WHO TOOK JOHNNY is an examination into the infamous thirty-year-old cold case behind the disappearance of Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch, the first missing child to appear on a milk carton. The film focuses on the heartbreaking story of Johnny’s mother, Noreen Gosch, and her relentless quest to find the truth about what happened that tragic September morning in Des Moines when Johnny never returned from his paper route. Along the way, there have been mysterious sightings, strange clues, bizarre revelations, and a confrontation with a person who claims to have helped abduct Johnny.
FEATURING: Noreen Gosch, John Gosch, John Walsh, John DeCamp, Paul Sparrow, Paul Bonacci
If you’ve ever gotten separated from your child for just a few moments and remember the depth of panic that sets in, then you can begin to understand what Noreen Gosch has felt over the last 30 years since her son Johnny disappeared delivering newspapers in West Des Moines, Iowa on the morning of September 5, 1982.
More than any other missing child case, Johnny’s story has spawned countless theories and has instilled intrigue in the millions who remember the kid on the side of a milk carton.
WHO TOOK JOHNNY captures the endless intrigue and conspiracy theories surrounding the eye-witness accounts, compelling evidence and emotional discoveries which span three decades of the most spellbinding missing person’s case in U.S. history.
In 2001, while at an industry screening for our film Horns and Halos at HBO headquarters in New York, we were approached by writer Nick Bryant with an intriguing pitch. He told us he had a once-in-a-lifetime story to tell. He had spent years investigating a child prostitution network that was conveniently covered up a decade earlier. In researching the scandalous allegations of the Franklin Federal Credit Union, he came upon the connection to a bizarre story of the first missing kid on a milk carton – Johnny Gosch. After learning more about Johnny’s case, we became intrigued and cautiously began to pursue a film about it.
It took over 10 years of shooting and thousands of miles traveled to capture dozens of interviews, edit hundreds of hours of footage, and sift through tens of thousands of documents and photographs to make Who Took Johnny.
There are currently almost 90,000 unsolved missing person cases in the department of justice database, and it’s clear that even with all of the advancements in technology and public awareness, the problem of missing and exploited children has only gotten worse since Johnny disappeared over 30 years ago. Understandably with such an ugly issue, people would rather skip-over reading about these stories or change the channel of a news report, pretending the problem doesn’t exist, rather than confront the brutality of the exploitation and trafficking of children in our country.
About a year and a half ago – when we launched our first kickstarter campaign to help fund Battle for Brooklyn (a doc we have been working on for 7.5 years), I did a great deal of planning. I took the game theory aspect very seriously. We knew that we had networks of people that we could tap into, and......
Last night I spent a little time going over a grant application for film funding. Years ago, I gave up on applying for grants because we never got them- literally- in our first ten years of applying, we got none. The one positive thing about the process is that it does force one to do the work of articulating what......
When I hit the floor with searing back pain for the second time in my life I was stuck on my office floor for two weeks, unable to even sit up. On the 9th or 10th day of my stuckness I tried to go to the airport to get on a plane with my family. It took every bit of......
Last week a good friend, and academy nominated doc director, gave us some great notes on our rough cut. He had seen a somewhat earlier version of the film so it was great to hear his notes because we had already addressed about 80% of them. At the same time, he asked a series of sharp questions about what we......
Cathryn J Ramin’s heavily researched look at the back pain industry, “Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting On the Road to Recovery“, is painfully satisfying to read – especially for people who have struggled with back pain and the surgeons, pushers, and needle jockeys that profit from it. Ramin’s book is framed by her personal journey to heal......
On a Saturday afternoon in late September, I almost drowned. On this warm fall afternoon, my friend Caroline and I had impulsively decided to swim across a lake. It’s a big enough body of water that we had to frantically wave at several speedboats to make sure that we didn’t get run over as we crossed. It’s one of those......
DSLR video has had a tremendous impact on us over here at Rumur. The image quality is so much better than standard HD cameras that it has inspired a whole new wave of ideas. Before we made our first feature film, “Half-Cocked,” Suki said to me, “If we can make it look anything like your photos, we’ll be all right.”......
On Sunday April 13th, parents of a 6 year old and a 10 year old dropped them off at a park near their house at 4pm and told them to be home by 6pm. When they didn’t show up at 6:30 they started to worry, and then began to panic when they couldnt find them. At 8:30 they got a......
Feb 13- a snow storm locked Chapel Hill into place. The highway was stopped and the meadow froze over. Our borrowed dog struggled with the icy layer....
Last month I got the first copies of my photo book. It would not exist without kickstarter, and for that I am very grateful. It all began when I put some 20 year old mall pictures on-line. They went viral so I quickly threw together a kickstarter to make a book. I kept it simple, just using a music video......
We've been doing this work for over 25 years and have made all kinds of films from rock and roll narratives to crime films to political and personal documentaries. On the surface, most of the films don't seem connected, but certain themes run through them all, and they build on one another. These can be thought of as themes and also as lessons we learned from making the films. ...
When I was a freshman in high school, I became somewhat obsessed with photography. I was “that guy” who took most of the pictures for the school paper and the yearbook. I knew that I wanted to be a photographer, but I didn’t want to go to art school, or journalism school for that matter. I intuitively knew that it......