With The Suicide Kings: Jamie DeWolf (born October 28, 1977) is an American slam poet, film director, writer, spoken word artist, and circus ringmaster from Oakland, California.
[1] DeWolf is best known for his early career as a slam poetry champion, his award-winning films for Youth Speaks Bigger Picture Project, live tours with the performance trio The Suicide Kings, hosting the monthly Tourettes Without Regrets at the Oakland Metro OperaHouse, and for his work as a producer and performer on NPR's Snap Judgment.
He helped with that family business for a while, but later told Penthouse that "99% of anything my father ever wrote or said about himself is untrue," and compared Scientology's inner sanctum, the "Sea Org," with the Hitler Youth.
He has since become a National Poetry Slam Champion, the Berkeley Grand Slam Champion, a YouthSpeaks Mentor, a featured performer on HBO's Def Poetry Jam hosted by Mos Def, appearing in Season Three with his poem "Grim Fairy Tale", and taping for Season Five with Dave Chappelle and Lauryn Hill.
"[8] Since his Slam beginnings, DeWolf has performed and led writing workshops at over 90 universities, high schools and juvenile detention centers across the globe, working with such organizations as Opera Piccola, Lunchbox International, and Youth Speaks.
He coached the Youth Speaks team twice, one of which was featured on Brave New Voices on HBO hosted by Common and Rosario Dawson.
He opened for B. Dolan on the first Church of Love and Ruin tour, for Shane Koyczan, and was featured in 2014 on All Def Poetry with his poem "Rebels Without Applause."
Commonly known as 'the fight club of underground art,' the variety show acts as a playground for some of the most eccentric and fearless people in the Bay Area.
It's like being a reverse cult leader as I'm being naked about wanting to brain wash you for your own entertainment and for a hell of a lot cheaper.
"[20] "One of their largest shows of the year is the annual 'F*ck Valentines Day Spectacular' which the irreverent DeWolf is at his most festive, presiding over sex toy giveaways, interpretive dances based on worst sex experiences, competitions to find which audience member survived the most odious ex-boyfriend or -girlfriend (the three winners get to have a pig's heart mailed to the ex's house), a game of 'What's Down My Pants?,' and prank calls to former lovers.
Most months, "full throttle" includes some measure of burlesque, bondage, dirty haiku tournaments, lap dances, rap battles, sexual pantomiming and things being set on fire, interspersed with spoken word and stand-up comedy.
On December 03, 2020, DeWolf announced this would be the final Tourettes Without Regrets and the monthly show would continue under the name Ruckus and Rumpus Revival.
[30] Beyond his work with spoken word poetry, DeWolf has established himself as a showman and performer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
DeWolf worked as a producer for Oakland-based NPR's Snap Judgement, where he produced a number of stories, and performed several of his own, including The God and the Man,[31] which drew international attention, and The Girl in the Hallway, chronicling the tragedy of Xiana Fairchild, who at age 7 in 1998 was snatched off the street and killed while she lived in the same apartment building as DeWolf.
The Movie, a feature film crime caper set in Oakland that "tells the story of three low-lifes, played by the Suicide Kings, who rob a cannabis club after their house is burned down—not realizing that the club is owned by local crime lord Tyrone Shanks (local slam poet Abdul Kenyatta).
"[34] "Drawn like most of the cast from the spoken word community, Kenyatta's magnetism is so strong that he turns the most cold-blooded character in the film into a kind of hero—one who sees his own criminal pursuits through the prism of class warfare.
Shanks calls himself a "true motherfuckin' revolutionary," and frequently talks about competing with the CIA for business and targeting rich white folk for addiction.
"[36] "DeWolf staged wild-west showdowns in broad daylight ... where cinematic hit squads ran around shooting at one another with live blanks.
It's also piss-your-pants hilarious, maddeningly nihilistic, oddly sentimental, weirdly moral, extremely silly, and insanely energetic.
"[35] "full of orgiastic naked clowns, wanton black revolutionary street executions, crappy ninjas, asshole kids, and seemingly countless hippies being tortured to death."
[5] DeWolf has collaborated with Youth Speaks, a San Francisco-based organization focused on teen spoken-word artists and has directed several films for their "The Bigger Picture Project"—a joint effort with the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations to raise awareness of type 2 diabetes.
[39] The Thin Line and another Youth Speaks collaboration, The Dealer were accepted into the 2013 Food and Farm Film Festival at the Roxie Theater.
In 2015 DeWolf was commissioned to direct a feature-length documentary entitled "Biker with a Moral Compass: Dr. Dick Fine and the Evolving Culture of SFGH", a documentary portraying and paying tribute to the life, times and contributions of UCSF and SFGH physician Dick Fine MD, Founder and Former Director of the General Medicine Clinic.
"The Off/Page Project combines the analytical lens of The Center for Investigative Reporting with the groundbreaking storytelling of the literary nonprofit Youth Speaks.
Living at the intersection of youth voice and civic engagement, the Off/Page Project provides a multimedia platform for young people to investigate the issues and stories that would otherwise be silenced.
"[42] "In the inaugural video Whispers from the Fields," 19-year-old Monica Mendoza takes on the challenging issue of sexual violence among migrant women farmworkers.
"[44] "This is Home" was "produced as a part of Subsidized Squalor, a collaborative investigation by CIR, KQED and the San Francisco Chronicle that exposed the failures of the Richmond Housing Authority in California and how it has left residents living in deplorable conditions.
[50] and "Best Writing" at Rio's Grind Film Fest in a competition judged by The Soska Sisters, the directors of "American Mary.
DeWolf also directed the controversial "Sweet Sh*t of Christ" music video with Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits that covers centuries of Christian history in a matter of minutes.
"[1] In a January 25, 2013, interview with Cenk Uygur on Current TV, DeWolf said that Scientology: ... works through a lot of hodgepodge of ideas thrown together with this extremely brutal sort of security sense and this kind of CIA-like structure that becomes really intoxicating to people.