Mark Jacobson
writer and journalist Mark Jacobson is a writer and journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is known for his explorations of the seamy side of urban life, both here and abroad, and for his offbeat and witty take on popular culture. Mark is a Contributing Editor at New York Magazine and a frequent contributor to The Village Voice, National Geographic, Natural History Magazine, Men's Journal, and other publications.
Early life Jacobson graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and achieved recognition in New York City whilst writing for the Village Voice in the 1970s, most particularly for a lurid account of life in the Chinatown Ghost Shadows gang.
Work His books include the cult favorite Godzilla epic Gojiro; the autobiographical Jacobson family travel saga co-authored with daughter Rae Jacobson 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time - a Semi-Dysfunctional Family Circumnavigates the Globe; a novel "Everyone and No One"; a collection of previously published pieces "Teenage Hipster in the Modern World..." includes the Ghost Shadows Village Voice articles; "The KGB Bar Nonfiction Reader"; the critically acclaimed but largely ignored compendium American Monsters which was published in 2004 and co-edited with Jacobson's close friend Jack Newfield, and the newly reissued compilation American Gangster containing the New York magazine piece "The Return of Superfly", the basis for a 2007 film starring Denzel Washington. Jacobson wrote the screenplay basis for Love Ranch, a dramatization of the murder of prizefighter Oscar Bonavena at the Mustang Ranch in Nevada in May, 1976. The troubled film was delayed by an early production company bankruptcy and was eventually produced during a writer's strike in 2009 which disengaged Jacobson from full control of subsequent script revisions. The film was finally released in 2010; directed by Taylor Hackford, starring Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci. Jacobson's non-fiction reflection on man's inhumanity to man "The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans," based on the discovery of a lampshade made of human skin purported to be a Nazi souvenir uncovered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was published by Simon and Schuster in 2010. Jacobson was awarded the 2001 Humanitas Prize for his screenplay work on The Believer. He is currently a contributing Editor at New York Magazine and a frequent contributor to The Village Voice, National Geographic, Natural History Magazine, Men's Journal as well as other publications.