Interview (Part 1): Joshua Golden

Joshua Golden wrote the spec script “Road to Oz” which was not only a finalist in the 2014 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition, it sold in September to New Line. From THR:

New Line Cinema has preemptively scooped up spec script Road to Oz, written by hot rising talent Josh Golden.

Recently I interviewed Josh and learned how he had taken an interesting proactive approach to marketing “Road to Oz,” something from which all writers can learn.

Today in Part 1, Josh talks about his background as a writer that led him to film school and eventually to Los Angeles:

Scott Myers: Let’s jump into it. Where did you grow up? How did you find your way into writing as an interest?

Joshua Golden: I grew up in Chicago. Well, the northwest suburbs of Chicago. A town called Buffalo Grove. A very suburban town, but close enough to the city so it didn’t feel isolated. I lived there all my life.

My earliest memory of writing is when I entered a contest for Reading Rainbow. It was a contest for elementary school students, where they were looking for the “next great story” or something like that. I remember writing a very Disney-esque tale about a talking tiger who had wanted to be a professional boxer, and needed to find his inner strength. Suffice it to say, I didn’t win. After that, I just remember writing short stories. I was definitely an Amblin kid. E.T., Star Wars, anything like that. I would write short sci-fi stories probably all the way up through middle school.

It wasn’t really until high school that screenwriting was on my radar. I had a terrific English teacher who knew I loved writing, and loved film, and she kind of came to me and was like, “You know, there are people that do this thing for a living. They write movies.”

Scott: I’ll ask that question sometimes to writers: “When did you first become conscious of the fact there were people whose job is to write movies?”

Joshua: Yeah. A lot of people growing up don’t really — myself included — don’t really realize that there are screenwriters. Actual, real life people who write movies. That kind of opened my eyes a little bit.

Scott: You had a high school teacher who opened your eyes to the fact there were people who write these things called screenplays?

Joshua: Yeah. High school, I think, was kind of a pivotal time for me, especially those last couple of years. My English teacher kind of took an interest in me, and then introduced me to the fact that my high school had a media technology program. Something, I believe, many schools have now. Which is great.

Then I had a wonderful media teacher, Dave Fuglestad, who really encouraged me to create. I spent countless hours in that lab, putting together short videos, writing my own little films and stuff. It was a very fun, experimental time.

Scott: You also had a fun thing you were doing with writing. For over a period of something like ten years, you worked with kids in summer camps, after school programs, and community workshops, even creating a youth storytelling class. Could you talk about that.

Joshua: That’s been such a huge part of my life. Probably for the the past 10–11 years, I’ve been working with kids in an after school environment, a recreational environment. It stared with my local park district back home. I’ve been doing that for a good chunk of my life, and I’ve loved every second of it.

There was a point where I realized I could take my interests in film and in screenwriting and kind of parlay that into the work that I enjoyed doing with kids. I started a screenwriting class for elementary-age kids back home, where we would just kind of talk about the basics of storytelling, and how to get your ideas onto the page, and then bring them to life. Really basic stuff.

I thought about how at elementary schools they teach how to write short stories, poetry, but this was kind of a different avenue of storytelling that a lot of kids don’t really get to learn.

Scott: Do you feel like you learned things about story and storytelling through the process of teaching it?

Joshua: Yeah. Especially through the process of teaching it to elementary-age children, because I think one of the things I always liked about working with kids is that they see the world in a very different way. Their imagination and their way of storytelling is very unfiltered.

There’s a lot that can be learned from kids just in terms of their limits, or lack of limits, to telling stories. And I did. It was a very interesting, eye-opening experience. I continue working kids to this day.

Scott: You attended DePaul University.

Joshua: Yes.

Scott: And received a degree in film, I believe, in 2012.

Joshua: Yes. I graduated from there in the spring of 2012. I was part of their fairly new Digital Cinema program. My concentration was screenwriting.

Scott: What was that experience like?

Joshua: It was great. Honestly, when I was looking at universities and colleges, I knew I wanted to study film. I made a very foolish choice. I applied to USC, I think. That was it. I thought, “All right. You know what? If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.” I didn’t have the grades or the academic stature to get into USC. Not even close.

My first year and a half, I went to Loyola University in Chicago, which really didn’t have a screenwriting program. I went there because it was in the city, and I had some friends going there. It was one of my few options. Then a year and a half in, I realized, “I need to go somewhere where I can really learn the craft of screenwriting.” DePaul, at the time, their film program had only been around for a few years. It was in the city. It was close by. I gave that a shot.

Honestly, DePaul’s program — granted I haven’t been to another program — but it’s fantastic. The professors, especially. The faculty really encourages you to workshop your work, to form a very kind of tight knit group of collaborators.

The program has been growing by leaps and bounds in the past few years. I keep in contact with my professors, my peers. I moved out to LA after I graduated, and there are probably about 30 of us that front he same class that are living out here now. I couldn’t have asked for a better learning environment and experience.

Scott: You did the intern thing at Jim Henson Company, Walt Disney Studios. Was that somehow associated with DePaul or was that something you did on your own?

Joshua: I interned at the Jim Henson Company in the summer of 2010, I want to say. That was an internship where I came out to LA on my own for a summer and did an internship. That was on my own.

But in the fall of 2011, DePaul launched kind of like an LA immersion program — the DePaul LA Quarter — where we came out here with a group of students that were accepted into the program, and with DePaul professors. We had classes on a studio lot, two nights a week. We would have guest speakers from the industry come in to speak with us. Some really great people. Part of that program was to have an internship as well. While I was out here with DePaul for that Quarter, I interned at Mandeville Films on the Disney lot.

Scott: That’s a question I always get from young people: Do film school or not? It sounds like you have positive things to say about that.

Joshua: My biggest takeaway from film school is the group of people that I met, and worked with, and continue to collaborate with today. A very close, supportive group of friends. You need that. It’s hard to get that from any other experience.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Josh reveals his inspiration to write “Road to Oz” and talks about two of the main characters in the script: Frank Baum and his wife.

Please stop by comments to ask any questions you may have for Josh.

Josh is repped by ICM and Heretic Literary Management.

Twitter: @joshmgolden.

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