We all pick up a lot of labels over the course of a lifetime – the jobs we have, the ways we show up in the world, the communities to which we belong. Sometimes the labels stick; sometimes we outgrow them. And the beauty and tragedy of adulthood is that it’s really up to each of us to decide what works for us and what doesn’t when it comes to who we want to be in the world.
In this lovely, vulnerable conversation with filmmaker Jacob Combs, we explore the ways that identity evolves over time, and how our experiences accumulate to form the rich tapestry of who each of us gets to become.
Jacob and I unpack our personal experiences with creativity, our journeys of queer identity, and what it means to belong to both ourselves and to our chosen communities. I also talk about having queer imposter syndrome… so yeah, it gets tender.
Plus! Jacob has a film about queerness and belonging and chosen family that will premiere in Los Angeles next month, which is super exciting.
The original title for this episode was “The Complex and Cumulative Process of Identity – On Creativity, Queerness, and Belonging” – which is a pretty accurate title, but it also made if feel more like a grad school paper than the juicy, engaging, and tender conversation you’re about to hear. So, I opted to just feature the big themes, and I hope you enjoy listening to it even a fraction as much as I enjoyed putting it together.
Or anywhere else you listen to podcasts!
Connect with Jacob
Follow Jacob on Instagram – @jacobdcombs
Follow the film on Instagram – @orange_seder_film
See The Orange at the Seder in LA! Premiering at the LA Shorts International Film Festival Saturday, July 20, 2024 at 10:30pm (yes, it’s late, but so worth it!).
Resources, References, and Links:
Multihyphenate. Apparently this is a movie industry term for someone with experience and expertise in many different roles. It was a new-to-me term, and I love it. Let’s all embrace our multihyphenate-ness in all arenas! “Why Being a Multihyphenate Will Boost Your Hiring Potential”
Multi-passionate. Whether this term has a positive or negative connotation apparently depends on which corner of the internet you ask. I’m all for the corners that see it as an asset and an opportunity. I also think it may partly be a code word for driven humans who also happen to have ADHD, but that’s just my uninformed opinion. “Being Multi-Passionate: A Jack-Of-All-Trades and Master of None Or Is it?”
Episode with Jayme Roderick. “Emotional Archeology and the Joy of (Queer) Authenticity.” Also talking about queer identity and belonging and loving all the parts of ourselves. It’s a gorgeous episode, and I am decidedly biased, but I think you should listen!
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Which has, as it turns out, been turned into a movie (if you don’t have the bandwidth for reading the book).
Passover. The weeklong Jewish holiday commemorating the Jewish people’s departure from ancient Egypt. The name stems from the way that God “passed over” the houses of Jewish people during the 10th plague.
Seder. A ritual meal held during the Jewish Passover holiday in which the story of the Exodus is retold. This is the event at the center of Jacob’s film.
Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. The venue for the Seder that Jacob attended in Israel that planted the seed of the film’s story.
Intersectionality. Basically, this is a term for the idea that people have a wide range of identities that overlap and intersect with one another. It’s super important for any discussions of race, gender, sexuality, and oppression. “Kimberlé Crenshaw on What Intersectionality Means Today.”
Cracks where the lights get through. This is a reference to gorgeous lyrics from the Leonard Cohen song, “Anthem” – “There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”
Transcript
Note: caveat here that this was generated by AI and so there are some inaccuracies, but it will definitely give you the gist!
Cate Blouke: Hi, friends. I am here today with Jacob Combs, filmmaker extraordinaire.
Jacob is a director, writer, producer, composer. He’s worked in animation, tv, musical theater, journalism, and the queer rights space. He’s a lovely human and I’m really excited to talk to him today. And I’m talking about him in the third person…
Hi, Jacob.
Jacob Combs: Hello.
Cate Blouke: How are you today?
Jacob Combs: I’m doing great. I’m so excited to be chatting with you – again.
Cate Blouke: Right, yeah. So this is actually our second go round. We’re re-recording the intro because since we recorded, Jacob got some super exciting news that he wanted to share.
Jacob Combs: Yes, I did. So my latest film, The Orange at the Seder, which we’ll talk about a little more, just got into its very first film festival, will be premiering in Los Angeles at the LA Shorts International Film Festival at the end of July.
Cate Blouke: Woohoo. Fuck yeah. So exciting. Ooh, I just got goosebumps. It’s gonna be amazing.
Jacob Combs: Can’t wait to share it with the world.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, it’s a really beautiful little film. I’ve had the privilege to see it. You’ll hear us talking about it, obviously, in the full episode that we recorded, but it’s really cool that it’s getting released into the world.
And in the episode that you’re about to listen to, that you’re currently listening to, uh, we’re gonna talk about creativity, we’re gonna talk about queerness, we’re gonna talk about belonging. It’s super juicy and yummy, but we wanted to set things up a little bit better. ‘Cause afterwards we kind of realized that we are talking about our own experiences with sexual identity and just wanted to be really mindful of how that comes across.
Jacob Combs: Yeah, I mean, I think, as you say, like, we had a very wide ranging conversation. We were really open with each other, which was super fun because we’ve been sort of getting to know each other. And we’re definitely speaking from our own hearts, speaking from our own personal experiences.
We know that the range of human experience is vast. The range of gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation. We just really wanted to kind of share what our lived experience has been and celebrate how diverse and expansive other people’s experiences can be as well.
Cate Blouke: That was beautiful. So articulate. It’s like you have worked in the queer rights space.
Jacob Combs: Looks like I have, yeah, chatted about a few of these things. And unfortunately, we’re in a little bit of a time warp now where, you know, some things are happening that feel a little bit like deja vu in that space.
So I think it’s important as ever to really highlight how expansive the queer community is, but also make sure that we’re not creating spaces where we exclude each other, which is what the film is about, actually. So I think it’s just more important than ever now. It’s an evergreen topic to think about, you know, queer communities, creative communities, and how we can be as welcoming of difference and diverse experience as possible.
Cate Blouke: Absolutely. And something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the ways in which, well – especially like in this episode, where we talk about how I’ve been coming to terms with my own bisexuality and choosing that as a label for myself – but that the labels that we choose for ourselves and sometimes, like, the ones that we get to pick, sometimes the ones we don’t get to pick, but they get put on us, but that how that impacts our experience in different spaces and our sense of belonging and sort of how we show up in the world and how powerful that can be, and challenging at times.
Jacob Combs: Absolutely. I think the more that we have these opportunities to express, the deeper, more complex, more rich, even at times contradictory sides of ourselves, the better.
And I think it’s why I love the way that you introduced me. He’s a writer, he’s a producer, he’s a director, he’s a composer. These are all elements of myself, not necessarily ones that I’m always putting into practice, but they all influence who I am and the work that I do.
And I guess I’d ask you right now, in this moment, if you had to describe yourself as a rich, multihyphenate, who would you say you are? As a cumulative human being.
Cate Blouke: Ooh. As a cumulative human being. As a multi. A multihyphenate. I like that term. I’ve been hearing multi-passionate a lot lately, and it makes me happy. So, okay, so I. Who am I? I am a writer, a podcaster, and a coach. I’m a sober person. I’m queer, I am cisgender, I’m white, I’m tattooed, I’m a lot of things. I’m probably many more things than that, but it’s already a long list, right?
Jacob Combs: Absolutely.
Cate Blouke: Well, and I’m an audio producer! I fucking edit this shit myself! So let me give myself a little gold star there. Right?
And part of the conversation y’all are about to hear is that, you know, we wear a lot of hats. And that as humans, we’re all kind of always evolving and that the experiences that we have build on each other. It’s not like we, you know, wear a hat and then donate it to Goodwill and it’s gone from our lives. Right. Like, we still have it. It might just get dusty, you know?
Jacob Combs: Absolutely. And I think as people who are trying to find ways that we fit into a larger society, into a larger community, we often sometimes think maybe I should just share a narrower slice of myself. Maybe that’ll make it easier for people to understand, easier for people to know who I am. Easier for people to know, maybe, oh, am I one of them? Am I not one of them? Whatever that means.
And I think there’s this sort of ongoing process that we do that you really spoke to in that. Who am I? As a multi-passionate, where it’s like, no, I think I want to share all of myself with more people. And it might be a little messier and it might be a little confusing, but I think in the end, it’s going to create opportunities for dialogue like this one that really lead to a richer, deeper understanding of who I am and who anyone is, who I come to get to know.
Cate Blouke: My heart is just kind of bursting right now in joy at this conversation. I just needed to share that moment.
Also, I remembered that ADHD should definitely go in my label of who I am. And it’s been really cool to embrace that as an awesome part of myself instead of seeing it as a hindrance.
Yeah, but instead of, like, taking us on a long and lovely tangent about that, I want to set us up for the conversation that we already recorded because it’s so good!
So we got a sense of where you are now. How did we get here?
Jacob Combs: Yeah, we got here through a lot of different experiences that I think layered on top of each other to make me who I am now. You know, I think, like so many creative people, it started when I was very young.
I was a big reader. You know, I was always lost in a book. And as I got a little older in middle school and high school, I started to really fall in love with theater. And I just loved being part of a cast. I loved seeing people create something out of whole cloth just from their ingenuity and hard work.
And that led me into college, where I officially was an English major. I was unofficially a sort of music double major. But I spent all my time in the theater, and I sort of was encouraged in some ways to try on a bunch of different hats because I had initially sort of been an actor in the theater space, as you might note, I didn’t put actor in my introduction because I truly am not. And I was kind of not getting cast in things as an actor. And I thought, well, what other ways can I be a part of this community? And I started trying on those different hats like you’re talking about. I started music directing. I started composing music and lyrics. I started directing. I started producing. And it really kind of opened up to myself. All these different things I could do that I loved. And ultimately, it led me to leave college and move to New York with the initial dream of being a musical theater composer lyricist.
Cate Blouke: Ooh, I love that. I also just wanted to pause, and I’m having this little moment of thinking about – I bounced between majors in college and didn’t know what I was trying to do, and I’ve always looked at that as not great.
Jacob Combs: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: But I think now that I’m older and wiser and listening to you, I can just. Just sit there and be like, oh, look at all those neat little pebbles I put in my basket. Right?
I know you listened to the episode with Jayme in which I talk about how I wanted to be Indiana Jones. We share that. We both took archeology classes.
Jacob Combs: Exactly right.
Cate Blouke: And what a neat little pebble to just have in my bucket of pebbles. I don’t know why life is a bucket of pebbles today, but it is.
Jacob Combs: Well, because I think it’s something that you carry, and it might sort of seem like it’s a weight ways. It just is like another part of yourself. It’s worth carrying that weight a bit. And I think there’s something beautiful about being open to experiences and not necessarily knowing exactly where they’re going or what they’re contributing to and then being able to come back to them later in life and be like, oh, that’s why that pebble is still in this basket. And that’s kind of something that we ended up talking about a bit.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. Except we just. You just framed it so beautifully. Great. I’m so happy about this. And so I think, without further ado, we will conclude the re-recorded intro, and I hope everyone enjoys the magic that’s about to happen.
[transition music]
Jacob Combs: So I went out in the world thinking, I’m going to be a musical theater composer lyricist. I moved to New York, bright eyed, bushy tailed the whole thing. Had quite an experience there. And I think I had a real impatience about how things were going to turn out and how quickly some kind of a creative life, career, whatever that looked like, was going to manifest.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: And I was also not making any money, which I think is important to talk about. I think in the creative arts, we really often kind of hide the money piece of it behind things. But I, like, I need to do something to be able to live in this insanely expensive city.
Cate Blouke: I am in some ways kind of delighted that it took me until my late thirties to really try to lean into being creative, because I feel like I’ve had the sort of adult jadedness of like, oh, no, there’s probably no money here. This is not going to be an instant fix. Right. It’s going to be a sort of slow and different process. But it sounds to me like you did not get disillusioned and jaded in your twenties when it was not instantly lucrative.
Jacob Combs: No, I mean, I’d like to say that that’s true. I don’t know if that’s true. I guess I decided to knock on a different door, and I think I did end up getting a little disillusioned about my own creativity. And I think the way that I did was not kind of giving myself the space and the grace to know how long it would take me to build that creativity. And I also think you get a lot of feedback from people.
It’s such a kind of cliche of write what you know and you’re like, cool. I’m 22, you know, like, I had lived a very, just, like, pretty nice life. I have my stuff, right? But I lived a pretty nice life till then. I didn’t have a ton to write about yet to be creative about.
Cate Blouke: So what were you creative about in your early twenties? What did you know?
Jacob Combs: Well, I had this memory of this kind of short musical that I wrote for this little festival at my college. And all the other ones in it were really fun, but they were like, they were kind of out there. They were wacky, they were very funny. And I wrote this piece. It was like a sung through musical about a mother and her daughter and the husband. Father has just walked out on the family, and they’re trying to pick up the pieces of it. That was me kind of digging into what it feels like to be in a family, in a relationship.
I think that’s, again, when I talk about now coming to realize what my creativity looks like, what is interesting to me to talk about that is the space, the space of sort of interpersonal connection and a lot about belonging, a lot about family, a lot about tradition. That’s something that does kind of resonate through a lot of things that I’ve made. But I didn’t know then just thinking, like, I’m sort of writing about a family falling apart. Right.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: I just was gone to it because I probably was sitting at a piano and started kind of tinkering away.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: So when I knocked on that different door, I knocked on what I would call kind of like the bigger sort of corporate creative world. And I got to work at an animation studio on the east coast for several years, which I kind of look at as my crash course film school, since I never studied this thing that I do now.
And then I came back to California, where I’m from, and I started really tapping into my own creativity again. Similarly, though, I think I had a moment where I was like, oh, this is going to take so long. I want to get back in the mix. I found my way to another, larger, corporate, creative, great entity where I worked for several years. And a couple of years ago, I really made the intentional choice to come back to my own creative work.
And it’s all come back to, you’re talking about the wearing of many hats. And I think for me, for me, my career, adult life, I don’t entirely know how to differentiate them sometimes is what felt like a challenge between two halves and myself, to be really honest. And on one side was the creative, and on one side was the producer, is what I call it. There was the part of me that just loved the nuts and bolts, the logistics, the putting together, and the part of me that kind of wanted to be just unfettered, creative, imaginative. And it took me a long time. I mean, I still think I’m actively in the work of realizing I can marry those two things, I can harness those two things. It felt like I could only do one at a time.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Right. And especially if part of your creative inroad was going and working in sort of these bigger entities.
Jacob Combs: Yes.
Cate Blouke: I think a big part of the creative process for me and journey and things I’ve witnessed and things I’ve talked to people about is this idea of, I don’t know. In adulthood, so many of us lose the capacity to play. That adult responsibilities crash in and we forget the joy and the exuberance that is found in play and creativity is play. And for me, that is where joy lives. And, yeah, it’s really fulfilling and beautiful and awesome when we can bring those, like, I can play and be an adult. Like, both of these things can be true.
Jacob Combs: And I think one way that I’ve learned that can be true is play can be, you know, play can be very independent, and play can also be communal. And, you know, obviously, I think of the word play. It is obviously itself, you know, this word for something that I love, that we go and sit in a dark room together and watch a play. I always think it’s really interesting that that is the word in our language for that experience.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: And when I’m talking about mirroring those two sides of myself, it has become helpful for me to realize I can be in that space of imaginative, kind of independent play. But the producer side of me is what helps me bring that into the world and bring it to other people, which as that extrovert I am that I’m talking about actually is just as important to me, fills me up in such a different way. And I, you know, I think what’s so cool and beautiful about creativity is there are so many different ways to do it and so many different things it can mean to the creator, to the artist, you know? And I think for some folks, it is just, it’s why, actually, to go back to what I kind of first said, where my child self would have probably said, I’d be an author, right? I’ll be a. Be a writer. But I recognize now maybe someday. I love the idea of someday doing something like that, but I love to make things with other people. My creativity, my writing started from a place of putting things together and putting them together with others and then sharing them with others. And that’s been what I’ve been trying to kind of, like, move closer and closer to, and to bring these two sides of myself together to really work in tandem.
Cate Blouke: So what was that sort of transition process like for you, of sort of being in these sort of larger corporate environments and then being like, you know, I really want to reconnect with what’s mine?
Jacob Combs: Yeah. For me, it started with just feeling that feeling of what you’re talking about. And I think I kind of now, as an adult, can self reflect and realize that I can have a tendency to be a bit black or white and just kind of throw myself in 100% into something. So I think it was a little bit of, I would do one of them for a while and then really crave the other and then I would go do the other, and then I would find myself craving the other.
And that’s kind of why I think for me, it’s more recently and especially on my latest project, realizing that I can bring those all together and that eventually the Venn diagram, I think, is going to move closer and closer together, but that it’s also okay to sometimes be like, hey, I’m just craving x, so I’m going to do x for a bit. And then if you’re craving Y, do Y for a bit. That was not something I was okay with for a long time.
Cate Blouke: Right. I can relate to that for sure. And especially, I think when we’re thinking about, like, career and employment, it doesn’t feel possible. Right, right. There’s this attachment to, oh, if I leave this job, then I’m not going to be able to get another job. Right. And I know that I’ve found a lot of joy and liberation in recognizing that actually all these different jobs that I’ve had give me sort of broader, different skill sets.
And I’m a big fan of moving through the world, kind of trusting the universe. I just find a lot more comfort and Joy in life, in trusting that. What if things do work out? What if I pursue the thing that makes me happy and I’m in a precipitous moment around that right now of really transitioning out of a sort of job? I was doing marketing for a while because it was paying the bills and it was fine. And now I’m like, I’m not doing that anymore. I’m a full time creative and coach, and we’ll see what happens. But I really believe that when we’re moving through the world, doing the things that light us up, that is attractive.
Jacob Combs: To people and to ourselves.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: You know? Yeah. I think the “what if?” I heard in what you were saying is, what if it’s all cumulative, right?
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: And it is. That, I think, is the beauty of being human is that all these experiences layer on each other and then they make everything in your life richer. I think it’s why, you know, it’s interesting for me to sometimes admit this as a creative, but I just think was someone who didn’t really cry a lot through most of my kind of youth, and I was actually kind of, like, skeptical about the love thing we see on screen or in books and stuff. I was like, is it really all it’s cracked up to be or, you.
Cate Blouke: Know, whatever, like, love it all, not just like a Disney princess or rom.com love but just love in general.
Jacob Combs: I think it was like, people talk about this all the time. They write about all this time, people. I have this very wonderful, vivid memory in high school where I went and saw a movie with my mom and two of my best friends. They’re all women. And my mom’s very emotional. She will get emotional watching something that normal people respond to that way. But I sort of didn’t. Was younger, and I remember looking to my right and seeing my mom and another friend of mine just bawling, weeping, enjoying this movie. And I went to, like, roll my eyes over to the other side to my friend who’s, you know, a little more kind of like me, a little more just like a little more of a realist. And she’s weeping, too. And I was like, what’s wrong with me? How am I not accessing this thing?
But when I fell in love for the first time, when I had my heart broken for the first time, I suddenly found myself rewatching things I’d watched before, reading things and just crying. I have a vivid memory of the first time I took a flight from the east coast to the west coast reading this one book. And I cried the entire time, and I had never done that in my life. It’s called The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. It’s one of my favorite books, and it’s told from the perspective of a dog. I mean, if you’re not. I don’t know.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, no, I. Okay, I’m sold. I mean, it’s gonna make me cry, but.
Jacob Combs: Yeah, but I cried the whole time to the point where, like, the person sitting next to me said, are you okay? Can I help you? I was like, no, I’m actually very good. Like, I’m accessing something I haven’t, but that’s. That’s what I mean by, like, it being cumulative. Like, all these things that happen change who you are. They change who you are as. As a person, as a creative, as an employee, as your own boss, like, any of those things. So I fell in love for the first time at 19, and probably a year later, I sort of had my heart broken for the first time, and I just had never experienced it. And I thought I was a big grown up at that point, right? I was like, well, of course.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, we all do.
Jacob Combs: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: I’m eighteen. I can buy cigarettes. Like, I know everything, right?
Jacob Combs: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So what opened up for you about love after that?
Jacob Combs: I think it’s hard to even put into words. It was just, like, the depth I can put it into words now. I don’t think I could have put into words now, but I think it is the depth of feeling an emotion that we can feel for others while still knowing that they’re having just, like, their own life, a completely different experience from us, that they’re kind of ultimately unknowable to us in a certain way, and that desire to get closer and to understand and to support something that is kind of, like, at its root, unknowable.
There’s something so beautiful about that. And also, I think, a little bit, there’s a longing in it. I think that’s what I felt, and I think that’s kind of what I felt when I met someone and thought, I just want to, like, drink this person in so deeply. And then when that was taken away from me, spoiler alert, I was broken up with. That’s why I say, I mean, like, have my heart broken, like, was broken up with, and to have that taken away and then that sense of longing and, yeah, I think that’s what accessed the emotion for me.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So how did that. Did that change your creative output or start, did that start showing up in your storytelling?
Jacob Combs: Yes, I think it did. You know, it did in the sense that I think it helped me put the focus on the other a bit more in my storytelling. Whether that was a character that doesn’t necessarily have a similar background to me, you know, just the act of creativity and the act of fiction. Right. The act of fiction as a way to really investigate other people’s experiences and maybe get just inches closer in the gulf that can be between us, but, like, inches closer to understanding someone else’s perspective.
Cate Blouke: This seems like a great opportunity to segue to talking a little bit about your newest project.
Jacob Combs: Sure. So I have just made a film called The Orange at the Seder. I like to call it my queer, intergenerational chosen family dramedy. It is about the relationship between these two queer men, one who’s a little bit older, one who’s a little bit younger. And the older one has held this all gay seder for many, many years and has sort of looked at this younger man as his protege, someone that’s going to take over a Seder eventually, when he passes. And the younger man, his name is Adam, has brought partners in the past to the Seder. They’ve all been men. And this year, he’s bringing his new partner, Charlie, to the Seder. And it turns out, kind of early in the film, we discover that Charlie is a woman. And this is the first woman that Adam has ever dated. This is the first woman Adam has ever brought to the Seder, and he has sort of hid that fact from his adoptive mentor father figure. And now they’re all in the same room, and they have to kind of deal with it together and see, is there a path forward or is this the end for some of these relationships?
Cate Blouke: Yeah. And to the listeners, I have had the privilege of getting to watch this film, and it is wonderful and very poignant. And I’m so curious, how did you come to this creative project? What’s the background, especially in thinking about what we’ve been talking about, about love and relationships and queer identity, what brought you to this project?
Jacob Combs: It was a long road, which I think is really beautiful now being able to look back on it. So the very kind of seed germination of this idea happened many years ago. I was actually in Israel during the Passover holiday, which is this spring holiday in Judaism. And there is this phrase that you say typically in the holiday in the jewish diaspora. You say, “next year in Jerusalem.” And the idea is that next year maybe sort of, I’ll be in Jerusalem celebrating this holiday together.
So I was in Israel around the Passover holiday, and I thought, I want to go to a Seder in Jerusalem. And I had been working in queer advocacy for a while in New York City, where I was living. And I reached out to a friend of mine who I knew had some connection in the queer community in Israel and said, can you suggest a queer seder for me to go to? And so she put me in touch with this group. They’re called The Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. And I showed up to this Seder, and as I was walking in, I thought, you know, it’s going to be a bunch of people like me. It’s going to be a bunch of kind of queer, 20-something, cool Jews. Maybe there’ll be someone cute here. I don’t know. We’ll see.
And I walked in, and it was a small, intimate gathering of men in their seventies, eighties, older queer men who didn’t have families to celebrate the holiday with, whether they had a partner who had passed away or they had a family that hadn’t accepted them. And they had created this space. And it was an amazing experience. And I knew I wanted to write about it someday. When I was going into it, I really wanted to explore the idea of allyship, what it means to be an allyship, and what it means to belong in a space.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: So I centered the story around Charlie, who is still in the final film that I’ve made now, but, you know, was this young woman who was coming to a Passover Seder that it was actually set at a sort of lgbt senior center. Her partner has worked there for many years, and he is close to the community, and this is the first woman he’s ever dated, and he’s invited her in. But the pov was really Charlie’s. It was really about the experience that I had had a little bit, thinking I was walking into one environment, realizing I was in a very different environment and having that split second fight or flight. Do I just turn around and walk out? Because this isn’t what I thought it was, or do I lean in and engage? And what does it mean to reach across difference, in my case, generationally, in her case, generationally, sexuality, religion, like a lot of different things. And I worked on it for a bit and I shared it with a lot of people, and I was getting the feedback that it was a bit didactic, that it was a lovely piece, but it was a little bit centered around, like, teaching, which to me had been, maybe I thought, a feature, not a bug, because Passover is a teaching holiday. There’s this text that you read that is, like, specifically about passing on, you know, certain ideas, certain traditions. So I continued working on it. I thought, I’m going to try to direct this next year. And the pandemic hit, and I thought, I can’t make a short film set in an lgbt senior center. That would be the most irresponsible thing to do.
Cate Blouke: That would not. That wasn’t. Yeah, I could see how that would not work out. Well, it’s not going to happen.
Jacob Combs: And honestly, I put it away and I thought, maybe that’s just a story that I will have written and I’m not going to tell. Fast forward a few years later. I am married now in this wonderful relationship with this amazing man who I talk about forever, but I won’t. And my relationship to myself, I think, has really deepened my relationship to my identity and my relationship to my sexuality.
And I was thinking a lot about how I identify, looking at sort of some things from my past with new lenses. I had just been to this writers retreat where there were several folks there who identified as bi or kind of more expansively queer. There was just, like, a really interesting energy in the air that I hadn’t necessarily experienced before.
And I went to visit a friend not long after that, and I said, I think I’m going to rewrite that story. I think the main character is Adam the partner, not Charlie, the one stepping into the holiday? And I think Adam is me.
And I just kind of stood there for a sec like, what? Really? And it was kind of an amazing moment. It was a little bit of a scary moment. But I came home, I sat back down with the project. I shifted the whole thing to be from his perspective. And she had some very smart ideas about how to kind of simplify the whole story down to focus in on that idea. And honestly, a draft came out that I was like, yeah, let’s go make this. And here we are about a year and change later, and we are imminently about to share the film with the world.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So what is the me-ness of the Adam character for you? What was that?
Jacob Combs: The me-ness is the sticky part, but, you know, is, I think, a sense of wondering whether I belonged in spaces where I really wanted to belong. And I thought I should, but feeling a bit tied between two worlds. And this is something that I think is sort of central to who I am, central to an understanding of myself. I’m someone who has always known. Again, now that I can look back with the benefit of my 30 something wisdom.
I’ve always known that I was interested in people of both genders, of all genders, but I didn’t have the framework to put that into words as an identity. I didn’t really know what that looked like.
And I think kind of, like, as a creative, trying to figure out the creative side and the producer side and do they meld together? I sort of followed my experiences and my desires and my interest in people where they went. Freshman year of college, for instance, there was a beautiful woman who I was very, very into, who definitely was not interested in me that way. And I, like, spent a lot of time sort of trying to get closer to her. And nothing, really, truly nothing came to that. And then my second year of college, there was a lovely man who I had that experience with who was interested back, and all of a sudden, I was like, I got to come out. I got to tell people that. And then you’re like, okay, I’m gay. That’s the word, right? Because there’s this guy, and he wants to do something, and I want to do something. So.
Cate Blouke: So that’s what that means.
Jacob Combs: That’s what I mean, right?
Cate Blouke: That’s the word. And, yeah.
Jacob Combs: And it was actually really lovely to step into that space, to step into a community, to be like, okay, this is a new world that I am really going to embrace. But as the years kind of went by, I started to realize there was always like another piece. There was just like another piece.
And that’s where that me-ness of that story came in. You know, wondering like, what is that piece? What does it mean? Will I ever investigate it? Will I ever express it? And I think it’s really interesting, you know, I think this comes back to that idea of like, experiencing love, experiencing different kinds of love and really coming to a deeper understanding. But when I really became kind of deep and settled in my current relationship, that allowed me the space to think more deeply about who I was in a way that I never would have expected and to realize there was another side of myself. But before I, you know, I talked with a couple close friends about this, but before I ever really like, talked more widely about it, I think I wrote this story, you know? Yeah, I wrote this story. And it came from the simple idea of, boy, we see a lot of stories about I’m queer and my family doesn’t know it and I’m bringing my same sex partner to a family holiday and spanks are going to fly. And I was just like, what if I turned that on its head?
Cate Blouke: Right?
Jacob Combs: That was kind of where it started, as in thinking, I’m trying to figure out something about myself here. Yeah. And yet that’s where I led.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, I love that and I can relate. You know, my sort of bisexual identity has been a more recent discovery for me, largely because I’ve, I’ve mostly just dated men and I mean – people who’ve been listening to the podcast know this, but like, I’m in twelve step recovery. I’ve been sober for a really long time – but I used to get drunk and make out with girls in my twenties. Like, I would do that a lot. And in hindsight, right, with like adult vision, I can be like, oh, that’s because I was attracted to women. But because I was also very clearly attracted to men and had dated men. Like, I didn’t, my brain didn’t know what to do with that. And so I would be like, oh, if I get drunk, then it’s fun and it’s fine and like, yay, right? Being the wasted college chick making out with other girls. But then I was in relationships with men and similarly looking back and being like, oh, but I’ve always gravitated towards queer folk. My friend group in high school was a big group of gay boys for a while, but then I always didn’t really feel a part of the queer space. And I’ve been having a lot of conversations lately about this because, okay, I’ve realized I’m bisexual. I haven’t successfully dated women yet, so does that count? So I have some queer imposter syndrome, and it really taps into that belonging, and where do I fit and how do I fit and how do I want to show up and who do I want to be? And there aren’t any experts for me to consult. Nobody actually makes the rules about this.
Jacob Combs: Well, I agree that no one makes the rules. And I would say there are so many experts for you to consult, which is everyone, because everyone’s going through their own unique, individuated experience of this. And, like, that’s the expertise. Right. It’s, I think when we’re looking outside of us for the rubric of what it means to be fill in the blank, it often falls short. It often falls short for us. And I think that’s maybe one of the most beautiful and challenging things of growing up and becoming human and becoming an adult is recognizing, like, wow, I really do have to figure out. Maybe not have to, but I have the opportunity to figure out almost everything for myself anew. Do I take these? I’m having this, like, deja vu moment. And I had never thought I would mention this, but my senior thesis in college was, it was called adolescence as adaptation, and it was about literary adaptations, but also about how the process of adolescence and becoming an adult is taking texts from the people before us and reading them and deciding, what do I keep and what do I not keep? Right. Like, what works for me and what doesn’t? And I use west side Story and I use Romeo and Juliet. But I don’t think it’s just adolescence. I think it’s like, human hood is adaptation. Humanhood is understanding where we fit into larger categories, larger systems, and not necessarily looking outward for that sense of, like, how do I fit? And what does that mean? I have to be. And I love that phrase queer imposter syndrome you use. I think it’s a really interesting phrase to think about during pride month because it’s such an interesting time where there are so many different ways to express pride, so many different ways to express queerness. And yet during Pride month, we do tend to mostly see a little bit of a narrow sliver of those ways. And I think many of us think, well, if I’m not doing that, looking like that, buying that, maybe I don’t belong in this community.
Cate Blouke: Right?
Jacob Combs: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: Right. And, yeah, I mean, and for me, it has centered around, oh, well, I don’t have the lived experience. So in some ways, that was showing up for me, as it doesn’t count or whatever, or I’m an interloper or just some nonsense that thankfully, like, I got some really lovely coaching around and was like, oh, no, it’s fine. Like, I like ladies and I like men. I’m queer. That’s the end. It’s not actually as complicated as my little self that struggles with belonging wants to make it.
Jacob Combs: Yeah, yeah. And I think maybe I’m sort of saying the same thing, but I would argue you have had the lived experience. You haven’t had a specific lived experience, and it tends to be one that is given more weight. I think that’s the only way to say it. Right. And as someone who lives in the world of sort of fiction and media, we show what, like, relationship is. We show what sex is. Those are the things that define how we interact with other people. But that’s not actually true. How we are in ourselves, the longings we have individually, the poems we write to ourselves, the ideas that we have for ourselves, those are just as much the lived experience of whatever your sexuality might be or your kind of, like, identity at large as the things you do with other people. That’s what I think, at least.
Cate Blouke: Right. No, I mean. And, yes, exactly. And it’s been really helpful for me to sort of, like you said, like, you know, I’m taking in the texts, right. And being like, this doesn’t make sense. Why am I putting this on myself? And it’s been really lovely and important to me, especially during pride month. And I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity and how important it is to, like, welcome all of ourselves and to be able to sort of stand in the, like, this is who I am. This is how I show up in the world. And I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of that.
Jacob Combs: Yes, yes. And to recognize that that is a lifelong project.
Cate Blouke: Yes.
Jacob Combs: And I think that is so much a piece of what I wanted to explore in my film. Right. It’s like there’s this intergenerational element to it. There’s this older character who has been ostracized from one community and created a safe space for a new community and is being asked, in his advanced age, can you actually reconsider your worldview again? Can you make it a little more expansive? And knowing that who we were in the past or who we were at some point when we decided, oh, actually, I think my identity is, this can change again. And I think that if we’re in touch with those questions as they arise, I think genuinely, for most of us, when questions arise, they’re not out of whole cloth. You’re usually like, oh, a lot of other things.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, like, I see how we got here. I see, okay. Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, exactly. It’s like I’m in this moment and I’m like, oh, this has been a thread, you know? And I believe that, like, some of the things, like, we can’t see it until we’re ready to see it, right? Or we don’t have the kind of either emotional awareness or just the emotional safety in our world for our little brains to be like, I’m ready for this now.
Jacob Combs: Yes. Yes. I think it’s very vulnerable. And it’s interesting to me. Most of my friends are women. So I was going to say I’ve had several conversations with women, but I’m a bit of a. There’s already, like, a selection bias in my data set. I’ve had really profound conversations with several women in my life, both. Some that I’m very close with, some that I’m not as close with when I’ve opened up and shared a bit more about my sexuality and the complexity of it, who have essentially, like, communicated back the same sense of, I actually think I’m interested in women too, but I’m partnered to a man, or I’ve really, like, only been partnered to men or whatever it’s looked like in their own life. And I don’t. I don’t know where to take it. I don’t really know what to do with it. I don’t even know if I want to do something with it. But I kind of want to be able to say, yeah, that exists, too. And I’ve had multiple of those conversations. And I think, you know, I’m not trying to be overly reductive and say, like, everyone’s queer or everyone’s bi, or whatever it is. I don’t think that’s true. But I do think that there are many of us who are, like, wonderfully rich and textured in the ways that we’re interested in engaging with other humans. And we generally are presented with a list of checkboxes and often think, “I don’t know which box to check.” And that’s how I feel right now. Like, I still. I still would probably usually identify as gay or queer. When someone asks. I don’t necessarily identify myself as bi, but I’ve come to really love the term queer for its expansiveness and its inclusivity. It really works for me.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: But I don’t have a problem with someone describing me as gay, which is interesting.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s also interesting. And for me, a big part of this sort of process of self discovery was moving to Portland, Oregon, where it is. I don’t know, I would just meet people and I just got here and I felt like all of the women I was meeting were queer and identified as queer. And there was just this expansiveness that I hadn’t been exposed to when I was living in Greenville, South Carolina, and even in Austin, Texas prior to that.
Jacob Combs: Sure.
Cate Blouke: And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how it’s really hard to be what we can’t see. And so it’s so important to have representation of queerness and the gender spectrum in media, in stories to open up that possibility. For me in the nineties and early aughts, I don’t remember seeing bisexuality anywhere. And, like, I had gay friends and I had lesbian friends, and I knew that I liked male anatomy, and so I wasn’t a lesbian. And so apparently I was straight. Right. Like, that was what was going on for me.
Jacob Combs: Yeah. I so relate to what you’re saying. And I think the two words in there that really jump out to me, there’s the visibility and there’s the representation. And I know they’re kind of similar, but, but they’re a little distinct in my mind. And, you know, I had a really kind of wonderful formative moment a couple years ago where I was up with a bunch of my friends at San Francisco Pride, and I was actually marching in the parade with them. And as I was looking around at all these, like, young faces, these young folks that had come to watch the parade, so many of them were holding by pride flags. So many. And I thought, wow, I don’t think that was really accessible when I was that age.
And if I were that age now, right. If I was 19 and trying to come out today, I think I might just go straight to bi. I probably would just be like, that feels good. That’s going to explain a lot of who I think I might be and what I have experienced for myself. But I didn’t have that visibility. And I think that the representation piece is in the things that make culture. And I think it’s very interesting what makes culture and whole separate conversation. But I do think even now, the sort of the systems, the companies, the tastemakers who make culture still don’t really show us a ton of what that experience can look like, other than a little bit of a narrow description. And I think that a lot of folks, I mean, I’ll just speak for myself at least to say when I did see a depiction of bisexuality in the media, somehow it, it like, came into my consciousness as a black and white cookie. It’s 50/50. It’s like, and it’s got to be both. That’s what it means. That’s kind of what I took in. And it’s taken me a while to deconstruct that message and say, like, not black and white, not 50/50. Doesn’t have to be both. Right, right.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, no, totally.
Jacob Combs: My experience, I don’t want to speak, you know, real large for a lot of people.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. And I think that’s what’s important is like, that there’s not like nobody speaks for any particular community and we get to decide what communities we are a part of. And I get to decide for myself whether queer is the right label for me, whether bisexual is the right label for me, whether pansexual is the right label for me. And there isn’t a committee that I have to submit an application to and like boxes that I have to check.
Jacob Combs: Right. The old joke about the membership card, it’s a joke. It’s not real.
Cate Blouke: Right, right. And like, I was joking with a friend about it yesterday of just like, I don’t know, like, do I have to have sex with a woman to earn my queer badge? Right. You know?
Jacob Combs: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: And like, no, as a matter of fact I don’t. But it can be really easy, I think. Especially when, when we’re like playing or exploring or thinking about aspects of like, who we are, it can be really vulnerable. And I know for me, I do tend to want to look to somebody to tell me what I’m supposed to be doing a lot of the time.
Jacob Combs: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: And I think the joy and tragedy of adulthood is that I’m the grown up and I get to pick now.
Jacob Combs: Yes, it is both those things.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. There’s so much freedom and liberation in that. And then also, fuck, I have to decide.
Jacob Combs: Yes. And there are so many ancestors and trailblazers and mentors that we can look to to show us how they individuated themselves. We don’t have to do what they did. But I think that’s the piece of pride month that I find the most inspirational. Right. Sure. The parades are fun, the parties, right, all that stuff. But you’re like, the reason that we celebrate this month, during this month, is because of a moment in a longer, much longer, much more complicated, you know, set of moments where someone stood up and was like, I’m going to do something different. I’m going to stand up for myself as this person and as this community. And, you know, it started a chain of events that we’re very much still litigating today.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Jacob Combs: Both literally litigating and metaphorically litigating. You know, the boundaries of what. What is possible, what is accepted, what is embraced, what is encouraged around gender and sexuality is, you know, something that’s. It’s under attack all the time. And very much, I think, we’re all still figuring out together and will be forever. That’s what makes humans who they are. They’re beautiful and complicated.
Cate Blouke: Right. Oh, man. And I don’t know. I hope that we’re not. This isn’t the thing that we’re litigating for forever. I want to believe in a future where we can all just, I don’t know, not be assholes to each other and let people be who they are. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Jacob Combs: Yeah, I think. I believe in that future. I tend to be an optimist, and I also think that the. Just the way our brains are wired to both want to be an individual and both want to be part of a group are always going to be working between those two places. You know, it’s very central to how we organize ourselves as beings, understanding what our group is. I kind of think, like, I don’t know if it has to necessarily be a thing that comes out of prejudice or bigotry. It can also be something where we recognize, oh, I do that for myself, for safety, and I can catch myself in that process and then really interrogate. Am I creating a space that’s safer for myself? Am I creating a space that’s safer for others? Or am I creating an unsafe space that makes me think that I belong by making someone else not belong? Yeah, there’s something in there.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, well, and that brings in an element we haven’t really talked about yet, which is sort of the work that you’ve done around kind of inclusivity in some of your more corporate roles. What has that work brought forward in your life and in your creativity?
Jacob Combs: For me, it was part of the impetus for wanting to do more of my own personal creative work. And I think that idea of representation just was very central to my own journey, because in some of these larger environments, I was part of groups that were trying to push for more representation on screen, more representation on screen of queer voices, more representation behind the camera in all different facets. And it’s been really challenging, and there’s definitely been a bit of movement I think we’re in were in a great time for queer art. But I also think that Hollywood generally tends to be a little bit more. It’s hard to use the word conservative, right. Because there’s the whole thing of like those Hollywood liberals in LA, traditional.
Cate Blouke: I don’t.
Jacob Combs: Yeah, I think traditional is a good word for it. Or just a little more, play it safe, you know? Yeah, a little more. If we round off the edges, maybe it’ll appeal to more people. And I, as a creative, gravitate in the exact opposite way. And I love watching stories that are about people who are not like me. I never have trouble finding something in there that I relate to. Right. I think to me, telling stories about difference is really the way you show that we all are very similar in our course. I believe so. To me it really was like, oh, I want to get a little more specific about the stories that I’m telling. And maybe that’s going to make it harder for me to be creative in some of these structures, but it’s going to let me express something that I’m trying to express. It’s going to let me learn more about myself and it’s also going to help me find my community. Going right back to that thing. Right. Finding my community, finding people who are also interested in the spaces in between, the intersectionality, the sort of like cracks where the light gets through, whatever way. You want to talk about that.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So who’s your community now? As a solo creative?
Jacob Combs: My community is like all the people that I’ve come to love over the course of my life. It kind of goes back to that thing we’re talking about of the individual and the group, right? Yeah. I think part of the reason that I loved the more corporate creative environments was there was continuity there. And I do enjoy that. I enjoy deep relationships with folks. And part of what’s sometimes challenging working on the more project by project base is you’ll bring people together and have a really intense connected. Like, we shot this film in three days, and everyone who worked on my set was absolutely incredible at what they did. And then the day after, you’re like, I don’t get to spend all my time with those people all the time, but like we’re talking about now, all those folks are in my community. Like, I’ll share the film with them. Once it’s ready to be out in the world, they’ll work with me on other projects in the future. There’s just something really wonderful about getting to expand the circles that way. And I think it allows for the kind of intersectionality that I’m interested in rather than just kind of being in one pool over and over.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, absolutely. What did the journey of being the 20 something, going to New York, I’m going to do musical theater and then going into corporate and then coming out and then going in and coming out. What would you say are kind of some of the overall learnings of that that have brought you to where you are today?
Jacob Combs: I think a lot about the phrase slow down to speed up because I am someone who patience is not my biggest virtue, but I have a lot of passion, I have a lot of chutzpah, I have a lot of drive. So I think that young me who just was like, it’s got to happen so fast. I just want to make it happen so fast. I’ve come to, in my better moments, really love when it doesn’t happen fast, which, let’s be honest, is usually how it happens because it allows for that cumulative process that we’re talking about. It allows something else to happen in my life that when I circle back on either a project I haven’t come to for a while or even right now, I am thinking a lot about stepping back into some of the work that I used to do but haven’t done for a bit. And it’s like, oh, that’s always been a part of me. I think it’s a sense that all sides of yourself don’t have to be expressed at every single moment for them still to be sides of yourself.
Cate Blouke: What I know. Do you have to be all the things all the time?
Jacob Combs: I don’t think so.
Cate Blouke: I think you’re right. But you’re also blowing my mind a little bit.
Jacob Combs: Yeah, I think. And kind of picking them up and setting them down when they’re of service to us and then when we pick them back up. Not being judgmental about it. Right. Not saying, I haven’t written something for five years, just saying, oh, remember all those beautiful things I wrote? I’m writing again because it’s part of me, it’s who I am, or I haven’t worked at a big company for a while and I’m doing it again because there’s a part of that that I love, too.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. There’s something in there that just, like, really spoke to me. I know that I’ve been susceptible to and I have heard it from clients and from friends of just this idea of like, well, I haven’t done that in so long, so, like, I can’t, I can’t pick that up. I haven’t touched it in x number of years, and I just think there’s a beauty in remembering that it’s still a part of you. It’s still there, it’s still available, and that I’m the one that’s imposing the guilt or the shame or the frustration or the whatever around, however long it’s been since I touched the thing.
Jacob Combs: Yes. And I think that when it comes to creativity specifically, it’s so ineffable, it’s so magical, mystical, not really understandable that it’s okay to follow the whim, where the whim is going, rather than to think, oh, but I’m supposed to be an ex, so why haven’t I exed?
Cate Blouke: Yeah, I love that it’s okay to follow the whim.
Jacob Combs: Yeah. I’m gonna need to listen to that myself, because I don’t always take that advice.
Cate Blouke: Oh, no, absolutely. I mean, I record this. This podcast kind of fundamentally started with, like, what are the things I need to hear? What are the things I want to hear? What are the conversations I want to be having that are going to be good for me to hear? Yes. And my experience thus far with it has been that other people also find it valuable to hear, too. Right. But I get to hear myself say things, and I’m like, oh, that is. I do believe that.
Jacob Combs: Yes, exactly. And I think that really, that is kind of the underlying theme of what we’re talking about here. When we bring it back to sexuality, where it’s like, if you’re not hurting yourself or others, follow in where it’s taking you, and it’s okay. Right. It’s okay where that is right now. It’s okay if that changes. There’s actually something really beautiful and exciting about that. That’s part of being human, is we’re never set in stone, we’re never not changing.
Cate Blouke: Right. Whether it’s aging, whatever. There’s that phrase of, like, you never stand in the same river twice. We are never the same person twice.
Jacob Combs: I know. I actually think that’s a great reframing of that. Right. Because it puts the focus on us rather than the river. Everything there is different. It’s not just the river.
Cate Blouke: Right. Right. Yeah. Jacob, this has been so lovely.
Jacob Combs: So lovely.
Cate Blouke: I like to wrap things up by asking, like, what brings you joy?
Jacob Combs: What brings me joy? I. As I’ve said in this conversation, I love working with other people, and I love helping other people do their best work. I think that’s kind of a space that makes me very fulfilled and very joyful. And in doing that, I recognize that I’m also doing great work of my own. That’s what’s really drawn me to these creative arts. And I think again, that creator, that producer side, both of them are really integral for that.
Cate Blouke: Beautiful. Where can people find you?
Jacob Combs: Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram. My personal Instagram is a combs that’s d like dog. And you can find our film the Orange at the Seder at Orange Sederfilm. That’s Seder. And like we mentioned earlier in the episode, we were premiering world premiere here in LA at the end of July. If you’re here, please come check out the film. We’d love to meet you. You can find all the details about that on our instagram. And please, you know, keep in touch because we’re hoping we’ll come to a city near you and share a film with people in your community.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, I hope it comes to Portland. That’ll be amazing.
Jacob Combs: Me too.
Cate Blouke: And I’ll put a link to those events in the show notes.
Oh Jacob, this has been such a treat. Thank you so much for being on this magical journey of conversation with me.
Jacob Combs: Thank you so I’m so happy to be a part of it.
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