October 31, 2023, 12:00 p.m. EST
After her time at Emerson, Jamie Loftus started out as a comedian, but certainly didn’t stop there. Between starting a podcast (before they were cool) and writing a New York Times Best Seller about the history of hot dogs (yes, hot dogs), her creative endeavors have taken her to a lot of places, most recently even out to LA. Jamie shares with Hunter how taking risks and keeping things fresh have led to her success. Recorded on August 30, 2023.
Transcript: Season 7, Episode 2
Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1:
What does it mean to make it big? Well, it depends on who you ask, and we did. Welcome to Making It Big in 30 Minutes, a podcast for, by, and about the Emerson community. You're about to meet an Emersonian who's making it, making a living, making a difference, and sometimes making it up as they go. As far as we're concerned, if you're making something, you've made it big time. We know you'll enjoy hearing our host, Hunter Reis, from the class of 2017, and all of our guests share how Emerson shaped their lives and careers after graduation. So, let's get into it.
Hunter Reis:
Jamie Loftus is a comedian, podcast host, TV writer, and as of recently, a published author and hotdog historian. Jamie graduated from Emerson in 2014 and hit the ground running writing on Robot Chicken before launching numerous successful podcasts, including My Year in Mensa and The Bechdel Cast. Jamie joins us on Making It Big to talk staying true to yourself, the Emerson comedy scene, and how getting out of Los Angeles helps put things into perspective. Here's Jamie Loftus in making it as a comedic writer.
Welcome, Jamie. Thanks for joining us today.
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, thanks for having me.
Hunter Reis:
I'm actually particularly excited for this episode, because I was a freshman when you were a junior, I believe, and some of my first memories at Emerson were seeing you perform in your comedy troupe and-
Jamie Loftus:
Really?
Hunter Reis:
... being exposed to the comedy scene at Emerson through you. Yeah.
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry.
Hunter Reis:
You were truly what they call one of the M celebs back in the day. So, almost 10 years later now, it's really cool that it's full circle moment for me getting to talk to you.
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, my gosh. Good to see you. Because when I saw your name, I was like, "I have met them. I know it." Oh, my God.
Hunter Reis:
It's one of those things too, where it's like you were upperclassmen, so it's like I feel like all the freshmen and the underclassmen know very well the upperclassmen and then vice versa, it's not really the same for good reason.
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, my gosh. I think of the upperclassmen that I looked up to my freshman year and I was so feral about it. It was very unique dynamic. I love it.
Hunter Reis:
So you have your hands dipped all over the place. You're truly like a creator in every sense of the word. So, I am also excited to hear how you might describe what you do in just one quick sentence.
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, yeah. I am pretty all over the place. I think I call myself a comedian and a writer, which is very vague, but I just do stuff that is interesting to me and hopefully people pay me for it. Often, they do not, but that's okay.
Hunter Reis:
So this is my only actual second podcast here, so you have much more podcast experience than I do just with The Bechdel Cast and My Year in Mensa and all the other incredible podcasts that you've done. I'd love to talk about how you ideated The Bechdel Cast, because I was actually just listening to your podcast on Jackie Brown this past week. You had made a comment, you were talking about Quentin Tarantino and you were making a comment about your Kill Bill episode and how it never really saw the light of day because you didn't know what you were talking about at that point when you were making your first episode. So, can you talk about how The Bechdel Cast came to fruition and how it's developed over the time?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah, I mean, my co-host had the germ of the idea originally, Caitlin Durante. They came to me in... This was so bleak, but it was not too long after I got out of college. It was 2016. I had moved to LA in the last year. They came to me and they're like, "Hey, I love movies." The original germ of it was that we knew each other from Boston. We both needed friends and a podcast like this didn't exist. The original concept was we wanted to specifically talk about how women were portrayed in movies, because there were a lot of movie podcasts, but they were mostly from men and they very rarely talked about gender dynamics at all within the movies. So, they came with that idea and the concept was that they had seen a lot of movies and I hadn't seen as many.
So, it was like that was going to be the original dynamic, and we started it independently. We had this amazing producer who we found, Aristotle Acevedo, and we just used what we had access to already. So, Caitlin at the time worked at a now closed comedy venue called Meltdown, and there was a recording booth there. We could use it for really, really cheap if we went very early in the morning or very late in the day. So, we were working at a loss, but we scrambled together a recording situation and just brought on people we had met in the LA comedy scene to start. As far as movie criticism, we didn't know what we were talking about. We were going based off of our impressions, which obviously, you bring all your personal biases to that.
It started off a little more goofy and less analytical. Then as the years went on, I think that we had to confront our own biases and realized that we wanted to make the show more thoughtful and include more research. As I was going more deep into journalism, it felt weird that that wasn't being brought to the show in the way that it should have been. We also over time realized that we had to be more inclusive with the breadth of movies we were bringing to the show. So, I think just over the years, it was a ton of trial and error. Our early episodes, good for people who can listen to them, I cannot. I'm just like, "Oh, that girl is suffering. Someone help her out." But I'm really proud of how we've grown as a show and just grown as friends and together over the years. There's still plenty of way to go, but it's been a really cool process.
Hunter Reis:
That's great. We're always our worst critics, right? I'm sure you cringe listening to the early episodes, but other people probably don't as much.
Jamie Loftus:
Let's hope so. I don't know.
Hunter Reis:
So you, actually like me, were born in Massachusetts and then now you live in Los Angeles, right?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah, I moved there at the end of 2015.
Hunter Reis:
Nice. Okay. So, what was your thinking behind the move? I know that I did this right after the LA Program. I stayed out here in Los Angeles and just stayed ever since. Was it the same experience for you or how did that work for you?
Jamie Loftus:
No, I didn't do the LA Program. I was really involved and invested in WERS. I ended up doing a radio minor and I wanted to stay through the end for that purpose. I also really liked Boston comedy. So, my first jobs out of college, I graduated. I did the graduated semester early thing. I worked as a clickbaity writer for boston.com, which is connected to the Boston Globe. I was working at Improv Boston just to pay for my own classes and feel like I had access to their space to do experimental plays and stuff like that. So, I didn't move out to LA right away, but when I did, it was because I had been reached out to by a manager and I wasn't sure if it was a scam. So, I flew to LA and stayed with friends to meet her and it wasn't a scam.
Hunter Reis:
That's great. I think it's really important to just think that you did take a year in Boston after graduation or sometime at least before moving to LA. I feel like a lot of students feel that they need to move here right away and might make the leap without having anything lined up, which could be great. For me, that's what I did and I just took a little retail job on the side until I found something full-time. But a lot of people feel stuck like, "Oh, I don't know if I should move out right away" or, "This is my one chance", but that's not the case. You have all the time. You can stay on the East Coast for as long as you want and then move. So, I just think that's a really good thing for especially graduating students to hear.
Jamie Loftus:
If it doesn't feel quite right for you yet, or if you feel like you have creatively unfinished business where you are, then I mean, rest assured LA will be there, unless it sinks into the ocean and then you really made the right decision.
Hunter Reis:
Just very possible.
Jamie Loftus:
So I don't know. I don't want anyone to hold themselves back if it is the time, but if it's not, don't be hard on yourself. There's so much that I don't know. I mean, I've been in New England for the summer. I haven't been in LA for a couple of months and nobody noticed, because I'm still doing the kind of work that I care about somewhere else. I feel like that's one of the few real interesting sea changes about us all having lived through lockdown is that depending on what you want to do, obviously, some places you do have to physically be in LA, but speaking just as a writer, there's a lot you can do without being there. So, if it's not right financially or life timing, don't beat yourself up. There's plenty you can do where you are.
Hunter Reis:
That's a conversation that I keep having as well about remote work. I work in social media and entertainment, so it's similar where it's like, "Do I need to be in an office sitting at a computer on Facebook all day?" No, I do not.
Jamie Loftus:
You do not. You could do that quite most anywhere.
Hunter Reis:
Anywhere as long as there's WiFi or service.
Jamie Loftus:
Right, not in the woods.
Hunter Reis:
You are a newly published author. You have written for Adult Swim. You have an iHeartRadio podcast, all very, very cool things. Is there one thing that stands out to you that might impress your college age self to find out you have done?
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, what would she like? I think that college Jamie would be very surprised that a book happened. Current Jamie is still pretty surprised, because I feel like that is more a childhood dream that felt... I think at Emerson, I was trying to shoot for things, but I also feel like there was a pragmatism about it of here is how you do this and you get this job, which leads to this job. It felt like there was this process, which doesn't actually really exist, but I thought it existed. But publishing a book, I mean, that was like I wish I could tell my five-year-old self that that eventually happened and that it was about hot dogs, because I think that a five-year-old would also be excited about that.
Hunter Reis:
Yeah, I think that's an amazing feat. Also, something that you mentioned in your book is that it's one of your first loves in life as a child. You are introduced to hot dogs and then that's it. You're set for life. Something like that, right?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah. I love books and hot dogs.
Hunter Reis:
I've gone to several bookstores in Los Angeles, and I was in New York a few weeks ago and just walking around bookstores that I've ran into copies of your book. I picked one myself too.
Jamie Loftus:
Thank you. That's so cool. Yeah, it still feels very surreal and yeah, it's exciting. There's very few things that I'm like, "I'm proud of that," but the book, I'm like, "I'm proud of that. That was really exciting."
Hunter Reis:
Can you tell me something about the publishing process or even just the writing process that surprised you when you ran into it?
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, it's so funny. I've talked to other published authors and they were like, "Wow, the process for your book, it went so quickly." To me, I was like, "This is the slowest thing I've ever done in my entire life." I know that I was so adjusted to podcast timelines, which are very, very fast. Obviously, doing standup for as long as I have, you get feedback instantly. Publishing just isn't like that. It's old school still. It's mostly old people. There's all of these hundred-year-old processes to how it's done. It tested like my patience and I think the book is far better for it, because as opposed to even with the reported podcast, depending on what the timeline is, sometimes you're writing, recording, editing back to back to back.
If there's anything personal about it, it's pretty of the moment. What I liked about the book is that the three drafts were done over the course of a year. So, the person I was when I started writing, it wasn't necessarily the same person as when I finished. I'd never had a creative process like that before. It was challenging and I really enjoyed it.
Hunter Reis:
But your love for hot dog stayed the same, I assume.
Jamie Loftus:
Yes. Spoiler alert, I do not give them up.
Hunter Reis:
Can we transition for a second and talk about your work for Adult Swim and maybe comedy writing?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hunter Reis:
So I guess my main question is how do you balance it all? It seems like you do a whole lot, and this seems to take up a good portion of your time as well.
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah. TV writing was my Emerson dream, and that was why I wanted to go there. I didn't even know I wanted to be involved in comedy when I went to Emerson, and that's something I guess discovered over the course of going. Yeah, it's so funny. I cherish this false perception. It's a lot of work, but it's never as hard as it seems where right now I have a show that I worked on called Teenage Euthanasia. It's coming out on Adult Swim. So, it's like, "Oh, she looks so busy on this show," but it's like we wrote that January 2022. I've blown through two boyfriends since that script was written, and it's because the production process is so long and because it's animated and all this stuff. The same thing with the book where it's like, "Oh, I'm so busy."
With touring, that is true, but also, I finished the book a while ago. I find it interesting and I have to constantly keep myself in check, because I have the habit that I think it's just a lot of people have of just comparing myself to other people. It's never what it seems like positive, negative, or otherwise, but I feel like I didn't really answer your question. I balance it because it's fun for me.
I think that I've been lucky to have the opportunities in TV writing that I have, and it feels like a completely different area of my brain than doing the podcast work because that's more analytical and not creatively free in the same way. It's not collaborative in the same way. So, I've been, I think, lucky to over the years find different ways to work different parts of my creative brain, and it seems like everything lifts up the other areas.
Hunter Reis:
That's interesting. That's a really interesting way of putting it. I wouldn't think that utilizing different parts of your brain for your podcast or for book writing would really, I guess, be that barrier that you need to jump from one to another either. I do find it interesting, you've been in Massachusetts or New England for the past few months, right?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah.
Hunter Reis:
Do you feel like maybe that's a breadth of fresh air for you? You said that you've been in LA for eight years and you still have so much to learn, but do you find that you're learning by taking time out of LA?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah, I mean, it's learning or just remembering how to be a person. That's very important to me. I mean, there's a lot of circumstantial stuff that brought me here this summer, but I'm very glad that it did, because I think that as much as I love living in LA and it took a while, but I found my support system. I love comedy there and I really love living there, but it's so easy to develop tunnel vision in a way that doesn't feel great and I feel like also doesn't serve being creative. I know that there's a bajillion people that feel this way.
Every once in a while, it's like if there is an option to step away and be with people you love and be somewhere that feels familiar, I feel like you find new elements of it, because as you get older, hopefully, you're seeing new things in the places that you love or you're not paying close enough attention to it. But I've really appreciated being here this summer for that reason of getting to be in this place that I really loved growing up in and seeing it from not a very frustrated recent grad perspective, which is where I was at. I was so desperate to leave. I understand why and I'm glad I did, but I also was like, "All right, we cannot solidify 22-year-old Jamie's opinion of this area of the world." So it's been wonderful.
Hunter Reis:
Yeah, like I said, I grew up in a Massachusetts town as well and I've lived in LA for... Actually this past week, it was seven years, so I always just try to get out for a little bit as well. I'm going back to Massachusetts next week actually.
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, awesome.
Hunter Reis:
Just like to visit family and just to get out of the city. It's so big, but like Boston, the neighborhoods can feel small and they're very close together. So, you get stuck in that tunnel vision, not just living in LA, but living in just neighborhood that you're in. I feel that just going to different parts of the city, going up to the mountains or getting out of the state entirely, that always makes me feel a little bit refreshed.
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah. I mean, what I like about getting out, it's I think important to me at least to be... I mean, my family and my friends here are supportive and wonderful, but also, we're not talking about work all the time. We're not talking about how do I do this, whatever maneuver it is, because there's utility to those conversations. But again, it's just the tunnel vision. I think sometimes I feel like I zone out at whether it's a party or whatever, where it's like everyone's doing their best and sometimes I'm like, "Oh, my God. We're so full of shit. Shut up." Then you're just like, "Well, I need to get out of here for a while. It's too much."
Hunter Reis:
What was one of the most difficult parts of the first two to three years out of graduation and what were some of the best parts of those years?
Jamie Loftus:
I mean, the best parts were definitely feeling like that you can try whatever and I don't know. I feel like I didn't have the same self-consciousness, because you don't have a reputation to uphold. You're nobody. You're just a person that wants to be creative and wants to be funny and wants to meet people and have a good time. So, I really liked those first couple of years, because it just felt like a really cool chance to find my voice and find what I liked and what I didn't like. It was cool, because now it feels more like, "Oh, wow, is this consistent with what I've done in the past? If this sucks, will people hate me forever?" As you get further into your career, it feels scarier to take risks, but yeah, those first couple years, it was like nothing but risks.
Every day was a risk, and that's scary. It was also I tried to enjoy that process. I mean, for better and for worse, I was doing whatever those first few. Also, just I think learning that I didn't think that the prescriptive paths, you're saying your senior year, you're like, "Well, this is what I have to do and this is how my life has to go." Just realizing that that isn't true, I'm glad that I was given that option, but it quickly became clear to me that it's the office job to writer's assistant job to staff writer job, that wasn't going to be for me. It was like I was going to work a retail job and butt chug on stage at night and make my own stuff on the side and just do stuff. I think that most successes or steps forward I took in those first couple of years were because I was doing stuff that felt right to me and that I bailed on the path that I thought you were supposed to do. Yeah.
Hunter Reis:
Obviously, you have a sizable social media following. People come to your shows and read your book. Do you feel that as you started to get more fans, viewers, whatever you'd like to call them, that you were more pigeonholed into a certain category or had to produce certain kind of content?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah, that I feel lucky that I've already experienced that and then also feeling that change over time. Because when I started in LA, I mean, I know I was very body horror, gross stuff. It was a lot of that and I loved it. But after whatever, two or three years of most of my work being that, I felt pigeonholed in it and I also felt like creatively I wanted to do more and was worried that there would be like, "All right, go do the nasty thing again. We're not interested in whatever this is."
Hunter Reis:
Like JLo.
Jamie Loftus:
Exactly. Exactly. It's JLo starting a skincare line. We're both JLo's just trying to make it work. But yeah, I was getting frustrated with that being the limits of what I would be considered for, but it made sense. That was most of what I had done. So, it became, "Well, if this isn't what I want to be strictly associated with, what do I want to do?" That was when I started developing a one-person show that I took to Edinburgh four years ago that felt like half and half where there was thought behind it. There was a story. I had done research, and it was also body horror and gross and whatever. I loved combining those. Once that worked, it was like, "Okay, maybe what I have to say as a person will be enough," or "It's not going to be flat out rejected."
Working on The Bechdel Cast also was helpful in developing. You can't butt chug on a podcast, no one can see you. So, it was a cool opportunity to finesse, "Well, what are the issues that I care about? Can I talk about it in a way that gets through to people?" So I felt lucky that I had different areas to experiment while I figured out what I wanted to do. Then on the other side of it, yeah, I got to have my gross stage stuff and then also have the podcasts and have another area of myself.
Hunter Reis:
Is there something that you didn't learn at school that you wish that you did in your classes specifically?
Jamie Loftus:
I don't know. I think that I did learn it from certain instructors. I think I just wish I knew when I was in school that there's not one way to do things or I think that I learned that by watching people who I knew who had graduated. But I feel like at least when I was going there that it felt like there was one way I learned all this amazing stuff. I mean, I loved my writing classes. I loved learning just how to write and how to collaborate and how to take criticism and all this stuff. But I think I left school thinking that if I didn't do it in the way that had been presented to me several times over the years, that it was never going to work out.
That has not been true for me, especially because again, just the world is changing so quickly that the things that we were told almost 10 years ago about how to make it big in Hollywood are no longer applicable. It's not a thing anymore. I guess I wish I knew that the business that I wanted to get into was fluid and changed a lot in ways that were scary, but also in ways that can be really accommodating and experimental and cool. I feel like I learned that once I moved out, but I wish I'd known that while I was in school, because I think I just had a lot of fear about, "Oh, I don't really want to do that. So, have I just taken out a bajillion dollars in loans to realize that that is not what I want my life to look like?" But I don't know.
Hunter Reis:
Yeah, I had a similar moment in college where I was in the journalism department and 80%, 90% of the students that come out of there will go to a small market in a small town and start as a reporter or producer there. As a queer 21-year-old boy who had never left Massachusetts, that just didn't really feel like what I wanted to do with my next steps.
Jamie Loftus:
Sure.
Hunter Reis:
Yeah, that's how we started here. One other theme that actually keeps coming up a week after week is something that I learned when I was in school that was really hammered into me. It's that the job that you have five years from now doesn't exist yet. Do you feel that that is true in your own life, that things that you're working on now, you could have never done five years ago?
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that I've been in podcasting from a seven years, which is scary to think about, but five years ago, I don't think it was considered a real job. I remember five years ago being embarrassed to say that I was doing it. That couldn't be less true, where podcasting has been colonized by every celebrity with a Zoom microphone to throw down the hallway in the world. It's now considered far more legitimate than it was five years ago. Something I was embarrassed to say that I did, even though I really cared about it and I was proud of my work, but I felt ashamed for being proud of it, or it felt like unserious and like you're saying, not a real job is now very much considered a real job.
I mean, I find that really exciting, because I think that even in times where there's less resources, that's when people find new ways to do stuff. I think that the hot dog book, I couldn't have done that five years ago and I don't think that there would've been considered a market for it five years ago. I mean, the reason I got to write that book is because I was doing deep dive podcasts and those really weren't a thing five years ago. So, I am excited and I shudder to think of what five years from now could look like, but I feel excited about it. It feels unpredictable in a very slightly unsettling, but mostly exciting way.
Hunter Reis:
That was my next follow-up question. Do you think five years ago the world was ready for Raw Dog: A Naked History of Hot Dogs?
Jamie Loftus:
No, I think-
Hunter Reis:
Definitely not.
Jamie Loftus:
... that we really had to live through a tumultuous time culturally to be prepared for this seminal hot dog pot.
Hunter Reis:
Okay. So, now the big question, what is your definition of making it and how will you know when you get there?
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, I will let you know. I don't know. I think that something that I would consider is feeling at peace and happy and excited about the work that you're making, if it's by yourself or it's with other people, and also feeling in a good place with yourself. I think those two things existing together would be my definition of making it, because then you can be a happy person and you're not just someone who made something that people liked and you're still absolutely miserable. That is not making it to me. There's a lot of people that live in that place. Yeah, I think that it's finding a balance that would be the dream, would be ideal.
Hunter Reis:
So do you think that your definition of making it has changed since you graduated?
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah. Well, I mean, my definition of making it when I graduated is don't die, take your meds, keep your shit together and whatever. As you get older, you figure out who you are a little more. You figure out what on top of your work is important to you, which I don't think is something I really thought about and I wasn't ready to think about. But now it's all I think about because I love my work very much, but I don't want to live for it. I think finding that space is hard but good.
Hunter Reis:
It definitely took the pandemic for me to realize that as well. I think of back in 2018, 2019, I was working 10-hour days just for the sake of it.
Jamie Loftus:
Because you could.
Hunter Reis:
Yeah. Being forced to step away from that really made me be like, "No, there's much better things out there."
Jamie Loftus:
Right. It's so lucky that we were able to. I try to feel grateful of that because I worked myself almost to death during the pandemic and because it was like podcasting. You don't have to leave your house. You could work 20 hours a day and you could be absolutely miserable. I think it's like the cognitive dissonance of I produced stuff I was very proud about when I was doing it, but the way I was doing it, there was no maintaining it. It feeds my OCD brain to be seen as a hyperproductive person, but it's not something I necessarily want others to aspire to, including me, because working 20 hours a day, even if it's not something that means a lot to you, isn't going to fill you as a person. You have to have areas of your life that are just for you and just for people that you love.
Hunter Reis:
Wow. Yeah, 20 hours a day producing and editing podcast, that is exhausting.
Jamie Loftus:
That's on obsessive compulsive disorder. It is not good for you, and no one should do it.
Hunter Reis:
See, it is definitely a real job. That's more than a full-time job for sure. I feel like this is such a silly analogy, but it's like back in the day saying you were an artist, people would be like, "Ooh, you're an artist." It's fun to make fun of, but now that is podcast, you're like, "Ooh, you're a podcaster," but there's some real work that goes into it.
Jamie Loftus:
Yeah, I mean, it depends on the show where some shows that I've done required far more work than others. It's definitely a sliding scale, but it's a job. It's a real job whether people like it or not. It's a fun job for the most part.
Hunter Reis:
Well, thank you again, Jamie, for coming on today. This was such a great episode. I'm sure people are going to love to hear this.
Jamie Loftus:
Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.
Speaker 1:
Making It Big in 30 Minutes is brought to you by the Office of Alumni Engagement and was created in partnership with alum Terri Trespicio. Our executive producer is Rebecca Glucklich and Lilly Meehan-Egan from the class of 2023 is our producer and editor. Additional editing and mixing was done by current graduate student, Trinity Hodges. Stay connected with the alumni community by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and joining the Emerson Alumni Group on LinkedIn. You can also find upcoming events, benefits, and more by visiting emerson.edu/alumni.