Bio
Joshua Foster, native of Spartanburg, SC, is a writer/director/producer currently residing in the Lower East Side of New York City with his wife and daughter. He is a graduate of the NYU Tisch MFA graduate film program where he earned the NYU Media Services Award for producing an outstanding body of films over the course of his studies. He received an IMBA graduate degree and undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina.
Joshua works as an executive for Cinetic Media in the company’s film finance and production department. He is the executive producer and/or producer on the upcoming feature films Old Dads, Little Rootie Tootie and Nothing But Net. He’s currently writing a script based on his experiences at the Chicago Board of Trade and developing a project centered around the world of manners and etiquette in the Deep South.
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
My career before I became a filmmaker was firmly rooted in the world of finance which has ultimately informed my storytelling focus with regard to this script about capitalism, family, and social mobility in a small Southern town. The prevailing myth that anyone can pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make it in America is a complex narrative at the very least rife with hubris, insinuations, and political trappings alongside its relatively positive primary meaning. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous quote, “Families are always rising and falling in America,” is laden with the responsibilities of climbing the economic ladder to perceived success while hoping to hold on to relationships with the ones seemingly left behind. These themes and myths color much of my writing and focus as a storyteller.
John Lane’s novel, Fate Moreland’s Widow, explores these issues and others in an entertaining and cinematic narrative with complex Southern characters that will resonate on the big screen as well as in book form. Having grown up in the Deep South and observed a few larger-than-life contemporary characters inspired me to adapt John’s novel and make it my own in script format. He was open to places I wanted to take his story while still holding on to the key tenets that inspired him to write the novel in the first place. It’s with great pride that my first feature script is based on John’s novel that encompasses my love of the South in all its endless complications, nuance, and dark beauty.
SYNOPSIS: FATE MORELAND’S WIDOW
On a placid Blue Ridge mountain lake on Labor Day Weekend in 1935, a union representative and two locals drown in an overloaded boat, and the cotton mill scion, George McCane, is indicted for their murders. Ben Crocker―reluctant participant in the aftermath of this tragedy―is drawn into the morally ambiguous world of mill fortunes, union politics and Appalachian foothills justice. The son of mill workers in Carlton, SC, Crocker is caught between competing loyalties to his family and future.
While traversing mountain communities in McCane's defense, Crocker must manage the forced renovation of the Carlton Mill, negotiate with labor organizers led by local hero Olin Campbell, collaborate with McCane's besotted and erudite brother, Angus, and fend off his father's and wife's skepticism of his own social aspirations. Hanging distractingly over Crocker's upended life is his burgeoning infatuation with Novie Moreland―the young widow of one of those McCane is accused of killing.
Email: joshua@cineticmedia.com