Mark Daniel Bailey (born November 21, 1968) is an American writer, best known for his documentary films, including Last Days in Vietnam (2014), Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2022), and The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari (2022). Bailey, together with his wife, filmmaker Rory Kennedy, own Moxie Films, a documentary film production company. The company produces documentaries "for broadcast and cable networks, including Netflix, HBO, PBS, A&E, National Geographic, Showtime, Discovery Channel, MTV, TLC, Lifetime Television, the Oxygen Network, and the Sundance Channel as well as for educational foundations and philanthropic organizations."
Life and career
Mark Bailey was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and grew up in the nearby town of Summit. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1991 and subsequently attended Georgetown University, where he studied for a master's degree in English. He moved to New York City in 1997 and began writing in 1999.
Films
In 1999, Bailey wrote the film American Hollow, about "the complex ties that bind [an] Appalachian family to a cycle of deprivation," which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and a Primetime Emmy for best documentary. In 2003, he wrote Pandemic: Facing AIDS, a "five-part documentary series about the lives of people dealing with the disease in various parts of the world." For his work, he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for outstanding writing. Both American Hollow and Pandemic were broadcast on HBO.
Subsequently, Bailey was one of the producers of Torte Bluma, a 2005 dramatic short film starring Stellan Skarsgård and Simon McBurney. The film, which won "best of the festival" at the Palm Springs International ShortFest in 2005 and was nominated for best narrative short at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006, was distributed by Phase 4 films as part of a compilation called Guilty Hearts.
In 2007, Bailey cowrote (with Jack Youngelson) the film Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, "an examination of the prisoner abuse scandal involving U.S. soldiers and detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003," which was nominated for six Primetime Emmys, one of which it won—for best nonfiction special.
In 2011, Bailey was hired by Marvel Studios to write the script for Black Panther, a narrative feature film based on the African comic-book character of the same name. In 2015, Joe Robert Cole was hired to take over the script, and Marvel's film was released on February 16, 2018. Bailey commented, “Given that the film would go on to become the third-highest-grossing film in U.S. history, it would be hard to argue that Marvel’s decision to replace me was unwise.”
Bailey also wrote the 2012 film Ethel, which "chronicles the life of Ethel Skakel Kennedy." Ethel was nominated for five Primetime Emmys, including one for Bailey (outstanding writing for nonfiction programming). Bailey was also awarded the Humanitas Prize for his work on the film.
With Keven McAlester, Bailey cowrote Last Days in Vietnam (2014), which "reconstructs . . . the tragic final days of the American presence in Vietnam." The film was nominated for an Academy Award. For his work on the film, Bailey was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, produced and cowritten by Bailey, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2022, “before making its Netflix debut on February 18.” The film occupied “eighth place on Netflix’s list of most popular films worldwide, fiction or nonfiction,” and Bailey and his cowriter, Keven McAlester, were nominated for a 2023 Writers Guild Award in the category of best documentary screenplay for their work.
That same year, Bailey produced and cowrote, along with Dallas Brennan Rexer, The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari, a documentary feature about the “eruption of Whakaari on White Island off the coast of North Island in New Zealand on December 9, 2019,” which resulted in the death of twenty-two people. The film was released by Netflix on December 16, 2022, and five days later, it was ranked “the number one film in the U.S.” as well as in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and “much of Europe.” The same week, it was ranked among the official Netflix Global Top 10.
In 2019, it was announced that Bailey would produce and write the film Adrift, which compares the story of the 1939 voyage of the German ocean liner St. Louis to the plight of international refugees today. The film, which in February of 2023 was described as “nearing completion,” is produced through a partnership between Moxie Films and AR Content, founded by the Ukrainian film producer Alexander Rodnyansky.