{"id":11076,"date":"2023-02-13T08:18:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T13:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=11076"},"modified":"2023-03-10T09:44:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T14:44:50","slug":"the-rise-of-jonah-tulis-04","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2023\/02\/13\/the-rise-of-jonah-tulis-04\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Jonah Tulis \u201904"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Forget the internship with Martin Scorsese or his time working for NBC; Jonah Tulis \u201904 credits much of his success as a documentary producer and director to his time spent behind the camera at Colgate\u2019s CUTV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had a regular segment called the \u2018Chopp Factor,\u2019 where we would randomly rate the president for no particular reason,\u201d says Tulis, who fondly remembers Colgate\u2019s former president Rebecca Chopp being good natured about the show, which was called, Gateline<\/em>. \u201cWe even had someone challenge her to a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Tulis is a Chappaqua, N.Y., native who created his own major focused on film and music, before the University established a full major and minor in film and media studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI took a lot of film classes,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were definitely more art focused, but when I was there, I realized they were all the classes you needed for a film major.\u201d He also helped out with directing live basketball games for Colgate athletics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After graduating, Tulis worked on a\nnumber of comedy projects as a writer and\ncreator, but it wasn\u2019t until his 2020 release\nof Console Wars <\/em>\u2014 which pulled back the\ncurtain on a legendary feud between major\nvideo game makers Nintendo and Sony \u2014\nthat he found broad audience success.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financing for Console Wars <\/em>was thanks in part to Tulis\u2019 connection with actor Seth Rogen and producer Scott Rudin, yet it would spend eight years in production before it was released. A North Korean hacking scandal halted production at one point, and it was ultimately released by Paramount+ as the first-ever original documentary to be streamed on that platform. (There was actually a Hollywood Reporter <\/em>article called \u201cHow Console Wars <\/em>Took a Winding Path to the Screen.\u201d) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Console Wars <\/em>was released directly to\nstreaming services due to the COVID-19\npandemic. The subject matter quickly\nhelped it become the number one movie in\nAmerica for a time, and it also shot to the\ntop of the viewing charts in Japan. With\nmillions of streams and some critical acclaim\nfor his documentary work, Tulis embarked\non several new projects, including directing\nGameStop: Rise of the Players<\/em>, which was\nreleased in 2022.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That documentary was based on a highly\npublicized bout of stock market activism\nwhere video game fans snatched up lagging\nGameStop shares in an effort to punish\nhedge funds betting on the decline of the\ncompany. The resulting fallout crippled at\nleast one hedge fund and even halted trading\nof the stock by some online investment\nplatforms.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there have been several\ndocumentaries examining the GameStop\nstock story, Tulis was the first to release,\nhaving put together the entire documentary\nin under eight months. NEON distributed\nthe film to 300 theaters nationwide, and the\ndocumentary can now be found on Hulu.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhich is crazy,\u201d he says. \u201cThe film came\nout one year after the day that the buy button\nwas taken away on Robinhood [a popular\nstock-buying app].\u201d\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it remains too soon for him to talk about them yet, Tulis has several new projects in the works, including a true crime thriller, biographical films, and several scripted projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says nothing compares to the\nexperience of making films.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was really years of refining my craft and thinking about how to tell our stories best that got us to where we are today.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Colgate, Tulis played the string bass in the\norchestra.\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet Jonah Tulis ’04, the documentarian behind the films ‘Console Wars’ and ‘Game Stop: Rise of the Players’. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1272,"featured_media":11287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[1316,1315,449,58,517,887,1317,700],"coauthors":[327],"class_list":["post-11076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-spotlights","category-alumni-updates","tag-console-wars","tag-cutv","tag-documentary","tag-film","tag-film-studies","tag-filmmaker","tag-gamestop-rise-of-the-players","tag-university-orchestra"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-2SE","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2023\/02\/Excited-Nintendo-Execs-Animation.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11076"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11676,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions\/11676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}