Mark L. Lester
American film director (born 1946)
Mark L. Lester (born November 26, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known as a prolific director of cult films, including the disco musical Roller Boogie (1979), the vigilante thriller film Class of 1984 (1982), the Stephen King adaptation Firestarter (1984), the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film Commando (1985), the action-comedy Armed and Dangerous (1986), starring John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Meg Ryan and the buddy movie Showdown in Little Tokyo, starring Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee.
Early life
Mark L. Lester was born 26 November 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Career
"Now people want to make films to get into festivals, we made films to get into drive-ins." - Mark L. Lester
After his debut in 1970 with the documentary film Twilight of the Mayas, Lester quickly became a prolific B-movie director/producer/writer, initially making his mark with a trio of road movies designed for the drive-in market: Steel Arena (1973), Truck Stop Women (1974), and Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976). In 1977, he directed the high-concept thriller Stunts, an early outing for New Line Cinema, starring Robert Forster, Joanna Cassidy, and Richard Lynch, with a score composed by Michael Kamen. Two years later, he capitalized on the disco trend with Roller Boogie, starring Linda Blair. The film had a significantly higher budget than his previous films and was the first to be distributed by a major studio, to modest success. While it received negative reviews upon its initial release, it has since gained cult status as a proverbial time capsule of the bygone Disco Era. He then made the exploitation action crime-thriller Class of 1984, a film revolving around violence in an inner-city school. The Canadian-made production, which featured an early appearance by Michael J. Fox, was controversial at the time of release, but has since gained cult status .
“Mark L. Lester” enters the record as american film director (born 1946). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mark, Lester and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Mark L. Lester” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mark, Lester and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1532896. VIAF identifies the subject as 88143512. The Library of Congress control number is n92078450. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1979, 1984 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mark L. Lester” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.