Jacob Savage wrote the seminal piece on DEI. He is also a proud father. In our conversation, we discuss:
What he will teach his sons about fairness, hopes, and dreams
Nature vs nurture
What he wanted to be when he was a kid and the documentary he wanted to have made
The impact of his viral article on the DEI lost generation
Contrasts between the new elite and the old elite in the Ivy League
Older men destroying the career prospects of younger men to preserve their power
Restoring meritocracy in an age of mass migration and identarianism
The future of Hollywood and retaking arts and culture
Favorite kids’ shows
Why kids’ books are so bad now like Dragons Love Tacos
How much power gatekeepers still have relative to independents
How he got into ticket scalping
The masterpiece he wants to make
But those women didn’t take our jobs any more than the 50-year-old Hollywood lifers had. The lifers were still there. They’re still there. And I’m not angry at the women and people of color who made it instead of me—people have the right, in most cases the responsibility, to take the opportunities that are offered them—or even at the older white guys who ensured that I didn’t.
Mostly I’m annoyed at myself. Because instead of settling down, proposing to my then-girlfriend (now wife), and earning a steady income that might support a family, I spent a decade insisting the world treat me fairly, when the world was loudly telling me it had no intention of doing so. I could see what was happening—I was being told point-blank what was happening—and still I thought I’d be the exception, that if I wrote one more script, took one more meeting, I’d slip through. But very few people get to be the exception.
It’s strange and more than a little poisonous to see yourself buffeted by forces beyond your control. But there’s also a comfort in it. Because it’s less painful to scroll through other people’s IMDb pages late at night, figuring out what shortcut—race, gender, connections—they took to success, than to grapple with the fact that there are white men my age who’ve succeeded, and I am not one of them. I could have worked harder, I could have networked better, I could have been better. The truth is, I’m not some extraordinary talent who was passed over; I’m an ordinary talent—and in ordinary times that would have been enough.
There’s a wounded pride here—how could there not be? I have two sons. I used to imagine, long before they were born, that I would take them to film sets, that I’d bring them along to exotic locations. Instead their father spends most of his working day in his bedroom, scrolling through spreadsheets and ticket listings.
What do I say when my boys ask about my old hopes and dreams? What do I tell them when they ask about theirs?
