Life & Work with David Arnold Rubin of Koreatown

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Arnold Rubin.

Hi David Arnold, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born and raised in South Florida. My entire family still lives there. I wouldn’t say that being from Florida is a huge part of my identity—I don’t have like oranges tattooed on my neck—but while Florida is often made fun of by everyone, the funniest people I know are from there. I’m not sure which parts of my childhood led me to what I’m doing now, but getting accepted into an arts middle school for theater and making little movies and videos with my childhood friends seems relevant.

After college, I moved to Los Angeles and joined a small theater company. The theater is no longer in business, but it was called The Lost Studio and was led by director Cinda Jackson. It was a scene study class, but we also partnered with a group of writers and would put up small plays a few times a year. What made this experience so educational, in my mind, was that I learned a lot about scene construction. It wasn’t just about learning lines and getting notes on my “moment before”—you had to create your own costume, do your own makeup, light your scene, dress your set, find sound cues—everything was judged equally. You were judged on creating a world, and wearing multiple hats was necessary and directly relevant to what I’m doing now.

A few years ago, my writing partner Kaja Novak and I started working together, and we quickly realized that only we could direct and produce what we had written. We decided to go into production on our feature film Blue Square. We will finish shooting by the end of 2025. We have a small crew of just five people—Kaja, Caroline Hebert, Sean Webley, Cole Scott, and myself—and we do everything on this project. We decided to make our lives even more difficult by shooting on 16mm film, and Blue Square has grown much larger than we ever anticipated in terms of scale. We currently have over 200 actors, including some former VoyageLA alumni like Amber Kellehan and Vikram Bhoyrul.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Too smooth… obviously, I’m kidding. When it comes to my creative career, I’m not sure if it’s just about to take off or somehow already over. The struggles are especially evident in the making of our feature film—there’s an impressive number of obstacles that seem to pop up at every turn, and are impossible to predict. We’ve shot scenes in Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, and Virginia, and I view every scene like starting a small business. But at this point, with about 85% of the film shot, we’ve managed to overcome each one. I’d like to think it’s because we put so much time and effort into our pre-production preparation.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’d like to think what sets me apart from others is my ability to remove ego from creative endeavors. I often see people get sidetracked trying to look cool or mimic a miniature version of a big film studio. We strip away all luxuries and invest only in what truly serves the project—which, ironically, probably sounds like I’m trying to sound cool.

Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I can barely remember something from two years ago, let alone my childhood. But when it comes to movies, I remember going to summer camp where we’d occasionally have sleepovers. The older camp counselors would introduce us to horror movies, and we’d stay up late watching marathons. Watching a string of movies—especially when they’re bad—with people you like is something I really enjoy