Photo Credit: @hiddencookiejar
Joshua Tate is a writer, director, producer, and entertainment lawyer based in Los Angeles. A Film Independent directing and screenwriting fellow, Josh received an MFA in film production from USC, where he won a Student Emmy for his producing work and proudly contributed his apartment as a location for Ryan Coogler’s thesis film.
Josh’s directorial work has screened in competition at SXSW, Palm Springs ShortFest, and the Cleveland, New Orleans, and St. Louis International Film Festivals. Love Land, Josh’s directorial debut (now streaming on Amazon), won the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Ensemble Cast at the 2014 New Orleans Film Festival (where producer Effie Brown graciously acknowledged the film’s badass cast) and received finishing funds from the San Francisco Film Society. His short film Guest Room premiered at SXSW, streamed on Hulu as an NBCU Short Film Festival finalist, won the audience award at Dances With Films, was a Staff Pick on Vimeo (with over 148,000 views), was featured in a HuffPost op-ed, and has been used for instruction in law school and undergraduate courses at UCLA. Most recently, Josh’s spec script for Better Call Saul was selected as one of six Semifinalist TV drama specs for the 2021 Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition. Josh is currently writing his ninth feature screenplay and his third original pilot.
Josh also has experience in independent film production. He was the production manager on Sleight (Sundance 2016) and Farah Goes Bang (Tribeca 2013), a production coordinator on Flower (Tribeca 2017), and a producer on Catching Up (New Orleans, Atlanta 2019) and Love Land (New Orleans 2014, Cleveland 2014, St. Louis 2015). While at USC, Josh produced multiple thesis films and served as John Watson’s (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Backdraft) student assistant in producing instruction. He has studied producing under Watson, John Pierson, and veteran executive Zola Mashariki, and was a doe-eyed production development intern for Paramount Vantage in 2008 (during a thrilling Oscar season for three of his favorites: There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, and Into the Wild).
Coming from a family of disability rights advocates—including a cousin with Down syndrome—many of Josh’s filmmaking pursuits center around characters with disabilities tackling social barriers to realize their potential. He has marched with disability rights groups in Austin, TX, Harrisburg, PA, and Washington, DC, and advocates pro bono for veterans, foster children with mental illness, and immigrants—a pursuit for which Public Counsel awarded him its Pro Bono Award in 2020.
While in law school, Josh served as a judicial extern for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and as co-editor-in-chief of the UCLA Entertainment Law Review. Prior to film school, Josh studied film and psychology at UT Austin (hook ‘em).
Josh divines meaning from the irreverent and absurd and strives to laugh life’s tragedies out of the darkness that fuels their power. He enjoys New Orleans jazz, bleeding himself out on a blank page every morning, post-sunset Epcot, self-effacing poets, shrimp po’boys, his cat Jasmine, Nathan for You, fancy soaps, Ratatouille, pirate water, and sharing a baguette and a churro with his partner in crime, Angie.