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Mark Joseph
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Mark Joseph is an award-winning music and film producer, columnist and author. His books include The Rock & Roll Rebellion, Faith, God & Rock ‘n’ Roll, Wild Card: The Promise & Peril of Sarah Palin and The Lion, The Professor & The Movies: Narnia's Journey To The Big Screen. He is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Foxnews.com and has contributed to a variety of publications including Billboard, Beliefnet, The Jewish Press, World, RQ, Fox, NRO, and others.

Joseph is an award-winning record producer who produced the rock soundtrack for The Passion Of The Christ featuring Lauryn Hill, Scott Stapp of Creed, MxPx, Mark Hoppus of Blink 182, P.O.D. and others and has supervised the international releases of over 70 records and produced the music for dozens of television commercials. He is founder of Bully Pulpit Records whose first artist, Molly Jenson, released her debut album, Maybe Tomorrow in partnership with Nettwerk Music Group/Sony Music in 2009.

Mr. Joseph is currently producing the films Doonby, Reagan and IX and is completing work on a documentary Japan In Search Of The Dream. Over the last decade he worked in the development and/or marketing of 21 films including Ray, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, I Am David, Holes, Because of Winn-Dixie and others. Joseph is also a co-founder and president of the board of the Damah Film Festival.

He has also worked extensively as a TV host and producer having anchored The Entertainment Report for Group W/CNN, then spending five years as host and producer of NHK TV's The Interview, an international talk show that featured Joseph interviewing public figures like Jay Leno, Larry King, Charlton Heston, George Gallup, Gloria Allred and others. Mr. Joseph also spent a decade as U.S. correspondent for two radio stations, Tokyo FM and FM Yokohama for whom he reported daily from Los Angeles and covered the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 2000 for the Talk America Radio Network.

He has been quoted widely on issues relating to the intersection of spirituality and pop culture in media outlets like The New York Times, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, VH-1 and others.

Mr. Joseph lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and five children.

Blog Entries by Mark Joseph

Just What Our Angry Culture Needs: A Book on Being Nice

(0) Comments | Posted April 22, 2013 | 12:44 PM

Josh Chetwynd is a former USA Today and Hollywood Reporter writer who has written books with titles like The Secret History of Balls and How The Hot Dog Found Its Bun, and his most recent work is titled The Book Of Nice. Subtitled "A nice book about nice...

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Here Comes The Bible

(22) Comments | Posted March 3, 2013 | 9:53 AM

Tomorrow, Mark Burnett and his wife, the star of Touched by an Angel, Roma Downey, will debut their much talked about TV series, The Bible, and Hollywood will closely watch the numbers to see how the series will perform for its home, The History Channel.

Several months ago I...

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Chris Christie's Moment of Truth

(0) Comments | Posted February 11, 2013 | 12:15 AM

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may not have liked the public scolding he got from former White House doctor Connie Mariano, but if he's smart, he'll listen and heed her warning -- a warning I know something about. Mine came not as an adult and not from a...

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Frank Pastore Gets the Last Word

(10) Comments | Posted December 18, 2012 | 8:39 AM

Although I am among the 78 percent of Americans who call themselves Christians, if I weren't one, the aspect of the faith that would be the most appealing to me is the confidence and peace with which many of its adherents face death. And I can't think of...

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Notes From the Other Intellectual Feast

(1) Comments | Posted November 19, 2012 | 6:44 PM

In 1994, conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, fed up with stories about the much ballyhooed left-leaning Renaissance Weekends that then-President Bill Clinton had popularized, decided it was time for right-leaning figures like her to have a conference of their own. Tongue firmly planted in cheek, Ingraham called her conference the "Dark...

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Voting Against the Tribe: The Year of the Sophisticated White, Conservative, Churchgoing Voter

(53) Comments | Posted November 5, 2012 | 3:40 PM

It's been 32 years since the much ballyhooed take over of the Republican party by the so-called Religious Right and a narrative has emerged, especially among young Christians that many of their forbears like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have been far too closely wedded to...

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Debate Results: Tucker Carlson-1, Barack Obama-0

(9) Comments | Posted October 4, 2012 | 1:28 AM

Without taking anything away from Mitt Romney fans who think their man cleaned President Obama's clock tonight, it was the President who threw in the towel early on when he signaled that he wasn't going to fight back against the effective punches thrown by Romney. And while political commentators and...

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Rape For Profit: A Disturbing Look at Human Trafficking in Seattle

(0) Comments | Posted October 2, 2012 | 7:53 PM

I recently screened a disturbing and provocative film that deserves a wide showing: Rape For Profit takes a gritty look at inner-city Seattle's growing problem with human trafficking. The film isn't for the faint of heart, but it's an important look at the issues and challenges our nation...

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Why Dianne Feinstein Owes the Voters an Honest Debate

(5) Comments | Posted September 30, 2012 | 2:02 PM

For political junkies like me, October in an election year is the equivalent of several Super Bowl Sundays-full of not only presidential and vice presidential debates, but debates from various races across the country thanks to C-SPAN. Debates are not only entertaining and informative, they're a powerful reminder to politicians...

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Not Your Father's Bono: Creed Singer Scott Stapp's Confession

(15) Comments | Posted September 19, 2012 | 8:08 PM

A few dozen pages into his forthcoming autobiography, Sinner's Creed, (written with rock biographer David Ritz) the lead singer of Creed, Scott Stapp, begins kvetching about why artists like Bono and his band U2 (composed of four relatively devout Christians) managed to escape the "Christian rock" label, while...

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The Invisible Elephant in the Room: If Romney Loses,There Will Be One Overwhelming Reason Why

(487) Comments | Posted September 9, 2012 | 6:54 PM

Although it's usually "liberal elites" who are accused of being out of touch with the values, passions and interests of the heartland, when it comes to Mitt Romney and the Mormon question, I am finding that the entire political spectrum, from far right to far left, are in some sort...

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Why It's Time to Get Corporations out of the Business of Giving

(9) Comments | Posted August 16, 2012 | 8:35 AM

Both Chick-fil-A and Starbucks appreciation days are now safely behind us, which means that we can all resume our pan-ideological purchasing patterns that include subsidizing the gay-rights movement by buying Apple computer products, shopping at Target and eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and subsidizing their opponents on the political...

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Hollywood's Blind Side

(9) Comments | Posted July 27, 2012 | 12:26 PM

Various writers are publicly kvetching about the decision by a Baptist-owned bookstore chain called Lifeway to stop carrying The Blind Side DVD because, according to the Southern Baptist Convention it contains "explicit profanity," takes "God's name in vain" and contains a "racial slur."

Breakpoint, the daily radio commentary started by...

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What Vice Presidential Selections Tell Us About Our Presidents

(22) Comments | Posted July 13, 2012 | 10:35 PM

The vice presidency of the U.S. is "not worth a quart of warm spit," declared one of FDR's vice presidents, John Nance Garner. That may indeed be true so long as a president doesn't die in office, but the process by which a presidential candidate chooses his running mate is...

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If Richard Land Is a Plagiarist, He's One of the Dumbest Plagiarists on the Planet

(2) Comments | Posted June 3, 2012 | 10:31 AM

In my book, The Lion, the Professor & the Movies: Narnia's Journey to the Big Screen, I devote a chapter to the boycott organized against Disney by members of the conservative Christian community and the smart decision on the part of one of its leaders, Richard Land, to...

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Remembering Donna Summer

(1) Comments | Posted May 17, 2012 | 8:51 PM

Donna Summer will be lauded as the Queen of Disco in most obits, but many of these will miss the important role she played in integrating faith into pop culture, for it was Summer who, faced with a religious conversion at the height of her popularity in 1979, resisted efforts...

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The Universal Desire to Worship Someone

(9) Comments | Posted April 9, 2012 | 6:25 PM

As incongruous as it may sound, I "celebrated" the season by watching both Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ and Bill Maher's Religulous. Not to say that I'm neutral in that debate, having both worked on the former and being a Theist for most of my life, still I...

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Holy Rollers

(2) Comments | Posted March 12, 2012 | 11:00 PM

The Salvation Army is reported to have had a saying in its early days: "Take the Devil's money to do God's work." Now a group of 20- and 30-somethings based in the Seattle area has taken that philosophy to a new level, and their story is told in a just-released...

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John McCain's Game Change

(112) Comments | Posted March 11, 2012 | 10:16 AM

"There's an old Greek saying," said Michael Dukakis in the heat of the 1988 campaign in a pointed attack on his opponent George H.W. Bush's boss, Ronald Reagan. "A fish rots from the head first. You know, it starts at the top."

Watching Game Change, I was reminded of that...

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R.I.P. Steve Bridges

(1) Comments | Posted March 6, 2012 | 8:37 AM

Comedian/filmmaker Adam Christing has posted this moving tribute to his good friend Steve Bridges, a top-notch impressionist whose victims included George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and many others, who passed away this past weekend at the age of 48.

Bridges was booked as the...

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