 2006 | 5 episodes |
| Olivia | 2010 | "Olivia Takes a Hike" |
| Gaspard & Lisa | 2011 | "The Magicians" |
| Julius Jr. | 2014 | "The Gummiest Bear" |
| STEM Explorers | 2022 | 13 episodes |
| Award | Project | Year |
| Humanitas Prize | "Hand Me Downs" - Rugrats | 1999 |
| BAFTA | LazyTown | 2006 |
| Emmy nomination | STEM Explorers | 2022 |

## Professional affiliations

Valenti is a member of the Writers Guild of America and The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.