Fight for Autonomy: A Conversation with ‘Thelma’ Writer-Director Josh Margolin

The feature directorial debut of Josh Margolin, THELMA is a poignant action-comedy that gives veteran Oscar® nominee June Squibb (NEBRASKA and star of Scarlett Johansson’s upcoming directorial debut ELEANOR THE GREAT) her first leading role and features the final performance of trailblazing actor Richard Roundtree (SHAFT). Squibb, who did most of her own stunts in the film, plays Thelma Post, a feisty 93-year-old grandmother who gets conned by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson (The White Lotus’ Fred Hechinger) and sets out on a treacherous quest across Los Angeles, accompanied by an aging friend (Roundtree) and his motorized scooter, to reclaim what was taken from her. Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Malcolm McDowell also star.     

Buckle up, kids. Grandma is putting the pedal to the metal in Josh Margolin's directorial debut Thelma. All jokes aside (actually, there's loads of humor in this film), there is a deep love, respect, and appreciation for this film's characters, namely Thelma, but also the relationship between her and her grandson. There's an intention from Josh and his collective creative team with how they marry action and comedy, and embrace familial relationships. 

Josh Margolin spoke with Script about writing from a personal place and being inspired by his own grandmother's real scam incident, writing the film from the character's drive, action film and unlikely film references that inspired the visual language, why tone was his North star, and so much more!

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: What was the writing process for you when formulating this idea, especially pulling from such a personal place?

Josh Margolin: It was interesting, The nugget of the idea was based on a real scam incident that's very much like the one in the movie, basically, up through her sending the money. Whereas in real life, we were able to step in before she actually did, thank god! But that incident got my wheels turning, and the idea was sort of born out of imagining what might have happened if she had sent it and gone to get it back. And taking it as an opportunity to reckon with, I think, some newfound limitations that she was facing in her own life, which were happening at the same time as a newfound freedom. Which was a strange contradictory moment for her. And she's somebody who I've been really, really close with my whole life.

And I think that's also partially why that incident stuck with me, because I think it felt like the beginning of maybe a new chapter for her or felt like a moment where I was seeing someone who has always been so sharp and so capable, kind of get duped and taken advantage of in that way. And obviously, it could have been a lot worse in real life. It just pinged on something for me that got me thinking.

And it's funny, I've always just had a love for action movies, it's always just been a genre that I've been drawn to. And I think I'm particularly drawn to ones that also treat the stakes seriously, even if they're really fun. They're not just purely referential, or purely, ‘Look how cool this is,’ but we're more attuned to the struggles of the protagonist, on their way to accomplishing the mission. I find it weirdly affecting sometimes actually, when those are done well.

The idea of using some of the DNA from that genre, and that language to tell the story of something that's a lot more every day than your typical action movie. But also has, in my experience, so much of the stakes and the sort of grit required just by watching someone like my grandma live day to day - there's all these obstacles that I think if you're not around someone that age all the time, they're not as immediately apparent, or you don't give them maybe as much credit for how they do move through the world. Because little things can present great dangers in a way that sucks.

When those ideas started conflating and I started to get excited about the idea of exploring, like my grandma's fight for autonomy through that lens, that's when the movie opened up for me on the script level and was like, ‘Oh my god, this is cool.’ We can tell this story using elements of that. And so, I started just writing down moments or ideas or nuggets off that basic premise.

The timeline is always a little fuzzy for me, but I think over the course of a handful of months, I was sort of zhuzhing an outline and showing it to my partner, and getting thoughts from her, and just making sure I was on track. Once I had a pretty solid outline of the major movements, I started writing, maybe even a little sooner than I might have on something less born of my own life. But I think because it was so personal, there were things I wanted to feel out as I wrote. Know what I'm paying off and starting to the basic movements of it, but then trying to find those in the scenes on some level so that they felt organic too and not super wedged in. Because I think the tone was always a delicate dance of not wanting to skew too broad or diverge into parody territory.

The script took time, but I think it came out as one complete gesture. I kind of knew the broad strokes of what I wanted it to be. And then the process also became, refining those, developing it further, just making sure all of those raw ideas that did feel really personal, and also kind of played in some of these action tropes that weirdly also felt personal even though they're not, I feel like there was an initial kind of just getting it all down, and then a refining process that I continue to do with also my producers Zoë [Worth] and Chris [Kaye], who came on really early - and are also pals who I have a writer's group with and who were some of the first people to read it and be encouraging and give thoughts.

Lensing a Rorschach: Writer-Director Tayarisha Poe Talks Free Form in ‘The Young Wife'

Read More

Lensing a Rorschach: Writer-Director Tayarisha Poe Talks Free Form in ‘The Young Wife'

Read More

Sadie: Speaking of the action and writing this through that lens and hitting those action beats, but also making sure that you're staying true to a heartfelt, grounded comedy. I'm curious, because you’re also an editor and edited this film, how much of that skill set came into play to make sure that you were hitting those things in weren't going into Naked Gun territory?

Josh: [laughs] It was definitely a different process. In the writing stage, it was definitely something I was just thinking a lot about. And what was helpful was, maybe, in part being an editor, but what's funny is, I think that just ended up being more helpful in the editing itself, just being able to make sure I had a really direct eye on that sensibility. Luckily, I had a team around me too, who were instrumental in protecting that and helping guide it.

But in the writing process, I think what also helped was just having it be based on a real person, because I think I could usually run things through the mental algorithm of, ‘OK, if my grandma were in this situation, as slightly heightened as it may be, at this point, or at this point, or at this point, what do I actually think she would do?’ And then I run back through that system and go, ‘Oh, this is pinging. This is coming up above sea level here and starting to feel a little push or a little too crazy.’

And so, I think it was always a dance between trying to have fun with that and make sure we're nodding to that in a way that's basically using those tropes for this movie…and making sure in turn that becomes a wink and a nod just because it's fun to do them in this context. But I wanted to make sure that the primary driver always felt like it was coming from her grit and her single mindedness, and the family's anxiety and feeling the tension and the pace and the action.

Maybe being an editor, I could have imagined seeped into it in some way in terms of thinking about the way I wanted to crosscut things and try to build a sequence out. But I think what really helped there actually was just putting it through the lens of the real characters or the real inspiration points, and then finding where those and the genre elements sit comfortably.

Sadie: In terms of preparation and your creative collaboration with your DP [David Bolen] – it’s definitely tonally consistent. What were some references you guys were looking at, and just getting mentally prepared for what you could get done day of with those action pieces, especially with your actress June Squibb?

Josh: I love working with David Bolen my DP. We met on this movie, for this movie. And he was, in the way I felt that it had to be June, I also felt like, ‘OK, it has to be David.’ [laughs] He was just so the guy. And he had done a movie called Some Kind of Heaven, which was a documentary about The Villages in Florida, that chronicled these older people living there and shot so beautifully. And I think that was one of the early things that got me excited about working with him. And so funnily enough, that was actually an early reference for me too. It's different. It's a doc, but it's a very narrative-feeling doc. It’s a really wonderful doc, and it has just a really cinematic quality to it, but also a natural kind of textured soft filmic look. The palate of that was it was a source of inspiration.

I used to pitch this as Mission Impossible meets Nebraska, or Noah Baumbach’s Mission Impossible. Finding the marriage between I think, especially visually, I looked at even The Meyerowitz Stories, which is more of the anxious Jewish family side of the movie than the action side. But those movies just have such a textured filmic - I think they were shot on film, I think I could be wrong - but they have that look that feels a little bit handmade and feels a little bit…

Sadie: It’s lived in.

Josh: Yeah, it’s like her condo, these spaces, and these people are that as well. And so, you want that to be felt in the way it looks and the quality of light. And I think another movie we watched together that we both really love and talked about a bit was Punch Drunk Love the way in which that movie turns anxiety into camera movement. Obviously, ours is a slightly different pitch and it's a different animal, but we talked a lot about Punch Drunk.

We also talked about actual Mission Impossible movies and what are some of the devices or the tools and tricks that we could kind of shrink down for our purposes - be it rigging the camera to the wheel of a scooter or even these rotating shots. There’s a shot in The Dark Knight that I always had in mind; it's a shot where Batman and I think Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent are on a roof having a conversation and there's this slowly rotating camera around them. Michael Bay does that in a much more high-octane way but that rotating camera thing, we talked about wanting to use that. We have these moments where for her it's these simmering moments of, ‘Do I know this person?’ But just finding ways to take some of the language of those movies and shrink them down to the scope and scale of this one.

It was a mix of action movies like Mission Impossible and some Christopher Nolan movies, [laughs] believe it or not, and also looking the feeling and texture of Punch Drunk, a Baumbach movie or something that just has a filmic textural quality to it that we wanted to bring into the DNA of it, because I think part of the trick too is being like how do we start working in elements of the other but make it all feel like one movie. Which I think David had a really awesome eye for. And Some Kind of Heaven, and his experience as a doc DP which was really fruitful because we shot listed the hell out of it - we shot listed every shot very meticulously. But then on the days, we would also stray from that, just depending on the needs of the moment or if something wasn't looking right, or if we had overthought it and we were like, ‘You know what, let's just simplify.’

To David's credit, he was able to live in both modes of really planned, really exacting in that way, and then also adaptable and able to make something look really great and beautiful and polished even on the fly. We had a lot of back and forth, a lot of planning, and then occasionally throwing some of those plans away. [laughs]

Sadie: Was there a thematic North star that you were following from the page to directing this – and so that you don’t fall off the rails?

Josh: That's a great question. I'm trying to think if I even had a name for it in my mind…I would call it tone, honestly. I think it was something where it's like, ‘I know it when I see it’ kind of feeling more than something I could even totally articulate. There's many themes in there, whether it's autonomy, anxiety or family dynamics across generations. There were many facets of it on my mind. But I do think the thing that I would cite as kind of a North star was tone - always making sure everything felt sincere, even if it was absurd.

As we used more and more of these tropes and ideas to explore, aging and autonomy and anxiety, and all of those things that are fueling the movie, as absurd as they can get, I just wanted to make sure we were always treating them with sincerity and sort of head on in some way. Because I feel like, again, with this confluence of things, the moment you start to do something for the sake of it, or start to comment on it from within too heavily, I think it just starts to get less fun and the stakes go away.

And I think part of what's fun about the movie or what we want to be fun about the movie and hopefully funny and everything else is that you're really on the journey with her and you're laughing at times, because what she's doing is kind of wild, but you're also like, ‘OK, here we go.’ Not like, ‘Oh, isn't this cute?’ or ‘Isn't this goofy that she's giving this a shot?’ I just didn't want it to have that tenor ever. So, the North star was just keeping a respectful and earnest tone while also trying to push some of the other elements into the right pitch of action or absurdity or comedy.

Sadie: What inspired you to become a filmmaker, storyteller, writer, actor, director, all the above?

Josh: I wish I knew, because I feel like I've wanted to do it my whole life. And I started doing it in various little ways as a kid that I've just, for better and worse, [laughs] I just feel like it's always just been the thing that I've known I wanted to do. And it's been the way I make sense of the world.

Movies growing up were just a way of engaging with big feelings, or big questions or scary ideas that felt safe to me and felt clarifying in some way. I was always social and had a lot of friends. But I was also sort of naturally little on the shyer side as a kid and growing up. And I think I just connected to that language for whatever reason and fell in love with so many facets of it. I wish I had a really clean and clear moment of like, ‘Oh, and I realized then…’ but I actually can't really remember a time before I thought I wanted to do anything else. So, I feel like for better or worse, I've just been immersed in it my whole life.

Make Stories Relatable to Large Audiences: A Conversation with 'Quiz Lady' and 'Totally Killer' Screenwriter Jen D'Angelo

Read More

Make Stories Relatable to Large Audiences: A Conversation with 'Quiz Lady' and 'Totally Killer' Screenwriter Jen D'Angelo

Read More

I also come from a family that really loves movies. And my grandfather was a director actually, though, we overlapped in life, but not really in his work. And most of the work he had done was by the time I was born and kind of conscious of these things, he was largely looking to get stuff going, but in his 70s, 80s, and 90s, and it was harder. I don't feel like I grew up sort of quote, unquote, in the industry, really, because neither of my parents are in it. And he almost wasn't by that time in a real way, but he had a really wonderful storied career and did a lot of really wonderful stuff. 

And I think that love for movies and that love for theater and that love for storytelling was something I felt as a kid from my grandparents. And from my parents as well. Our family has always loved going to the movies and it's been such a staple. I feel like I question most things in my life on a regular basis, like any decision I make on any given day, but for one reason or another this one is just always felt like what it is. [laughs] I don't know why.

Sadie: Yeah, it's in your DNA. Any advice for filmmakers who are essentially writing what they know? Maybe some encouragement to stay the course or don’t go so deep in that water?

Josh: I think you gave great advice on this, [laughs] I think it is staying the course. Staying the course is hard, because the course can be really long. And the course can also have chapters that don't feel like they're part of it. I think that's what's weird - when you're actually working on a thing, it takes a long time. And it's a long process, and you have to have the sort of endurance and love for the thing to carry you through. But even the process of coming up with an idea and then slowly forming it, sometimes you're doing work that you don't realize you're doing. And so, I think staying the course is a really, really good piece of advice [laughs] not to steal your advice directly from you, but I think we can share the credit on that.

Sadie: Absolutely. [laughs]

Josh: I do think that's really, really smart. Because so much of it is you’re kind of always guessing a little bit, you're always kind of taking a leap of faith. Sometimes it's a big one, sometimes it's a small one, but you're in that state perpetually, even once you clear one hurdle in your mind. There's always another. So I do think staying the course.

I also think writing the things that you're most excited to see. Because I feel like I've been on both sides of that where I've worked on things where I'm like, ‘I think I should work on this,’ or ‘This is a fun idea that someone will like’ or that I think someone wants - that's always a harder place to work from. Especially now having gone through the real full lifespan of this project and been with it for so long. I don't think it's a coincidence. I don't know how you'd survive if it wasn't something that was really important to you in some way. So, I think that's just always a good thing to follow. Even if it feels kind of unlikely, or you're not sure anybody's gonna connect to it. Because the more personal it is to you, I think the more likely it is to connect to somebody else.

Thelma is exclusively in Theaters on June 21, 2024.