Jamie DeWolf

Jamie DeWolf (born October 28, 1977) is an American filmmaker, writer, slam poet, spoken word artist, and showman from Oakland, California.

DeWolf is best known for his work as a filmmaker for Youth Speaks Bigger Picture Project, 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. DeWolf has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry, 60 Minutes, UPN, Inside Edition, and CBS. DeWolf directed, wrote and starred in the feature film Smoked. The Movie (2012). He is also the great-grandson of author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and an outspoken critic of the Church of Scientology. In 2000 he hosted the first ever anti-Scientology summit in Clearwater, Florida.

Early life

DeWolf was born in Eureka, California, and as a teen raised baptist in the towns of Vallejo and Benicia, California. He was a “hardcore Christian kid” who hoped to become a Baptist minister; he would regularly hand out pamphlets on street corners. At the age of six, he was handed a book titled The Kingdom of the Cults by his pastor. The book referred to contemporary religious movements, and one stuck out: Scientology, founded by DeWolf's own great grandfather, L. Ron Hubbard. Since that point, DeWolf was fascinated with his ancestor's legacy, reading his books, and citing Hubbard's legacy as his inspiration to become an artist “I remember idolising L Ron as a kid, and I remember asking my mom all the time why couldn’t I meet him,” admits DeWolf. “I didn’t know at that point that he had created a religion, I just knew when I went into a bookstore I could find books by him – he was evidence to me that you could be a writer simply by your will alone. Outside of this man running this crazy church and brainwashing millions of people, at the same time he was just another family member,”