We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bullet Valmont a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bullet, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

A friend invited me to an event on a tall-ship where a group of people dressed as pirates and sailed about for three hours, watching for whales and drinking. It was fun but I saw a lot of potential to do greater things with it. I had been a film/television actor for several years by then and wanted to do something more creative than just appearing in other people’s projects. i decided to form a pirate-themed performance troupe, a group that looked authentic, could fight with swords, pistols, boarding pikes, and could speak in the jargon of long ago sea-faring men. Most of all, i wanted to avoid the cliches that today’s culture associated with pirates and instead focus on historically accurate elements that were unfamiliar to modern audiences. It was also important that the troupe have live musical accompaniment during the performances, something which could set the mood while spontaneously accentuating the action, comedy and dialogue. I knew that, if done right, such a show could succeed not just aboard a ship but in the mainstream of show business. The world, I felt, had been starving for just such a thing.

I realized I needed to know more about the subject of pirates in history and began several years of intense research. Every new discovery seemed to incite a hundred ideas for characters and props. i began writing scripts and this project became the primary focus of my life. The trouble, of course, was that I needed a crew to make it happen and almost nobody else believed it would work.

It took nearly a decade to get the first reasonably good crew of performers assembled and the shows to come together as I’d intended. A few more years for the money to to start rolling in.

Bullet, 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?

Beginning in the late 1980s I appeared in dozens of music videos, both high and low budget, for famous as well as unknown artists. I learned about how things worked on film sets and eventually got cast in my first role on television. It was almost an entire year before I got my second role but the momentum grew from there and over the next decade I did more television and then feature films in starring, supporting, and cameo roles. When I finally scored a small role in a hit movie I achieved financial security for a couple of years which allowed me freedom to try other things.

A friend and I founded the company Hell’s Elves which created and sold gothic and Halloween themed products such as coffin tables, coffin bookshelves, etc. and jewelry. I did the woodworking and she made lid ornaments molded from her original sculptures. We sold at night clubs and via online stores.

I created my first pirate-themed performance troupe in 1995 and commenced the long process of learning through experience how to write and direct shows, choreograph sword fights, make costumes, assemble talented people and get them to believe in a project then work together to achieve it. I also learned how to connect with the right people to secure bookings, how much money to ask for, and how to drop just the right amount of images and information online to hype each upcoming gig.

I wrote the advice column, Wench Whisperer, for Mutiny Magazine and sold bawdy Wench Whisperer greeting cards online. I also wrote interviews and features for Pirates Magazine. Other columns I wrote were; The Newgate Gentlemen’s Club (concerning crime and punishment in the 17th century), and (with Nikki Carey) The Art of Revenge, about building pirate props. My blog, Pirate Envy, is about the complications and solutions involved in pirate-themed performances.

My favorite project was the annual Sea of Darkness pirate cruise aboard a three-masted tall-ship fit with cannon and swivel guns. This event was by invitation only so I had some control over who the guests were. We performed a show on the main deck with shootings and sword fights, floggings and throat cuttings, going through about a gallon of blood each time. Pirate attire was mandatory so everyone in every picture or video looked the part. There were two wooden barrels of rum, live musicians, and a continuing story line that picked up where the previous cruise left off.

Writing and performing consistently kept my name visible to enough people that despite changing the name of my troupe every few years I was able to retain the same audience. They would come out to see “Bullet’s new crew” or “Bullet’s new thing” so my name, rather than the current project, sort of became the brand name that people recognized.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

During the first few years performing i was a perfectionist. I wrote the scripts with a vision of how the show would go if executed perfectly. i held to that perfect vision during performances and as things went wrong, which they inevitably did, it would destroy me. Each time a fight didn’t go well or some gag failed to get a laugh it would cause me an almost physical pain. My stomach was knotted with anxiety before every show and through every show. Afterward, no matter how well received we had been or how much applause we’d gotten, i would dwell only on those things that hadn’t worked. This state of mind was demoralizing to the performers who noticed that, even when the show had gone exceptionally well, i was disappointed. I was personally depriving everyone else of the joy of performing by never being satisfied. I struggled obsessively to achieve one perfect show. As though the validity of what we were doing could only be proven by getting it perfect, just once.

Then I had the good fortune to be listening to a rebroadcast of Jack Benny’s radio program from the 1930s. He always had a live audience in the studio when he did his show and on this occasion an actress blew her line, followed by another actor blowing his line, then the next actor missed his cue. Rather than be thwarted by this -as I would have been were it my show- Jack simply addressed the audience directly and said: “This show is going like we didn’t have any rehearsal at all.” The audience laughed. They laughed hard. Then they applauded and then the show continued as scripted. Jack Benny had recovered perfectly from a situation that would have crushed me.

I reconsidered my whole approach to performing. I wrote down the words: ‘There’s no fourth wall in comedy.’ Then changed that to: ‘There’s no fourth wall in piracy.’ At the very next show I began by instructing the audience to not expect a polished presentation because, after all: “We are not actors pretending to be pirates. We are pirates pretending to be actors. . .”

From then on I perceived our stage-board mistakes and mishaps as opportunities to bond with our audience. Occasionally I will ask them: “That fight looked weak, didn’t it?” If the crowd answers “Yes,” I’ll ask, “Do you think they can do better? Do you want to see that again?” The fight always goes better the second time. The pressure is off the performers, and off me. The burden of perfection has been lifted and the joy of performing is realized. So, definitely, perfectionism is the best thing I’ve unlearned.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I had co-founded ImaginePirates.com with two partners, one of whom, Jim, was a long time friend. The other, Joe, was a singer in a rock band who I didn’t know at all but Jim recommended him. Just as we were starting out Jim had to move out of state. So I was left here in Los Angeles with a complete stranger just as we were getting a new act together. I considered abandoning the project entirely but decided to wait a few months and see what happened. Joe was new to pirate performance but he believed in what we were doing. He learned sword work quickly and had a knack for finding new talent. He brought in several people to audition and we settled on three of them. Our first couple shows went badly but we identified the problems, made the changes, and within two years had become the top pirate-themed act on the west coast.

Maintaining business relationships was never my strong point so Joe became invaluable by keeping in touch with every client and club promoter. He really made friends with people. Old clients begat new clients. We did festivals, corporate parties, public and private events, even modeling gigs and eventually four of us were cast in a pirate movie. In 2020 we performed a pirate version of Hamlet called Pirates Murder Shakespeare. Despite only a few hours of rehearsal, the show went over well. We planned to do a Pirates Murder series where we’d badly perform and desecrate the classics of theatre but that was Joe’s final show. He died unexpectedly just a few months later.

For a while I believed things were over for Imagine Pirates but then, after a year of inactivity, an old client booked us a gig at an Indian casino. Each of the crew wore a piece of Joe’s costume -a button or buckle- on our costumes so we could take him onstage with us. Since then we’ve done a few shows and regained some momentum but the wound is still open for us and it’s not the same. I sense a sea-change coming though so we’ll go forward. I know Joe would have wanted that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bulletv.blogspot.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bulletvalmont/
• Twitter: https://pirateenvyhollywood.blogspot.com/p/logbook.html
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfVEVMG9MA8koRWn8mTldCw
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0885282/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Image Credits
Grace Morgan, Wendy Ericson, Debra Casey, Phil Johnson, Ed Gage, Gene Blalock