We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jacobo Fe Gismera a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jacobo, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey?
Writing allows me to relive the most remarkable events in my vital journey. Words make me feel inside my chest what my mind might forget one day. That’s a relief. I have difficulty living in the present because I’m naturally inclined to daydream while being attached to my childhood roots. Yet, nostalgia drives me to have lofty hopes for the future. I learn rapidly, utilizing my experiences to develop strategies to reach my goals, and written words are a spiral stairway connecting my past and future. Putting things on paper calms my racing mind. From a young age, I can recall many little details from my memories and retain more information than I wish. That hurts sometimes. But it’s Titan Atlas’ levy and torture for a passionate and curious globetrotter like me. The longer I live, the heavier the weight of lovely keepsakes on my shoulders… Therefore, writing helps me safeguard my most precious ideas and feelings and extract valuable lessons. People don’t last forever either, so my writings are a tribute to some extraordinary lives and events. No matter if I met a person on a romantic trip holding hands on the beach or a dust-laden book in an ancient library. People I admire or adore, dead or living, remain everlasting in the words I once wrote, and I will always love everyone I used to love because my writings remind me why.
My passion for travel and history has shaped my writing style and the topics of my screenplays, which deal with multiculturalism and human ethics. Doing on-site research, going to these remote places, no matter how far they are, how different they are from what I’m used to, gathering experiences abroad and understanding the way people live their lives, the way they think and feel… that is, of course, the best way to recreate historical events and describe the locations where my scripts take place.
I enjoy reading and studying any subject. Above all, I’m a history buff. History is a moral compass for humankind, allowing us to comprehend and value social diversity, beliefs, and viewpoints—a mirror to measure progress and highlight areas for improvement. We can only grasp our present by looking back in time. Despite its relevance, history is rarely taught engagingly in schools or books. Movies can address this issue. I’m constantly looking for genuine and entertaining stories that fit into a movie concept while including dramatic aspects and plot twists. History can not only be amusing but hilarious, too! That’s why I think a great storyteller cannot simply be a bookworm who lives between volumes in an old library. An extraordinary writer cannot have an ordinary life.
Hence, exploration is a regular part of my life, and I intend to visit every nation before my time ends. After extensive planning, I leave my comfort zone every three months with an open-minded personality and a long smile. So far, I’ve visited 70 countries, understanding their people and landscapes well. There are many funny or interesting anecdotes I could tell. Somehow, they appear in my writings. Such as the day I ended up in my pajamas in the freezing Himalayas, diving with sharks in the Maldives and discovering the shipwreck Hemingway found in Cuba, riding (too fast) a Navajo horse in Monument Valley, watching the blue fire in an Indonesian volcano or the sunrise at the top of Mount Sinai like Moses, when I lost my appendix in Bangkok after suffering from appendicitis (I guess that part of me remains in Thailand), sleeping in a tent with a cute Dutch lady but surrounded by roaring lions and hyenas in the Serengeti, or the day I got mesmerized by the human eyes of Orangutans in Borneo’s jungle…
Not everyone can read or travel as frequently as I do due to many factors, such as work, family, money, or fear… Via my writing, I strive to relate these true stories and bizarre adventures so that my audience has a similar experience, discovering new cultures, regions, and history… all while joining me, the storyteller, on an epic journey entirely intended to make them have fun and learn. As a pirate captain, I take the wheel, but everybody is welcome to embark with me. Just pack a smile. Ready for a ride?
Jacobo, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Based in L.A., I’m a multi-award-winning writer and fashion model who attended UCLA for graduate studies in Screenwriting. At age 19, I became the youngest Spanish author in the historical genre, publishing a peplum novel, “Perfectus Imperator.” At the same age, I launched a successful modeling career that has resulted in hundreds of worldwide publications to this day. Before relocating to the US, I worked hard to collect some of the most prestigious national grants such as Faro, Fulbright, MMF, and ICEX while simultaneously completing studies in Business Administration, Law, and Filmmaking and also living and working in several countries: Spain, Italy, India, and Thailand. England and the Netherlands also have a special place in my heart and have both contributed to my personal growth and writing style – my “real-life education.” Always eager to explore the world to conduct research on-site and nourish my imagination, I have already visited over 70 countries, and I’m not planning to stop.
I have both Spanish and French citizenship and got an O-1 visa in the USA, granted to “aliens with extraordinary abilities in the arts.” My historical adventure dramedies have garnered 150+ international awards in competitions such as The Academy Nicholl Fellowship, WeScreenplay, SRFA-Cannes, SPARK, Final Draft – Big Break, Screencraft, Sundance Institute Development Track, and Launch Pad. Ranking in the Top 1 in Coverfly, I have also participated in the Banijay Cannes Incubator and NALIP Emerging Content Creators, been a finalist for Lena Waithe’s Hillman Lab and Roadmap x Husslup Competition, and been featured in magazines such as Forbes and Variety.
My writing work (“AMBERGRIS,” “HALSTED: BETWEEN PLEASURE & PAIN, “ACE,” etc.) is focused on period scripts and biopics, combining exhaustive historical research, witty creativity, and humor. They pursue the inclusion of ethics in an effort to do screenwriting with a conscience. Movies with both a commercial appeal and a social value. My feature screenplays are the result of an in-depth investigation of diverse areas like WWII Aviation, 19th-century Modern Surgery, Napoleonic Wars, Egyptology, Military Strategy in Ancient Rome, Pre-colonial African History, or the Casino Golden Age and Infomercial Rush on the American East Coast during the ’80s.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
When I was 19, I published Perfectus Imperator, a historical novel, and whenever I’m feeling down, I read a particular chapter with fresh eyes. It’s an incident in which the protagonist, Salonius, is wounded on the ground. Almost everything is lost for him. But he musters the will to rise again, like a phoenix. The reading is therapeutic since those statements are from a younger version of myself, reminding me why I came to this world and should keep fighting for my principles and dreams. Salonius is my alter ego—the model of a Greco-Roman hero. Yet, I like to think he’s the best of me, and I’m the best of him. That book might not be my most outstanding work, but it’s the cornerstone of a life dedicated to art—an explanation for the inexplicable: my life. Salonius is my child talking to his Creator and the Father’s voice speaking to his son. Indeed, he is the Son of the Sun (the title for a series I wrote based on my book)—a spark when my engine fails. A dreaming kid, full of hope and courage, pushing me to the horizon while aging. A look at the past that invites me to glimpse the future. My own words are all I need to remember why I was born.
My goal is to entertain people and inspire them to achieve their dreams, boosting their self-esteem while contributing to society through my discipline. One’s ego and a societal purpose may coexist and mutually benefit. When you love yourself, you can appropriately love others and accomplish mutually rewarding goals for yourself and others around you. At that crossroads, one can experience genuine fulfillment and delight since you feel valued, respected, and appreciated while knowing that what you’re doing is helping others feel the same way. That, in my opinion, is the pinnacle of one’s profession and existence, and that’s why I aspire to become a notorious author.
But I’m no preacher providing postmortem salvation or a guru hawking the key to wealth; I’m merely a funny troubadour, a joyful minstrel roaming this vast planet, telling stories and experiencing adventures on the way. Nothing makes me happier than watching someone smile or laugh after finishing telling one of my many bizarre stories. And, when traveling around the world, I have realized that I can cause the same emotion and reaction wherever I go, so I guess humans aren’t all that different. That is also how I discovered my life’s mission: to be a storyteller for a global audience.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The social responsibility it entails, as well as the freedom granted to achieve it. As a writer, I believe that by including messages with a supra-individual force, words translated into moving pictures may serve to make the world a better place. To extend moral circles, to examine human nature, I introduce ethics—screenwriting with a conscience—by fostering self-reflection and critical thinking and teaching world history. Combining creativity and research, I portray multiculturalism and biodiversity. Hope and resilience propel my characters through adversity until they attain goals with a positive global impact.
The same applies to me. My boyhood dream remains the same. I hope to win an Academy Award for Best Screenplay one day. Some people don’t understand the true meaning of my fanciful aspirations. I chose that ridiculous goal when I was ten, and it progressively became a symbolic purpose for the rest of my life. Despite learning many lessons along the path of my life, I never learned to give up on what makes me feel whole and alive: writing.
When death comes knocking and the circle finally closes, I’ll feel rewarded for pouring all my effort into my crazy boyhood dream. The same one I once announced, full of confidence and naiveness, staring in the mirror at home in Rivas with watery eyes, a rebellious grin, and a tender spirit. I reckon I haven’t changed that much since then…
If I get the coveted gold, I’ll pay one last visit to the friends I made along the way to thank them for their contributions to my existence and stories. I’ll ask them how far they are at that point in their lives from achieving their goals and whether I can help them. I honestly enjoy transforming people’s pain into willpower. Likewise, if I never get an Oscar because time goes faster than my striving, I’ll push the next baby dreamer to go even further than I did.
No hell or heaven may be waiting for my traveling and artistic soul at the end of the road. Still, being a good, honest, and fair man must be even more rewarding than becoming a great storyteller. Kalos Kagathos, they used to say in Ancient Greece.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.imdb.me/jacobofegismera
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacobofe_/
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/JacoboFeGismera
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobo-fe-gismera/
Image Credits
Tim Sayre (@timsayrephoto) Paul Carmelo Barranco (@paulcarmelobarranco) Alevtina Kalashnik (@alevtina.visual_arts) Indrek Arula (@indrek_arula)