Career
Mothersbaugh attended Kent State as an art student, where he met Devo co-founders Jerry Casale and Bob Lewis. In early 1970, Lewis and Casale formed the idea of the "devolution" of the human race; Mothersbaugh, intrigued by the concept, joined them, building upon it with elements of early poststructuralist ideas and oddball arcana, most notably unearthing the infamous Jocko-Homo Heavenbound pamphlet (the basis for the song Jocko Homo). This culminated in 1973, when the trio started to play music as Devo.
Since Devo, Mothersbaugh has developed a successful career writing musical scores for film and television. In film, he has worked frequently with filmmaker Wes Anderson, and scored most of his feature films (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou).
His music has been a staple of the children's television shows Rugrats, Beakman's World, Santo Bugito and Clifford the Big Red Dog. He also wrote the new theme song for the original Felix the Cat show when it was sold to Broadway Video, some music for Pee-Wee's Playhouse in 1990 and the theme song for the Super Mario World TV series for DiC Entertainment in 1991.
Mothersbaugh and Casale have also produced much of Toni Basil's music.
Mothersbaugh is also known for his music in video games including Sony's Crash Bandicoot series, the Jak and Daxter series, and EA Games' The Sims 2. This work is often performed with Mutato Muzika, the music production company he formed with several other former members of Devo including his brother, Bob Mothersbaugh.
Mothersbaugh composed "Having Trouble Sneezing", the distinctive music heard in the award-winning "Get a Mac" commercials for Apple Inc.
He composed the score for the first season of the television series Big Love but was replaced after one season by David Byrne of Talking Heads. Mothersbaugh also composed the theme music for the American television show Eureka, broadcast on the SyFy channel.
He currently hosts a drawing segment on Nick Jr's television series, Yo Gabba Gabba! called Mark's Magic Pictures, teaching children how to draw simple pictures that often come alive at the end of the segment. He also currently composes the score of the Cartoon Network's TV series Regular Show, whose style and attitude is partly an homage to the Wes Anderson films Mark has worked on.
Read more about this topic: Mark Mothersbaugh
Famous quotes containing the word career:
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—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
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—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)