About Jimmy
James Gauntt-Metamorphosis Into a Writer, By Evan Nicholas
November 2, 2004
[Note: Evan Nicholas and James “Jimmy” Gauntt met as Freshmen at USC in the Fall of 2002. They both pledged the SAE fraternity. Evan was from a suburb of Dallas, Texas, and Jimmy grew up in Solana Beach, CA. Shortly after they met, they discovered they were born on the same day: November 8, 2008. They had entered a bar near campus using fake ID’s. Jimmy gained entry first. Evan trailed, and as he handed his ID to the bouncer, he exclaimed, “Wow, that’s cool! You two dudes have the same birthday!” At the bar they surreptitiously pulled out their real driver’s licenses and, sure enough.
Jimmy and Evan soon discovered they had many other things in common including a love of literature, film, music, writing and creating. They became fast, deep friends.
Evan wrote this about his pal six days before their 21st birthday for a film class. Three months later, Evan produced and directed Jimmy’s first play at USC, “The Leather-Clad Chaperone.”]
James Gauntt might very well be just a 20-year-old student right now, but he has the capacity, ambition, and desire to become a very important writer in the world today. This San Diego native grew up without ambitions of becoming a writer, but seems to have in the past several years, completely morphed into something hardly recognizable to his high school football coaches, and it is a breath of fresh air to the world.
When I met him, two years ago, he was a bright young college freshman, attending the University of Southern California on a full academic scholarship. The first time I asked him what he wanted to be, because I was a freshman also and you still ask those things at 18, he told me that he thought he “might work for the State Department.” I guess it is the only think he could think of to do with a Spanish major. Jimmy is a funny Spanish major, though, because he placed out of almost all of the language requirements and finished the other classes in about a year and a half of college. He has been filling the classes since with nothing besides exactly what he wants to take. According to him, “It’s the only way to go to college. How else do you really get the full effect?”
So James was in the middle of navigating through the dense thickets of world literature, which he as enjoying with all his heart, when he decided that he might take a playwriting class. “It was a natural step for me to take. I was feeling a bit creative so I dwelled on it to so see what would come of it. At that time, I think I seriously thought that important works of literature were just spit out like that.”
It was in this class that I, as a friend, saw him really change. He started the semester a college student and finished it a writer, or at least an aspiring one. Either way, he had made his mind up and was ready to get the show on the road.
‘My whole life I have put every bit of myself into what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do has always changed, but you can never have any regrets about giving whatever it is you are doing your all.”
Jimmy, true to his word, started writing and did not stop for anything those first few months. I hardly saw him. “Once I made my mind up to do it I just had fun with it. It’s a great feeling when you let a creative experience consume your life like that for a little while. Too long is unhealthy, but for a while, there is nothing better for starting writers.”
Tow plays later, one decent one and one pretty impressive one, Jimmy was ready to branch out a little bit. Film, which he acknowledged as “undeniably the most powerful thing in the world,” would give Jimmy the chance to to “insert a little more imagination into his work. I would never stop writing plays, plays are the real meat of life and why I fell in love with words, but I don’t see how anyone these days wouldn’t be attracted to the potential power of film.”
So James started his exploration of the screenplay. He read books, went to hear other writers speak at festivals and so forth, and generally jumped into the writing full force. “I am not really a fan of my first screenplay. I think that I was a little too concerned with listening to Syd Field to really put my heart into it. My second, which I am just finishing, is going to be a knockout.
So that pretty much brings us up to date; to Jimmy and me sitting here in Quizno’s, talking about motivation and ambition. “What do you want your art to be, James?” I ask. He tells me about this great imagery in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man where Joyce is talking about how all art should be able to stand alone complete and finite. “A brilliant sculptor, in a room full of people admiring his work, should just be hanging back, picking at his fingernails or something.”
We are talking about his screenplay because I am curious how he sees the medium both in the context of modern literature, and also within his own work. In my opinion, James is a writer born after his time. After having read his plays and one of his screenplays, I am convinced of his talent; however, I personally don’t think he was born for screenwriting. He is always talking about how nobody reads anymore, which makes me think he is forcing himself into movies. Movies have all the power, and more, that books once had. In another time, James Gauntt would have been a novelist, and he still may be, but in this time, at least at his young age, he will not focus on depth as much as he will on proliferation. In his own words, “when you are writing for the stage you’re free to explore characters because you don’t have all the possibilities of film. When you are writing for film you have all the focus and power the world can muster right at your fingertips.”
James is at the beginning of what will surely be a long, and hopefully, successful career. As a friend I am excited and anxious to see what he will create. He has the talent and the drive to make a very special place for himself in the world, and maybe in history. But then again, as Jimmy reflects, “another couple of years like these last two, and who the hell knows where I’ll be.”
Introduction to Ginger Poet Adonis
Jimmy Gauntt spent his senior year of college at the Queen Mary School in London studying English literature and acting. There, he met Dav Yendler who was spending his third year abroad from the University of California, San Diego. They became good friends and took several classes together. In the Spring of 2006, Jimmy’s parents, Hilary and Casey, sister Brittany and brand-new fiancé, Ryan, travelled to London to visit Jimmy and attend the opening of the play, The Relapse, performed by the Queen Mary theatre group in which Jimmy had the starring role of Lord Loveless. They met Dav on that trip, and a few times after he and Jimmy returned to California.
In 2012, Dav reached out to Casey and Hilary quite out of the blue—they had not heard from him since Jimmy’s passing in 2008. He sent them an audio link to a story he had written about his friendship with Jimmy and recently performed at the 2nd Story in Chicago www.2ndStory.com, together with several photos Dav had taken on their excursion to the English coastline in Devon. He titled his story The Six Foot Tall Ginger Poet Adonis.
It’s difficult to describe how Jimmy’s family was so completely and deeply overwhelmed by this moving tribute to Jimmy: Listening to stories of Jimmy they had never heard and looking at photos of Jimmy they had never seen. It was as though Jimmy was paying them another visit. It was hard and wonderful at the same time—lots of smiles and tears.
Casey asked talented videographer Elizabeth Herrgott of Feast Studios to create a film blending Dav’s story with his amazing photos.
Dav Yendler wrote something beautiful and captured the essence of Jimmy. so well.
