Mark Herman

Mark Herman
Born	Mark Herman 1954 (age 59-60) Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
Occupation	Film producer, film director, screenwriter
Years active	1987–

Mark Herman (born 1954) is an English film director and screenwriter best known for writing and directing the 2008 film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.

Life and career

Herman was born in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. He was educated at Bridlington School, Bridlington and Woodleigh School, North Yorkshire. He was late entering the film industry. Aged 27 he was drawing cartoons at art college before becoming involved in drama when he began studying film at Leeds Polytechnic, now Leeds Metropolitan University. He then trained as an animator at the National Film and Television School.

He moved away from animation and continued to study directing. He also wrote lyrics under the name "M. Henry Herman" for The Christians on the Christians' first album, The Christians, with Henry Priestman, a schoolmate from Woodleigh School, North Yorkshire.

Herman’s first feature-length project was Blame It on the Bellboy (1992), a comedy of mistaken identity starring Dudley Moore and Bryan Brown.

Next, Herman wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Brassed Off (1996), following the members of a colliery brass band, still struggling to survive a decade after the miners' strike.

In Little Voice (1998), adapted by Herman from Jim Cartwright's play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Jane Horrocks reprises the title role of a harried young woman whose only escape lies in the memory of her father and in imitating the singers he admired.

Purely Belter (2000), adapted by Herman from Jonathan Tulloch's novel The Season Ticket, is the story of two teenage boys trying to get together enough money for a couple of Newcastle United F.C. season tickets. Hope Springs (2003), is an adaptation of New Cardiff.

His most recent work is the adaptation of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. It was produced by David Heyman and stars David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Sheila Hancock and Rupert Friend. Herman directed and adapted the work.

Herman is a fellow of Film and Television Production, York St John University, York, England.

Jessica Winter in The Rough Guide to Film criticises Herman's fondness for "cloying" close-ups and "contrived melodramatic showdown[s]", saying of the film Purely Belter, that it "probably didn't create many new converts to Herman's partly gritty, party feel-good socialist realist strain of filmmaking."

Filmography

• See You at Wembley, Frankie Walsh (1987) – a comedy based around the wedding of a Hull City fan; won a Student Academy Award in 1987.
• Unusual Ground Floor Conversion (1987)
• Blame It on the Bellboy (1992)
• Brassed Off (1996)
• Little Voice (1998)
• Purely Belter (2000)
• Hope Springs (2003)
• The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008)