Going All the Way

Background:

Starting out in MTV's promotions department, director and producer Mark Pellington rose to fame through his work with the alternative rock group Pearl Jam on the video for their hit “Jeremy” (1992), which won four MTV Video Music Awards and a Billboard Video Music Award. He picked up a Grammy nomination for directing “Beautiful Girl” (1993) by INXS. Other performing artists he has worked with include U2, Bruce Springsteen, Natasha Bedingfield, Jon Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, Lush, PM Dawn, and De La Soul.

Pellington achieved success on television when he received a 1993 Emmy nomination for creating the title sequence for NBC's “Homicide: Life on the Street” (also directed an episode in 1997) and was credited as the director of the acclaimed five-part 1995 PBS anthology “The United States of Poetry.” Later, he produced and directed several episodes of the police series “Cold Case” (CBS, 2003-present).

Pellington hit the motion picture industry in 1997 with “Going All The Way,” a vehicle for Ben Affleck and Jeremy Davies which received the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic nomination at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. It was followed by “Arlington Road” (1999), which netted a Grand Prix nomination at the 1999 Paris Film Festival, “The Mothman Prophecies” (2002, also appeared in the movie) and “Henry Poole Is Here” (2008). He also produced the films “OT: Our Town” (2002), “The Man from Earth” (2007) and “Shipping and Receiving” (2009). Pellington appeared in front of the film cameras in Cameron Crowe's “Jerry Maguire” (1996) and “Almost Famous” (2000).

Crowe's Pal

Childhood and Family:

Mark Pellington was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 17, 1962. He is the son of legendary Baltimore Colts lineman Bill Pellington. Pellington Sr. passed away in 1994 from Alzheimer's. At the time, he was 67 years old.

Mark attended St. Paul's School for Boys in Brooklandville, a suburb of Baltimore. He remains close to his alma mater and occasionally visits to speak to students. In April 2005, he was honored with the Alumni Award for his efforts in the school community and career accomplishments. Mark holds a BA in rhetoric from the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, which he received in 1984.

Mark was married to Jennifer Barrett Pellington until her death on July 30, 2004. He is the father of one. Mark is good friends with Academy Award-winning screenwriter and film director Cameron Crowe.

Jeremy

Career:

After graduating from college, Mark Pellington worked in MTV's On-Air Promotions department. The Baltimore native quickly branched out to music video directing. Making his debut as a freelancer, Pellington's early works included Information Society's “What's on Your Mind? (Pure Energy)” (1998) and “Repetition” (1989), De La Soul's “Say No Go” (1989) and PM Dawn's “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” (1991).

Pellington began his collaboration with famous rock group U2 in 1992 by directing one of the numerous versions of the video for the hit single “One.” His version, featuring slow motion hazy footage of running bison, ended up being terminated by MTV. Pellington went on to create the multi-screen rapid fire media backdrop image for U2's mega hit tour “Zoo TV.”

It was also in 1992 that Pellington gained recognition for his work on the hard rock band Pearl Jam video “Jeremy.” Taking a look at youth hostility, the video won a Billboard Video Music award in the category of Best Director and MTV Video Music awards for Best Direction, Video of the Year, Best Group Video and Best Metal/Hard Rock Video. He enjoyed additional notice with INXS' “Beautiful Girl” (1993), which brought Pellington a nomination at the Grammy Awards. Subsequent video music directing credits include “Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe” (1994) by Whale, “Tomorrow” (1995) by Silverchair, “'74 – '75” (1995) by The Connells, “Ladykillers” (1996) by Lush, “Midnight in Chelsea,” “Queen of New Orleans,” “Janie, Don't Take Your Love to Town,” “Staring At Your Window” (all 1997) and “Ugly” (1998) by Jon Bon Jovi. He also worked on “We're in This Together” (1999) by Nine Inch Nails.

Apart from his video work, Pellington teamed up with renowned directors such as Jonathan Demme, Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders to contribute to “Red Hot and Blue” in 1990, an ABC AIDS special that was nominated for a 1991 Emmy for Outstanding Editing for a Miniseries or a Special - Multi-Camera Production. He helmed the segment “I Get A Kick Out Of You.” The same year, he also co-directed “Buzz,” a 13-part international series he created with MTV Europe producer/director Jon Klein. He went on to direct the 26-minute TV film “Words in Your Face” (1991), featuring KRS-One, John Leguizamo and Henry Rollins, the half-hour live action cartoon “Punch and Judy Get Divorced” (1992) for the PBS series “Alive TV,” and the 30-minute short film “Father's Daze” (1993), which was based on his father's battle with Alzheimer's. “Father's Daze” earned positive feedback at festivals such as the Berlin Film Festival, the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Montreal Film Festival. Also in 1993, he created the title sequence for the NBC series “Homicide: Life on the Street,” for which he was nominated for a 1993 Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Graphic Design and Title Sequences.

Two years after directing the landmark PBS miniseries series “The United States of Poetry” (1995), Pellington made his feature film directorial debut with “Going All the Way” (1997), which was an adaptation of Dan Wakefield's best selling novel. The movie, starring Ben Affleck and Jeremy Davies as Gunner Casselma and Sonny Burns, respectively, opened at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize-Dramatic. That same year, he also revisited “Homicide: Life on the Street” by directing the episode “Blood Ties: Part 3” and helmed Jon Bon Jovi, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon and Whoopi Goldberg in “Destination Anywhere,” a 45-minute film for MTV.

Pellington's sophomore film effort, “Arlington Road,” about a widowed George Washington University professor who suspects his new neighbors are involved in terrorism, was released on July 9, 1999, in the U.S. Starring Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack and Hope Davis, the thriller was nominated for three Saturn Awards, including Best Action/Adventure/Thriller Film and Best Writer (Ehren Kruger) and brought the director a Grand Prix nomination at the 1999 Paris Film Festival.

In 2000, Pellington made a memorable cameo appearance as Freddy in best friend Cameron Crowe's Oscar winning “Almost Famous,” which starred Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, Kate Hudson and Jason Lee. He then served as executive producer on Mark Neale's documentary “No Maps for These Territories.” “Almost Famous” was his second film appearance after “Jerry Maguire” (1996), also directed and written by Crowe. Pellington also served as a film consultant on “Jerry Maguire.”

In 2002, Pellington directed Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Debra Messing, Will Patton and Lucinda Jenney in the supernatural drama “The Mothman Prophecies,” based on the 1976 John A. Keel novel of the same name. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed over $54 million worldwide, with an estimated original budget of $42 million. Pellington also appeared in the film as a bartender. The same year, he executive produced “OT: Our Town,” a documentary directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, and directed the music videos “Half Light,” “Do You Realize,” and “Lonesome Day.”

Next, Pellington produced and co-directed the documentaries “Day by Day: A Director's Journey Part I” and “Day by Day: A Director's Journey Part II” (both 2003). In September of that year, Pellington worked with “Cold Case,” a CBS series created by Meredith Stiehm. He also directed the pilot episode of “Cold Case” and episodes such as “Churchgoing People” (2003), “Best Friends” (2005), “Family” (2005), “8 Years” (2006), “Rampage” (2006) and “Shuffle, Ball Change” (2007).

Pellington was reunited with U2 in 2007 when he shared the director's chair with Catherine Owens for the group's documentary “U2 3D,” which won the Visual Effects Society Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project. After taking the executive production duty in the sci-fi film “The Man from Earth” (2007), he helmed the independent film “Henry Poole Is Here” (2008), written by Albert Torres. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, the film starred Luke Wilson, Radha Mitchell, Adriana Barraza, and George Lopez. 2007 to 2008 also saw Pellington direct the music videos “Soul Mate” by Natasha Bedingfield, and “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” by Bruce Springsteen.

Recently, in 2009, Pellington directed Skeet Ulrich on the television film “Back” and executive produced “Shipping and Receiving,” a short movie by O'Shea Read. He is the executive producer of the upcoming drama film “Electric God” (2009), which was adapted from a novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Awards:

• MTV Video Music: Best Direction, Video of the Year, Best Group Video, and Best Metal/Hard Rock Video, the Pearl Jam video “Jeremy,” 1993

• Billboard Video Music: Best Director, the Pearl Jam video “Jeremy,” 1992