An Interview With Festival Director and Filmmaker Josh Hope
Josh Hope is a very busy man. As well as being a filmmaker in his own right he also runs, manages, programmes and is involved in many different film festivals. Lets just say he never sits still for too long. So when we did get to catch up with him we took full advantage of it. As well as talking about some of the many festivals he is involved in, we also got to talk about his most recent feature ‘The Life and Death of an Unhappily Married Man’.
Hi Josh, we know your a very busy man, so it is great that we have been able to grab ten minutes with you.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the filmmaking business?
I grew up in a very small town in Northwest Oklahoma called Waynoka. It had a population roughly around 1,000. Watching movies was always kind of my escape from the boredom of growing up in the middle of nowhere. Although the thought that I could actually be a filmmaker didn’t come until a bit later.
My intro into filmmaking really started when I got an internship in college to work on the Jerry Springer Show in Chicago. That was my first taste of the entertainment business. That led to other gigs working mainly as a PA & AD on reality tv shows and indie films. After working on other people’s films for a few years I got the desire and confidence that I could try it myself, and ended up making 5 shorts, and now 2 feature films as a writer/director.
So once you had a taste of the business you were hungry for more.
You’re the man behind a number of film festivals including the Twister Alley Film Festival, Twisted Horror Picture Show and Windy City Film Festival. What is it about film festivals that you’re drawn to?
I did the festival circuit for a number of years with my own films, and got to see first hand how good, and more often than not, how bad they can be. The bad ones were especially disheartening. It’s really hard as an indie filmmaker to find a way to cover the costs of attending and traveling across the country to a film fest only to find you’re playing in some weird room on a crummy pull down screen with a bad picture and/or audio in front of a half dozen people, where the festival directors don’t even acknowledge your attendance. It’s been my goal to provide a film festival experience that is both rewarding to the attending filmmaker and the local audience alike.
Yeah, we know what you mean, there are some festivals out there what really don’t do these films justice at all. Not only is it a poor experience for the filmmakers, it’s also disappointing to the audience.
How does someone go about organizing a film festival?
It truly is a team effort to pull a good film festival off. I’ve fortunate to have great partners including TJ Treece with Twister Alley & Twisted Horror Picture Show and Mindy Fay Parks with Windy City International. And our local community in NW Oklahoma has been great at Twister Alley. I love seeing their interaction with the attending filmmakers and actors.
Yep, I bet you need people you can rely on.
How much work is involved in organizing and hosting a film festival?
Oh man…a ton. I really do enjoy the process though, so even though I put a lot of time into the festivals it never really feels like a grind. But I watch every single film that’s submitted to the festivals I run or help program, I put together the schedules, handle most of the attending filmmaker interaction, and am heavily involved in all things related to social media/marketing, websites, sponsorship, program design, editing, and the list goes on…so yeah…it kind of consumes my entire life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Do you have any favorite festivals?
Yeah, there are a number of festivals that I’ve attended as a filmmaker and had a very rewarding experience. Sedona is one of my favorites. Screened there twice with both of my feature films, and always treated like a king. Had a blast at Whistler up in Canada, and it’s such a beautiful setting. Gig Harbor in Washington state is fantastic. Austin Revolution might just be the best networking festival on the circuit. North Hollywood CineFest was extremely rewarding. I highly recommend submitting to all of those.
What are you favorite films that you first discovered at festivals?
I saw a ton of great films while traveling to different fests with my own film this year. Wildlike by Frank Hall Green played everywhere, and deservedly so. I really liked the feature films It Had To Be You by Sasha Gordon, Jason Kartilian’s Seahorses, Corbin Saleken’s Patterson’s Wager and Jessica by Scott Foley and Josh Rosenberg. I recently programmed Michael Fassbender’s upcoming new film Trespass Against Us, and thought it was beautiful.
So many amazing short films traveling the fest circuit too. How to Lose Weight In 4 Easy Steps by Ben Berman and Aaron Bleyaert makes me laugh everytime I see it. I thought Vehicular Romanticide by Andrew Rowe was genius. Loved Steven McCarthy’s o negative, Joey Ally’s Partners and Minimum Wage, Jess Dela Merced’s Wait till the Wolves Make Nice, Darya Zhuk’s What Doesn’t Kill You, Sonejuhi Sinha’s Love Comes Later, and Patrick Vollrath’s Everything Will Be Okay which ended up getting nominated for an Oscar. And there’s some amazing horror genre shorts our there that blew me away. AJ Briones’ The Smiling Man, Jason Kupfer’s Invaders, El Gigante by Gigi Saul Guerrero and Luke Bramley, Shant Hamassian’s Night of the Slasher, and Brian Lonano’s Gwilliam is impossible to forget. I know I’m leaving a ton of great films off this list, so I apologize for that.
WOW! Thanks for that. There is some great one’s to watch out for.
Can you tell us a little bit about your recent feature film – ‘The Life and Death of an Unhappily Married Man’?
Sure! It’s losely based on my life and some breakups I had gone through. I got to the point where I was tired of dwelling on the negative, and was ready to move on with my life so I decided to try to make something funny out of a bad situation. I found it to be quite a therapeutic process.
Great idea. I think some of the best stories are based on real-life events.
This has been doing very well on the festival circuit. Were you surprised by the recognition and awards it has received?
Yes, very suprised. When I first set out to make it I didn’t know if audiences would identify with this character at all. It’s very different than my first feature ‘Wild Blue’ so wasn’t sure how audiences would accept it, but now the film has won like 30 awards and screened at over 50 film festivals in 7 different countries so it seems like the audience got a kick out of what we tried to do with it.
That is extremely impressive.
Where can our readers see the movie?
It’s been screening on the festival circuit for the past year, but it’s now winding down from that. It will be available via VOD sites like Itunes, Amazon, etc at some point this fall/winter. We have Facebook and Twitter for it that we keep updated, or they can check out our website HERE for more info.
Thanks, we will keep any eye out on those channels for more information in the future.
Twisted Horror Picture Show is coming up October 29. What can our readers expect from this event?
it’s a one day event screening the best horror genre indie films at the historic and haunted Woodward Arts Theater in Woodward, OK.
That’s going straight in our diary.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the festival?
We play a lot of great stuff from horror-comedy to films that will straight up haunt your dreams. We classify it as any film that is wonderfully weird, dark and/or twisted, so if you’re a genre fan you’ll love it.
Sounds awesome!
What is the best part about Twisted Horror?
I’ve always been a genre fan ever since I was a little kid so I love giving filmmakers an opportunity to screen their film in front of a new audience that normally wouldn’t get the chance to see stuff like this. And there’s so many great indie horror films out there so it’s been an absolute blast.
Have you got any upcoming projects you can tell us about?
I do have several new film projects in the works, but nothing that I can announce just yet. But I’m very excited to get back to work on my own films.
We’ll keep our ear to the ground for those.
What does the future hold for Josh Hope?
That’s a good question, and one I wish I had the answer to. My goal is to continue to make my own films, and run top quality film festivals that filmmakers can be proud of being a part of. If I can do that then I’ll consider myself a lucky man.
Well good luck Josh. We are sure you have a lot of films left in you and your festivals seem to be going from strength to strength. Thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk to us, it has been a blast.
If you get the chance we highly recommend checking out any of the festivals that Josh is involved with including Twister Alley Film Festival, Twisted Horror Picture Show and Windy City Film Festival.
