We caught up with film (recent Park City trips include Experimenter, Take Me to the River, Manchester by the Sea) and TV staple Josh Hamilton on the red carpet for the premiere of his latest Sundance role: Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. Hamilton, who was also at Sundance with Ethan Hawke’s Blaze might be more recognizable figure via larger film skus a la J. Edgar and The Bourne Identity; as a regular in TV shows Madam Secretary, American Horror Story, Gracepoint; on Broadway in Proof and The Coast of Utopia; and most recently as the ‘cool dad’ in Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why.
This time around, he stars as Eighth Grade’s embarrassing Dad to a 13-year old daughter (Elsie Fisher): peak loveable, goofy dadliness. There’s no Mom in the picture; their father-daughter scenes form the film’s emotional core. In our interview, Hamilton talks about working with newbie director Burnham.
Dylan Kai Dempsey is a New York-based writer/filmmaker. His reviews have been published in Vanity Fair, Variety, No Film School, Nonfiction.fr and IONCINEMA.com. He’s also developing a graphic novel as well as his own award-winning pilot script, #Likes4Lucas. He began as a development intern at Bonafide Productions in L.A. and Rainmark Productions in London.
