James Longshore is an American actor living in Bucharest, where he decided to move. Romania has apparently brought him many things he wished for when he was a student in Los Angeles. He recently published Stage Fright at Editura Creator. It’s a fun read that talks about the actor’s life in Romania, focusing on stage fright, but also on our culture seen through the eyes of an American.
The introduction is a translation of a presentation we received when promoting James’ book, a presentation that really piqued our interest. It’s not the first case of a person with a strong career or widely known moving countries here, but this one had something different. So off we went to investigate. The book PR was so kind as to facilitate a meeting with the actor and writer. Our editor-in-chief met with him at Humanitas Cișmigiu, a place he particularly likes because it brings together books and good coffee, while being quite central.
James Longshore: Writing Is Rewriting
Iulia: A couple of days ago I read that you are actually working on two books. Is this true?
James: I am currently writing the follow up to Stage Fright, which is also set in Romania, and another book. I’ve spent the entire day writing synopses, which has completely depleted my synapses [laughs]. You know what I mean? I mean it’s very hard. It’s almost harder than the actual writing to do the synopsis, because you have to tell the whole story very briefly, and from beginning to end. With the writing you can just sort of, you know, follow your muse.
Iulia: But then you get to the editing part, which most writers hate, as far as I understand.
James: I wish you didn’t have to revise, but it makes the book better. You have to remember that in the end it’s going to make the book better. There’s a famous quote: Writing is rewriting.
Iulia: Pretty much.
Say Goodbye to Hollywood
James proceeds to explain how the book he is currently writing (or one of the two, rather) it won’t be quite a sequel to the first. What the do have in common though is the set: the entertainment industry. ”It’s called Say Goodbye to Hollywood”, the actor/ author discloses, and minutes follow in which they muse about the famous musicians who have songs with this name.
James: I was actually gonna dedicate the book to Billy Joel and Eminem!
Iulia: There you go. They should be honored.
James: [sings] Say Goodbye to Hollywood.
Our guest starts explaining that many times he needs to apply extra focus while writing, because he has multiple thoughts and ideas at the same time. One of the most frustrating elements of my writing style is that I can’t even get the first one out before the second one is trying to push its way.
Iulia: And what do you do actually? Do you break down the other ideas?
James: I take a lot of notes, a lot of notes. And then I photograph them, and then I try to organize them by chapters. But what I’ve been doing lately is trying to force myself more to just go ahead and type it. Because the scene will start playing out and I’ll start writing it.
Iulia: But how does this work if you’re in the middle of another process? If you’re working on something and there are ideas coming upon you, then what do you do? Do you interrupt yourself and you go type the other ideas? Or how do you manage, if everything happens at the same time?
James: I try to lock the next thought in. And continue focusing on the moment at hand, with the other thought locked in. But a lot of times I’ll just stop and jot a couple of notes. That can be dangerous, because you don’t know what the note means later.
The Process
I would say the most difficult thing about writing being solitary is that I have to depend so much on myself to start.
Iulia: I can imagine that coming from your background, it’s not easy to do a very solitary job, because we are being told writers are solitary people, that writing is very much a one-person job. And you come from a background where there’s a lot of people, and there’s a lot of noise, and there’s a lot of things happening at the same time. How does it work for you?
James: The biggest challenge is the motivation. When I’m acting or when I’m performing stand-up comedy, I have to be somewhere at a certain time and I have other people who are depending on me. I can’t allow my insecurity or my hesitation to prevent me from being there and from supporting my colleagues. I would say the most difficult thing about writing being solitary is that I have to depend so much on myself to start. And then once I’ve started, to stick at it.
Iulia: I hear a lot about writers who have started or are part of a support group. You know, they join other writers, maybe in person, maybe online, they exchange notes, they encourage each other. Do you have something like that or have you thought about this?
James: I’ve tried doing that online and I don’t really like it. And here I don’t find those kinds of support groups as much. There’s not as natural an exchange. Ideas need to be exchanged in a real time conversation. I like to sit across the table from someone, get a sense of what they’re understanding, be able to ask each other questions. That’s very important to the writing process because I think one of the most important things about being a writer is to ignore self doubt.
This book isn’t the first thing I’ve written, but it’s the first prose I’ve written. The transition that was difficult and is still difficult to this day is that my credits have been in visual storytelling mediums, so screenwriting credits. I wrote a comic book, in collaboration with artists. And so this is the first time that I’ve had to say who’s saying what and how they say it or describe the room and communicate things to the reader, to the audience that I didn’t have to concern myself with in the past.
Iulia: So there’s no visual support this time.
James: Exactly, exactly.
Iulia: And this makes it challenging.
James: It’s a challenge because it’s a learning curve. I know about dramatic structure. I know about, you know, acts and pacing and elements of telling a good story. But finding the words to describe things, or knowing when to say “he said”, when to use an adverb to describe how they said it, as opposed to letting the dialogue speak for itself, that’s very much a trial and error. And so that makes the process longer. And it makes it feel awkward sometimes.
James Bong
Iulia: You mentioned a comic book. I know my eyes were sparkling because I’m a comic book fan. What comic book was that?
James: It’s a comic book called James Bong, Agent of J. O. I. N. T. I’ve been making it for ten years. It’s based on my thesis on short film from film school, back in Los Angeles. One of the reasons that I started writing books is because with screenplays you write it, but then you’ve got to find the money for it, you’ve got to find the actors for it, you’ve got to find the locations. It takes two years, you know, ‘till you may even see the finished product.
So I switched to comic books because I could continue to tell the story with just an artist and, you know, less of a team. And still you run into challenges there. So writing a book meant that it depended on me, and me alone, and so that’s why I pivoted to prose writing. But the comic book has been published in magazines internationally.
I financed the comic through product placement, having the products drawn into the comic, and I raised enough money to make some regular full length issues. I’ve just put together a collection of the best of the last ten years. I’m hoping to release that soon.
The thing is I’m looking for a proper publisher for it. You know, I could self-publish it. But my problem with having to promote yourself on social media as an entertainer or a content creator these days is that you spend all your time doing the promotion and not the creation of the content. And when I die, I don’t want a bunch of 30-second posts left behind, I want 100 books! [laughs]
Back to the Book…
The middle of the book is when you really get to explore the themes.
Iulia: Can you just tell us which is one of your favourite episodes in the book? Something that you really enjoyed writing, something that people should look forward to when reading?
James: I really enjoyed, I would say, the middle of the book. And when the suspense is building. I really had a chance to explore what the character was going through. You know, at the beginning you have the setup and in the end you have resolution. The middle is when you really get to explore the themes of the book, what each character is feeling, set them against each other. And so I feel that those parts of the book have the most… not pacing, but the most forward momentum, let’s say.
Iulia: Is it safe to consider that the MC is you? Would you say it’s very autobiographical, or not really?
James: I would say it’s what’s known as semi-autobiographical. It deals with themes and issues of the author’s life, but with fictional elements.
Iulia: And which was the least favorite part, when you wrote it?
James: I would say that the stand-up parts were very difficult. You would think it was easy, because it’s all jokes, and one of the reasons that I wrote the book was, you know, Seinfeld.
Iulia: You mentioned you were very much inspired by it.
James: Yeah, that was the model. I loved the television series and how Jerry would take his comedy bits and then find a narrative structure to build around them. And, have you watched the show?
Iulia: Not actively, but I know of it. And I’ve seen parts of some episodes. I’m not really a sitcom person.
…but also Let’s Talk About Film Theory!
James: I love sitcoms because I like to deal with life with humor and the thing that I like about sitcoms that I don’t find in dramas is that the conflicts are resolved. You know, you have these stable characters from episode to episode and basically, by the end of the episode, you’ve kind of hit the reset button.
And so they go through these conflicts, but they resolve them in a friendly way and at the end everybody is friends again. It gives you a feeling of positivity, that problems can be resolved. You know, in drama, there’s the good guy, the bad guy, and in sitcom you have what’s known as the eight characters. So you have the smart logical one. You have what’s known as the lovable loser. Homer Simpson, for example, is a good example of a lovable loser. And then you have, like, the womanizer. You have the dumb one. And so you have these stock characters. Naturally, that creates conflict. But at the end they resolve that conflict.
Iulia: It’s not like real conflict or the kind of, you know, very tragic things in dramas.
James: It’s the kind of conflict where you don’t have a good guy and a bad guy. In a drama you have the good guy who has to win over the bad guy and then that’s it. I understand it’s thrilling to watch a law case, or going after a murderer, you know, trying to catch a murderer, that’s exciting, living vicariously. Sitcoms, though, deal with the kinds of things that we, as people, as the majority of average people, deal with everyday. You know, going to the office, or dating, and so it’s relatable. My wife Bianca and I, we always say that we can put on a sitcom and just fall asleep happily.
There follows a part when Iulia and James discuss sitcoms. They talk length (did you know that the episodes are usually tailored to suit the timing of the commercials?), as well as technique nowadays. James explains the differences between multi-camera and single-camera comedy.
James: Friends is a multi-camera comedy. It’s shot on a stage-like theater, on a soundstage. And they have like four cameras set up. That way they can have one camera on this character, one camera on this character, as they’re all acting. And then they can cut it together, at the end.
Friends is an example of a multi-camera, and I love it. I would love to be on a sitcom because I grew up doing theater more than film as a young actor, and I love going to rehearsal every day, and then putting it in front of an audience, and having the immediate reaction. This is one reason that I do stand-up now, because here most of the acting I get to do is in film, because it’s the films from abroad that are in English.
And so stand-up comedy gives me that same thrill of being in front of a live audience. And in sitcoms what they do is they come on Monday and they sit around a table and they read the script. And then they have a couple of rehearsals. They have a rehearsal without a camera, where they figure out how they’re telling the jokes, if things are working, maybe adjust lines a little bit. And then they do a camera rehearsal, so the camera knows where they’re gonna be, where to position themselves. And then on Friday night the audience comes in and they do it in front of the audience.
In a way, it’s a live theater. So, I really love that format, because you get the best of both worlds. You get television, but you also get theater. You get to be on television, but… Theater! So there is… So that’s multi-camera. But I’m not even sure if there are any multi-camera sitcoms on the air right now.
As opposed to this, they shoot single-camera it the way you shoot a film or a drama, which is: we get a master and we cover all the action, then we’re going to get you on your close-up, and then we’re going to get you on your close-up, and then we cut it together. [it also helps a lot that he ”points at” the different characters he refers to]. An example of a single-camera comedy is Modern Family.
I had the opportunity, and I am so happy about this, to be on the only multi-camera sitcom ever made in Romania, which was Tanti Florica with Florin Călinescu. I played an American missionary who comes to try and convert Florin Călinescu.
James: That’s one of my favorite experiences, here in Romania. I got to live out my dream of being on a sitcom.
Back to James Longshore on Seinfeld & Stage Fright
James: Stand-up comedy is so much about the live and the delivery and how you say it. Like I said, I wanted to make it like Seinfeld, but narrative based on the comedy. But I had to write the comedy. On Seinfeld, he opened each episode with a clip of him doing a comedy bit that was connected to the story of the episode. So here I had to write the stand-up comedy, then kind of try to write an audience reaction.
The thing with writing is you have to have a lot of variety. If there’s too much dialogue, people get tired, so you have to break it up with descriptive paragraphs.
Iulia: I was just thinking, because I haven’t read the book yet, that maybe you took some things from real stand-ups that you inserted. But now you’re actually saying that you had to create it from scratch.
James: I did take some jokes that are common to my comedy. It’s sort of a mixture. there were jokes that I have told, some of them I’ve told on stage, some of them I’ve told to a friend, and then some I never got to tell. So it’s kind of like a grab bag of all of those. And then I would write, you know, I would take the one joke and it would make me think of another joke, like a new joke, so I would add that joke to the one that I already had.
Iulia: How do you know a joke is good?
James: That’s the biggest challenge of stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy is the only performance art where you rehearse in front of an audience. And that’s the only way you can know if a joke is funny. Of course it depends on the audience too. But you can’t live in a vacuum, doing stand-up, because maybe the joke is funny, but you’re not putting the words in the right order or you’re not saying this part excited and this part deadpan. And you have to try them out to, like, get a sense of that rhythm.
The Path
Iulia: The second topic I really wanted to approach with you is the part about you being a younger person and finding your path and deciding on a career. I wanted to know more about who would you say helped you the most and encouraged you. And what helped you go on when you were really down?
James: The first thing I would say is I was very lucky because my path was sort of shown to me. Because I got cast in a play. And then, at my school, there was a TV show casting. And they chose me to be on some TV shows. So I remember when I was like 12 or 13 that people would always say to me “Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up?” and I was like “Oh, I wanna be an actor!” and they were like “Oh, you’re so lucky because you know, at such a young age, what you want to be.”
And so I felt very lucky that way. Writing was something that I kind of did when I was younger. And then I just felt like I wanted to write, and so I followed that. I wanted to write because as an actor you’re saying someone else’s lines and writing is something that I knew I could do.
So I would say the number one thing is not to wait for anybody to give you permission to do anything. I think you have to find it in yourself. You know, it’s like stage fright. People do want to see you succeed when they go see a play or a show, so you don’t need to be afraid. And I think not to give in to fear of anything is important. You know, this world has kept turning for thousands of years through some of the scariest times ever. And the people who lived then thought it was going to end then, and it didn’t.
And so you can’t live your life like the world’s gonna end. You’ve got to live it like there’s always gonna be another tomorrow. And each of those tomorrows is a chance to do better. So when you fall down, which always happens, especially to me, becauseI’m very clumsy [laughs].
You got to pick yourself up and go “There’s tomorrow!”
Iulia: That actually made me think a lot, because you said this thing about “People want you to succeed” and I was just thinking that’s gonna maybe put a bit of pressure on you. Because what if people are disappointed because they go there and they want it to be like they want, or they want to read the book and be happy with it. And what happens if they’re not, how do you cope with that?
James: At the end of the day, they go home and I go home. And I have to live with myself, so I need to feel comfortable. And the way I do that is to know that even if they’re disappointed today, tomorrow I have another chance. As long as there’s tomorrow, I always have another chance. We’ve got to stop holding so many grudges and being so bitter about everything, and start being more open to forgiveness and open to the flaws and the mistakes that we have. One of the problems is on social media you’re seeing this idealized life.
You know, if I sit there and I scroll on social media and, like, I’m seeing everybody else’s life, I’m getting filled with all these feelings of jealousy or insignificance or not being good enough. So I just decided to start reading again and every time I’m starting to go through Facebook or Insta or whatever, I pick up a book and I just read the book.
And you know, that’s again why I like sitcoms. At the end of the day, everybody gets along and everybody works out their problems.
Iulia: You just like happy endings, you have to admit that you just like happy endings. That’s it.
James: Life is full of happiness and sadness, and I try to find the beauty in sadness as well. Like, honestly, to a certain degree, there’s more beauty in sadness than there is in happiness.
Iulia: To end this on a positive note indeed, tell us a bit about the next book.
James: Say Goodbye to Hollywood is set in the Romanian film industry. And it’s about an American who comes here to make his comeback film. And he casts a young Romanian socialite. She’s an aspiring actress, but nobody supports her in that dream. And so she dreams of going to America. But he comes here and falls in love with Romania. So it’s about both finding your dreams in unexpected places, but also about finding happiness where you are.
Iulia: That’s a nice synopsis.
James: Thank you. Been working on it all day! [laughs]
This interview has been made possible with the support of the following people:
☎ Luisa Ene, PR extraordinaire
☼ Ecaterina Grigore, gifted photographer
✍Ghanda, who helped with the transcription & first edit
the lovely staff at Humanitas Cișmigiu
An article written by Iulia Dromereschi
