Movie Magic

July 29, 2024 – Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in northern New Jersey, Alan Roth, BA’80 (Ruth), discovered the virtues of writing in high school, finding the narrative form to be an ideal way to share his thoughts and feelings. After earning a bachelor’s degree from FDU with a major in history and literature, he received his master’s degree in creative writing from Emerson College in Boston, Mass. Eager to embark on his profession, he began his career writing for standup comics in New York City and Boston.

Writing took a backseat when he joined his family business, and then began his own corporate communication agency, producing marketing videos for Fortune 500 companies and leading advertising agencies. His successful business kept him in the entertainment industry, “I found that I was hiring writers rather than doing the writing myself.” However, he was determined to somehow return to writing full time.

Tragedy struck with the untimely death of a close friend, positioning Roth to become more involved with raising his friend’s young son, who was also Roth’s godson. He took his godson, a big basketball fan, to a Nets game and signed up to get an autograph from his favorite player after the game. “The player had a challenging childhood himself, so I was hoping he would somehow connect with my godson in a memorable way,” says Roth. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be.

The athlete’s muted response to his godson troubled Roth. He wondered, “What would have happened if the player responded in a way that I would have hoped, and engaged my godson in a conversation about his own childhood, sharing some pearls of wisdom of how to move on in life?” The emotional turmoil of his friend’s death coupled with the lukewarm response of the player continued to bother Roth, even weeks after the encounter. “I cared so deeply about my godson and the experience he was going through that I lost myself in a fantasy of what could’ve been.”

Ultimately, the strong emotions that emerged from this poignant personal experience were turmoil and also inspiration. “I couldn’t get this story out of my head, and I needed some release from it.” Roth began to write, and for the next several months he rewrote the narrative of his godson’s encounter with that player, transforming the outcome into something positive and hopeful. “I built a new story — a whole new world —around that moment.” It was to become his first screenplay, “Jersey City Story.”

“After completing the screenplay, I didn’t know what to do with it. To have some closure, I decided to submit it to a few producers as well as to a screenplay competition, and then move on.” He never imagined anything would come of it.

Academy award nominee Tom Rickman presents Alan Roth with his award for Jersey City Story.

“What happened next was shocking and life-changing,” Roth says. He won the screenplay competition, receiving the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motional Picture Arts & Sciences (home of the Oscars). This special award affirmed what his teachers, mentors and fellow writers always knew: Roth is an amazing writer. At the awards ceremony, Tom Rickman, a member of Academy Fellowships Committee and screenwriter of the Oscar-winning Coal Miner’s Daughter, told the audience “Alan did that thing that all writers try to do…to produce feeling, to produce emotion, and all the things that we actually go to the movies for.”

After this career breakthrough, Roth was now in a position where he could do what he loved most, and his career as a screenwriter took off. However, he never lost sight of his early experiences as a student at FDU. When he became aware that FDU’s School of the Arts was looking for a screenwriting instructor, he decided to apply. “I spent so much time in my early screenwriting career making mistakes, going down the wrong road, and doing things by trial and error because I didn’t have anyone to show me the way,” Roth says. This seemed like the perfect opportunity for him to impart his wisdom to young aspiring screenwriters. He got the job.

Roth tells his students that even before writing begins, the process involves hard work —research, interviews, travel — all to understand the multiple points of view about a story. “It is a very immersive experience.” While the screenwriting profession is collaborative — a writer might adapt a book or assist producers or fellow writers, writing is an intimately personal endeavor. “Writers must bring their own sensibility to the story.” His primary lesson to his students is clear: A narrative that is genuine and written from the heart brings forth a writer’s best work.

While Roth confesses that “I live my life as a writer and it’s all consuming,” he still makes relationships his priority, including those with his wife, two daughters, and friends, many of whom he first met while an undergraduate student at FDU. “I have a very warm feeling coming back to teach at FDU, because the best people that I’ve ever met are those that I met while a student here. They make up my closest inner circle of friends and have been a great source of inspiration, still to this day.”