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Jamie DeWolf (born October 28, 1977) is an American Poetry slam, film director, writer, spoken word artist, and circus ringmaster from Oakland, California.
DeWolf is known for his career as a slam poetry champion, his award-winning films for the Youth Speaks Bigger Picture Project, live tours with the performance trio The Suicide Kings, hosting the monthly variety show The Ruckus Revival (formerly known as Tourettes Without Regrets) in Oakland, and for his work as a producer and performer on NPR's Snap Judgment. DeWolf has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry, 60 Minutes, UPN, Inside Edition, and CBS. He directed, wrote, and starred in the feature film Smoked. The Movie (2012).
He is the great-grandson of author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and an outspoken critic of the Church of Scientology. In 2000 he hosted the first ever anti-Scientology summit in Clearwater, Florida. He was named one of the "Top 25 People Crippling Scientology" by The Village Voice in 2011.
DeWolf calls his great-grandfather "one of the greatest con men of the last century." "I wanted to meet him," DeWolf said of Hubbard. "But he was already in hiding by the time I was born. I was told not to ask my grandfather, Ronald DeWolf, about him," DeWolf said. "L. Ron and L. Ron, Jr. were locked in this dangerous end-game, where Junior was trying to flush him out of hiding." DeWolf's grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., was born in 1934 into a front-row seat for the creation of Scientology. He helped with that family business for a while, but later told Penthouse that "99% of anything my father ever wrote or said about himself is untrue," and compared Scientology's inner sanctum, the "Sea Org," with the Hitler Youth. "I was incredibly religious. Super devout," said DeWolf. "I would stand on street corners passing out pamphlets warning about the apocalypse." Yet he entered adolescence feeling alone and troubled, as if a "toxic Molotov cocktail" simmered inside him.
"Ever since I was young I would often get sent to the school psychiatrist for what I was writing. A lot of it was just too macabre, in retrospect. But I realized, even when I was a Christian kid, that a lot of what drew me into Christianity—and what they were certainly exploiting—was my fascination with demonology and the apocalypse, the Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon. I must have read the Book of Revelation 10,000 times by the time I was ten years old." He began reciting more poetry at the microphones that were just opening up in the bedroom communities of Benicia and Vallejo in the late 1990s. "I would come in with this fire and blood," DeWolf said. "And they did not want that."
Since his first slam in 1999, DeWolf won his way onto seven slam teams, competing on the finals stage at the National Poetry Slam on his first team. He has since become a National Poetry Slam Champion, the Berkeley Grand Slam Champion, a YouthSpeaks Mentor, a featured performer on HBO's Def Poetry Jam hosted by Mos Def, appearing in Season Three with his poem "Grim Fairy Tale", and taping for Season Five with Dave Chappelle and Lauryn Hill. DeWolf's style has been described as "raw and raucous." "He brings that same inimitable, avant-garde style to everything he does—poetry, playwriting, performance and his latest endeavor, filmmaking."
At the same time he began participating in Poetry Slam, DeWolf started teaching Slam in high schools. "It gave me a driving force to help the kids like me and give them another model. It made me realize I had survived and chosen art as an escape route." "Too often we ignore what young people have to say and they're not asked to express themselves authentically– people are shoved into writing essays and taught how to speak. That's why bringing slam poetry to kids empowers them and encourages them to think about what they want in a way that they want." Since his Slam beginnings, DeWolf has performed and led writing workshops at over 90 universities, high schools and juvenile detention centers across the globe, working with such organizations as Opera Piccola, Lunchbox International, and Youth Speaks.
In 2001 the San Francisco Chronicle characterized DeWolf as "a nationally recognized slam poet". His work has been featured on 60 Minutes, UPN and NPR. He coached the Youth Speaks team twice, one of which was featured on Brave New Voices on HBO hosted by Common and Rosario Dawson. He opened for B. Dolan on the first Church of Love and Ruin tour, for Shane Koyczan, and was featured in 2014 on All Def Poetry with his poem "Rebels Without Applause." He was awarded The East Bay Express Best of the Bay "Best Poet" twice, in both 2012 and 2013.
The trio performed worldwide at colleges, high schools, juvenile detention centers. In 2004, they toured with Sage Francis and Doomtree on the Abusement Tour.
Over the past 18 years, Tourettes has changed venues repeatedly, moving to Oakland where it started at The Stork Club, then finding its current home where "every month, throngs of fans descend upon the Oakland Metro Operahouse, a chilly warehouse with mottled, tar-spattered cement floors, to witness one of Oakland's strangest attractions. Tourettes Without Regrets is a raunchy, attention-deficit vaudeville extravaganza." The show "combines variety show with game show for a balanced and rhythmic flow of high-energy scenes: the slam judges introduced themselves by mimicking psychotic animals; two previous "dirty haiku" champions faced off in three rounds; a sick beatboxing duo gave a perfectly timed set; a surreal burlesque/performance group combined a flute, some high-flown language, and a Snow White strip-tease, etc." Called "one of the wildest and most creatively raw variety shows in the Bay Area" by SF Weekly, the show has spawned a series of spinoff events, such as the annual Game of Thrones Show, where "the crowd is segregated into Starks and Lannisters and crazed interactive games ensue. You help kill off favorite characters and rewrite the ending of the show yourself." The show includes "a local "choose your own adventure" band whose live show involves twelve-sided dice the size of beach balls. As per the night's theme, the group will perform new material inspired by Game of Thrones." The Holy Sh*t Show, lampoons Scientology, and the yearly XXX Show, started in 2012 at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater. In DeWolf's own words about Tourettes, "If you've never been to a rap battle, if you've never been to a poetry slam, if you've never seen burlesque, if you've never seen stand-up comedy, or dirty haiku, or freakish, inventive contests—then that's what the show is for, to put all of those elements into one show. What makes 'Tourettes' individual and unique is throwing all of these elements together and seeing what happens." "It's Psychotic vaudeville. It's taking highbrow and lowbrow and making them collide in this demolition derby." The show has won "The Best of the Bay" multiple times from The East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Guardian since its inception.
On December 03, 2020, DeWolf announced this would be the final Tourettes Without Regrets and the monthly show would continue under the name Ruckus and Rumpus Revival.
Straight.com called Smoked "mean, bloody, and demented. It's also piss-your-pants hilarious, maddeningly nihilistic, oddly sentimental, weirdly moral, extremely silly, and insanely energetic. It's almost too energetic for the screen, to be honest." "full of orgiastic naked clowns, wanton black revolutionary street executions, crappy ninjas, asshole kids, and seemingly countless hippies being tortured to death." "exaggerating the dark side of the modern marijuana 'industry' to cartoonishly nasty levels." Picked up for distribution by Indican Studios , the studio that released Boondock Saints, it was a featured film at the Rio Grind Theater Film Festival in Vancouver and the Oakland Underground Film Festival. An ambitious undertaking, DeWolf viewed Smoked as an exploration of his city's culture. "There's a lot of history infused in there, a lot of references to Black Panthers and revolution. Oakland and Berkley are right next to each other and even in the history of these cities, there's been this certain element of tension. That tension, and that kind of ideological war, aggression versus pacifism; it's just really interesting to explore."
DeWolf has collaborated with Youth Speaks, a San Francisco-based organization focused on teen spoken-word artists and has directed several films for their "The Bigger Picture Project"—a joint effort with the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations to raise awareness of type 2 diabetes. Featured poets visit Bay Area high schools to perform their poetry and coach students to write their own health justice poetry.
The films have garnered national attention. His short film Thin Line about a family stricken with Diabetes and amputations was the $5000 Grand Prize Winner of the Real Food Media Film Competition. And the following year his film Home Flavored, also known as A Taste of Home, won the Grand Prize.
The Thin Line and another Youth Speaks collaboration, The Dealer were accepted into the 2013 Food and Farm Film Festival at the Roxie Theater. His film Perfect Soldiers won the youth category of the 2015 Sacramento Food Film Festival. In 2015 DeWolf was commissioned to direct a feature-length documentary entitled "Biker with a Moral Compass: Dr. Dick Fine and the Evolving Culture of SFGH", a documentary portraying and paying tribute to the life, times and contributions of UCSF and SFGH physician Dick Fine MD, Founder and Former Director of the General Medicine Clinic.
In 2014, DeWolf worked with Youth Speaks' newly formed Off Page Project to create three pivotal films. "The Off/Page Project combines the analytical lens of The Center for Investigative Reporting with the groundbreaking storytelling of the literary nonprofit Youth Speaks. Living at the intersection of youth voice and civic engagement, the Off/Page Project provides a multimedia platform for young people to investigate the issues and stories that would otherwise be silenced." "In the inaugural video Whispers from the Fields," 19-year-old Monica Mendoza takes on the challenging issue of sexual violence among migrant women farmworkers." (" video) "Their voices and poems and creative art has the power to change aspects of their lives personally, but also to have an impact on another kid's life and another city's life." "This is Home" was "produced as a part of Subsidized Squalor, a collaborative investigation by CIR, KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle that exposed the failures of the Richmond Housing Authority in California and how it has left residents living in deplorable conditions." The third film, "Locked In" is "a piece depicting the disturbing reality that many youth face in solitary confinement." DeWolf also made three films in collaboration with Write Home, addressing teen homelessness.
Several of the films have been featured on Upworthy. In addition to several Youth Speaks collaborations, his film "Waiting" with performance poet and humorist Thadra Sheridan, called "the best fucking video about waiting tables ever" by The Bitchy Waiter went viral after appearing on UpWorthy and received over a million views. "Ricochet in Reverse," starring Isaac Miller and Rafael Casal is "a lyrical retelling of the Columbine school shootings going in reverse, as a meditation on youth violence and survival through art."
DeWolf's own short films have garnered accolades and awards across the country. His short noir film "A Girl and a Gun" won "Best Acting Performance" at Briefs Erotic Film Festival. and "Best Writing" at the Rio Grind Film Festival in a competition judged by The Soska Sisters, directors of "American Mary." "Hey Baby Hey," a film about cat calling and sexual harassment, won the "Grand Prize Audience Award," "Judges Award," "Best Acting Performance" and "Cinematography" at the 2015 Briefs Erotic Film Festival. DeWolf's film about a new dating service for monsters, "OK MONSTER" was the Grand Prize Audience winner at the Scream Horror Film Festival, and was selected for the Fantastic Planet Festival in Australia. His film "Double Agent" which remixes a sexual identity into James Bond title sequence was selected for the CineKink Film Festival in NYC. His short film "U Turn" was selected for a feature-length horror film anthology franchise by Ruthless Pictures and received international distribution. His short film "Black Out" with Wonder Dave, delving into difficult subject matter talking about kink, sex and race was accepted into the Briefs Erotic Film Festival 2016. DeWolf also directed the controversial "Sweet Sh*t of Christ" music video with Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits that covers centuries of Christian history in a matter of minutes. The video features featuring a black Jesus carrying a crucifix in downtown Oakland followed by Santa Claus, zombies, the Easter Bunny and priests, a recreation of the Jonestown massacre, live snakes and faith healing. After winning their first ever Hosting Competition, DeWolf now hosts the annual Sacramento Horror Film Festival, which features horror burlesque acts and live shadowcasting of films like REPO: The Genetic Opera with live appearances by Skinny Puppy's Nivek Ogre.
In a January 25, 2013, interview with Cenk Uygur on Current TV, DeWolf said that Scientology:
In 2015, DeWolf incorporated his monthly show in a special game show aimed at Scientology, including 'a conversation with journalist Tony Ortega, who appeared in HBO's documentary , and Paulette Cooper, author of The Scandal of Scientology.'
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Jamie Dewolf talks to David Pakman about Scientology
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