The tall, lanky 33-year-old Joshua Solomon, sporting shoulder-length hair and sneakers, can still be found wandering through the shelves of McKeldin Library this semester, a decade after he graduated from the university.
But make no mistake. He’s no slacker.
Solomon is gathering material at the library for two ongoing projects and he has some high-profile collaborators.
Race, a script for Morgan Freeman’s production company, Revelation Entertainment, follows the life of a black mechanic in the 1920s who could have been a famous Indy racer, but was never given a chance because he was black. For producer and comedian Jim Carrey, Solomon takes a different direction in a screenplay about the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield.
“I’m pretty excited,” Solomon said. “I feel like for the first time this is my career. I feel strong about my writing and I’m confident about what I can do as a writer. It’s definitely the best stuff I’ve ever done.”
Solomon launched his writing career during an internship with The Washington Post his sophomore year at the university.
Inspired by the white journalist John Howard Griffin, who disguised himself as a black man in 1959 and traveled throughout the deep South, Solomon decided to repeat the journey. Under a doctor’s supervision he took the drug Psorlen to add melanin to his skin and flew to Atlanta for a two-day crash-course on what it means to be a black man.
His first-person account for the Post’s weekend Outlook section earned the 21-year-old a Pulitzer nomination.
“What I noticed at the start of it, my first few days living as a black man, were the small things,” Solomon wrote. “The differences in the way people treated me. The doorman at my brother’s apartment, a man I’d walked past every day for a month, stopped me, asked my name and where I was staying.”
Solomon remembers sitting in his dorm in Dorchester Hall the day after his story ran while offers poured in for scripts.
“Sunday morning, the article came out, and I came home from class Monday and my machine was full of messages,” Solomon said. “I was overwhelmed. Good Morning America had called and people from Oprah.”
Producer Reuben Cannon was instantly moved by Solomon’s story.
“I heard him on a radio program discussing his ordeal and experience and journey,” he said. “He was very articulate and full of rage. I thought it was so interesting to hear a white boy discuss the issue of racism. I felt that this would make a fascinating story. Since then, I’ve watched his career blossom as a writer.”
Back on the campus, Solomon has embarked on five months of research for the Dangerfield movie while finishing up Race.
The Dangerfield research has been a challenge, though, as Solomon is confronted with writing about a man very different from the comedic characters Dangerfield once played.
Most of his research on Dangerfield centers on 250 hours of home video that Carrey and producer David Permut (Face/Off) shot. The videos show Dangerfield bare-chested in his bathrobe with disheveled hair and often smoking marijuana.
“My first reaction was that this is a sad story,” Solomon said.
Solomon said he believes that Dangerfield really thought he “got no respect,” a line that became his signature catchphrase.
“He peaked in the ’80s,” Solomon said. “The tapes I’ve seen are about the end. What happens to a comedian when they are not so funny anymore? He didn’t think he deserved respect. He hated himself most of all.”
Solomon said he plans to be finished with the first draft of the Dangerfield script by June or July, with Race set for November.
Though Maryland is no Hollywood, Cannon sees Solomon’s location as the key to his success.
“His originality comes from that he’s not in Hollywood. When you hire Josh Solomon, you get an original voice,” Cannon said.
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