Meet Mark DeBonis

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark DeBonis.

Mark, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’m originally from Toronto, Canada and my story starts about 13 years ago. At that point really had no direction in my life was working at a restaurant Monday-Friday and some construction on the weekend. Had no clue what I was going to do with my life, one day I applied for a writing program that specialized in Comedic writing, I got accepted. At this school we would have to write scripts, perform and do a bunch of stuff I have never imagined my self doing, stand up being one of them… one day it came to my “turn” to do a 1-minute routine and I said no, hated the idea of stand up and just didn’t understand it at all. My teacher made it very clear that if I didn’t do it, I would fail. So I tried it once, didn’t think much of it, but thank god for Larry Horowitz cause he must have seen something in me that I never would have, I say that cause he asked me to do it one more time the next week, so I did and have never turned back since.

Within three years, I won “The Laugh Off” which had a grand prize of $25,000, won a Canadian Comedy Award and was asked to perform at the Just for Laughs festival. Which is the longest-running comedy fest in the world! Did it all, and had an awesome time, but now what was I to do… I was 25-26 years old, didn’t really have the respect of the industry cause I was young and possibility the “it boy” of the time and in Canada there is something called the “Glass ceiling” which pretty much means you can only do so much before you pretty much have to get a day job, or just try and live on the road. So my manager at the time decided it was best I work on my green card which is a very costly and time-consuming thing. Like $10,000 USD costly… so with nothing else to really do, I started saving money and putting together my green card package. Having some downtime, I started thinking about the reality of living in the States and how I could possibly stand out, so I started thinking about my pre-comedy days and how I loved skateboarding and filming skate videos. This led me to the decision that I would like to get back into some production work (low budget) so with the magic of YouTube I started learning some basic stuff and quickly realized audio was the “thing” that will make me stand out purely because everyone has 4K cameras on their phone but no one really had good audio.

Fast forward got the letter, I was approved for my green card and pretty much packed a couple of bags and left. Now in LA, I have to start trying to find money to recoup everything I lost moving here. First job was at a pizza place, and that gave me the comfort of rent being paid and lots of downtimes to hone my audio skills. Every once in a while, I would put an ad out on Craigslist, just to see who may be out Here but is in the same boat as me… after brushing all the LA flakes off, I ended up meeting Gabe. At the time Gabe was working on the release of his book, we got to talking and I helped him film a couple of documentary-style clips. Gabe than called me one day saying a large company would like to work with him and he would like to bring me along, which he didn’t have to do but was awesome he did. Now balancing video work and stand up my time in LA started to make sense, things started slowly moving in the right direction and I learned how to trust my instincts again. Through all of this, I have learned that my biggest “Canadian” downfall is being an awful self-promoter so in the last couple of months, I have been trying to force myself to get out there and show some social media face.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Is there ever a smooth road… lol – I think before anyone knows what they are about to get into the road seems smooth, or even exists! But you learn fast that there are always bumps and if you don’t know what you want, there is simply no road in general. Some I personally had to fight was just figuring out how people operate in the entertainment world, finding work, dealing with the good/bad – big one was getting the greencard for sure and now that I’m in LA having to re-insert myself in a new comedy scene.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
My long time business would be stand up, been doing that for about 13 years and professionally maybe 7-8 of them, since being in LA and focusing on production work I have been working with some awesome artists making music videos, short films web series, etc.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
A quality that I feel is important to my success is really assessing a situation and seeing the “big picture” that could come from it. It’s not always the best going from 0-100 with ideas but it’s for sure something that I believe will one day pay off for my creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.markdebonis.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/markdebonis/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markdeboniscomedian/?eid=ARD4VBPy70ZK3TEG9W7VD99V7HdgbarIFtamYk0dicQcYHYbOrNqXb2wcyf0aNUsRJvSxF72AVAtvogB
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheMarkDeBonis?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP_Qew4tPb5ansIrzijqW6A?view_as=subscriber

Image Credit:
@perfectpickleman @alicexuephotography

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