Josh Fox


Josh Fox is an American film director, playwright and environmental activist, best known for his Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning 2010 documentary, Gasland. He is one of the most prominent public opponents of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. He is the founder and artistic director of a film and theater company in New York City, International WOW, and has contributed as a journalist to Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, NowThis, AJ+ and Huffington Post.

Early life and education

Fox was born in July 24th, 1972 and lived in Milanville, Pennsylvania. He is Jewish. He went to PS 6 in New York City, Wagner Junior High School and Columbia Preparatory School for High School. He attended Columbia University, majoring in theater, and graduated in 1995. Fox worked as an actor in Chicago in the early 1990s, and was featured in numerous plays including Drunkboat with Tracy Letts, Jim True and Michael Shannon at Steppenwolf theatre, Goose and TomTom by David Rabe at the Theater Building, and The Love of the Nightingale directed by Amy Landecker at the Next Theater. Beginning in 1994, Fox trained extensively with Anne Bogart, and SITI Company members Ellen Lauren, Will Bond, Stephen Webber and Barney O’Hanlon in Viewpoints, Suzuki and Composition.

Artistic career

Fox founded the film and theatre company International WOW Company in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 1996 with a group of performers from New York City and Asia. He has written and directed over 30 plays with his ensemble. Notable works include ?WOW!, This is Not the Ramakian, Stairway to the Stars, HyperReal America, The Bomb, Orphan on God’s Highway, Death of Nations Parts 1-4, The Comfort and Safety of Your Own Home,The Expense of Spirit,, Limitless Joy, Surrender, and Solutions Grassroots. In addition, Josh has written, directed, and produced seven feature films, and over 25 short films, which have premiered in New York, Asia and around Europe. The New York Times has hailed him as “one of the most adventurous impresarios of the New York avant-garde” and Time Out NY called him “one of downtown’s most audacious auteurs,” citing his “brilliantly resourceful mastery of stagecraft.”
In addition to his work with International WOW Company, Fox has participated as an actor, director, designer and writer in numerous international theater collaboration projects in Japan, Thailand, the Philippines and Germany. He starred as David Conde in Yoji Sakate’s Emperor and Kiss performed by the Rinko Gun company, along with Kameron Steele, marking the first time that the company worked with a western performers. He was also the first western performer to work with Pappa Tarahumara dance/theatre company, creating roles for WD and The Sound of Future Sync which performed at the Setagaya Public Theatre and the New National Theatre in Tokyo. He created Heimwehen, Death of Nations Part V with Frank Raddatz, the former dramaturg of Heiner Muller, for the Forum Freies Theatre in Dusseldorf. Fox was a frequent collaborator of Filipino playwright, actor and screenwriter Rody Vera throughout the early 2000s.
In 2008, Fox directed his first narrative feature film, Memorial Day, an examination of American party culture, the Iraq War and torture. In 2010, he wrote, directed, and produced Gasland, and released it at the Sundance Film Festival. The film received critical success and was nominated for multiple awards. Josh later produced the HBO special Gasland Part II, which aired July 2013 and was released on DVD in January 2014.
On October 1, 2015, Fox's mini-documentary GasWork, which detailed the deadly unsafe working conditions in the hydraulic fracturing oil and gas drilling industry, debuted on All In with Chris Hayes.
In 2016, Fox directed How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change, a personal take on climate change, the film features many notable figures on climate change such as Bill McKibben, Michael Mann, Van Jones, the Pacific Climate Warriors, and Elizabeth Kolbert. Josh was awarded his third Environmental Media Association award for Best Documentary for his film How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, toured the world theatrically and was released on HBO in June 2016.
In 2017, he produced, co-directed and co-wrote AWAKE, A DREAM FROM STANDING ROCK with indigenous filmmakers Doug Good Feather and Myron Dewey, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Earth Day, launched on Netflix and toured to hundreds of locations around the world. In 2018 he co-founded the AWAKE MEDIA FELLOWSHIP for indigenous youth with leaders Stephanie Cassidy, Doug Good Feather and others.
In 2018, Fox created The Truth Has Changed, a solo performance, book and film about misinformation, propaganda and psycho-graphic targeting aimed at manipulating our current media and political ecosystem. In the performance he tells of his extensive frontline reporting with an emphasis on the smear campaigns waged against him for nearly a decade by the fossil fuel industry. The project has toured to over 25 cities in the US and Europe and has been seen by thousands of people in support of dozens progressive, environmental and grassroots organizations. The Truth Has Changed is Fox’s first book, published by Seven Stories Press. The feature film version of The Truth Has Changed will be released in 2019.

Activism

Fox is known for his opposition of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. He has campaigned for a ban on fracking and against the gas industry's exploitation of loopholes in the Clean Water act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
In 2011, Fox, along with engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson and actor/activist Mark Ruffalo, founded The Solutions Project with the aim of moving the United States towards 100% renewable energy, including the use of wind power and solar power.
In February 2012 Fox was arrested during a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing on hydraulic fracturing when he attempted to videotape the proceedings.
Josh was advisor to Artists Against Fracking, Damascus Citizens and many other orgs involved in the successful fight to ban fracking in New York State and the Delaware River Basin. Fox’s films have toured to hundreds of cities worldwide helping to form the global movement against fracking.
In 2016, he worked as a surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders as the Creative Director for Our Revolution and as a member of the campaign's NY Platform Committee. He worked alongside Bill McKibben, Nina Turner, Ben Jealous, Jane Kleeb and Dr. Cornel West to pass an amendment to the Democratic Platform which addressed carbon pricing, the phasing out of natural gas power plants, community involvement, and adopting the Keystone XL climate standard for all federal energy projects.

Personal life

In 2008, Fox's family was offered $100,000 in order to allow a natural gas fracking company to use his land in northern Pennsylvania. Fox set out to learn more about the fracking industry. After learning the truth behind some of the natural gas company's false positive claims, he went on a mission to uncover them further, crossing the country visiting other fracking areas and seeing their drinking water conditions, birthing his anti-fracking activism.

Awards and nominations

Fox was awarded the 2010 LennonOno Grant for Peace by Yoko Ono.
Gasland premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the 2010 Special Jury Prize for Documentary. It was also nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay by the WGA and was awarded the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary.
Fox received a 2011 Academy Award Nomination for Best Documentary for Gasland. He won the 2011 Primetime Emmy for Best Nonfiction Directing, in addition to three other Primetime Emmy nominations that year.
Gasland Part II premiered on HBO July 8, 2013 won the 2013 Environmental Media Association award for Best Documentary, the Best Film at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, and the Hell Yeah Prize from Cinema Eye honors. It was nominated for a 2013 News and Documentary Emmy.
How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, and won the Environmental Advocacy award at the Environmental Film Festival. The film was awarded the 2016 Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary, Fox's third consecutive win in that category.
For his theatre work, Fox has received five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, five MAP Fund Grants, a Drama Desk Award Nomination, and an Otto Award.

Street Naming

In May 2014, a street in Aujac in the south of France - a region where the French anti-shale-gas movement was born - was named after Fox.

Filmography