I spoke recently with writer Mark Jones about his new online soap opera, ON THE EDGE OF HAPPINESS. In addition to writing the project, Jones served as producer and director. It was a labor of love that came partially out of his lifelong love for the soap genre. The new show has been described as one-third DALLAS, one-third DYNASTY, one-third "GAYS" OF OUR LIVES. It will be available on the show's website at edgeofsoapopera.com starting Tuesday, February 24, at 9pm CT, and subsequent Tuesdays over a five week span. You can watch a trailer there now.
Tell me a little about your background.
I'm a native Memphian. I went to college in South Carolina and got a degree in religion and worked a little over two years in a church in Mississippi as a Youth Director. Then I took early retirement from the church at age 24 or 25. I always wanted to make movies and make TV, but just didn't know how. I moved back to Memphis and took a job interning at a small local TV station. I also got a bunch of little odd jobs - teaching baseball to inner city kids, working at a t-shirt shop - to support myself. Then I got a job with our local PBS affiliate and did that for several years in the 90s. I was associate producer for a couple of shows. Then I worked for our Fox affiliate for about a year. I always had that hunger to make a movie. I wanted to write a movie and tell a story.
The first movie that I wrote and produced was Eli Parker is Getting Married?, and it was a coming out story. A lot of my friends from the PBS affiliate helped out on the project. My family owns a couple of acres in Mississippi and the story was set on a farm and we shot it for about a month. It took us a while to edit but it finally came out and was shown in about seven film festivals. I came out several years before this, and while Eli Parker wasn't about my life, some of the conversations I had with good friends were put into the movie. My second movie, Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island, got into six or seven film festivals as well.
How did ON THE EDGE OF HAPPINESS come about?
I had the idea for a soap storyline for a long time. Right after Christmas of 2007, I was driving from Memphis to North Carolina and was trying to think of new ideas and I thought of turning my soap story into five short films.