Meet Tony DuShane | Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tony DuShane and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tony, what do you think makes you most happy? Why?
The struggle and the work. I’m not sure there’s happiness, there’s sometimes joy, there’s often satisfaction and gratitude. The process gives me fulfillment. The process of writing. The outcome can’t be predicted and whether it’s a great outcome or a failed outcome, we keep ourselves motivated, humble, and in the game because that next project is awaiting us tomorrow morning.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I grew up Jehovah’s Witness where creativity is just a handshake with Satan, for the most part. My parents converted when I was three years old. I believed it was the truth until I was 29 years old. I would have died for Jehovah. I almost died when I was 22 years old and wouldn’t accept a blood transfusion in a hospital emergency, I had some weird slow internal bleeding from a tear in my esophagus that finally collapsed me on Market Street in San Francisco. It was my near death experience. When I was out of consciousness I was on a canoe on a lake, a very calm lake, and truly at peace. Then the canoe would capsize and screaming EMTs would be out of focus wanting to know my name. I didn’t know where I was, I wanted to be back on that canoe. I was back and forth a few times.

Later, they knew there was lots of blood loss and I needed a transfusion. I was told that when I was in and out of consciousness I kept saying ‘no blood, no blood’. After I was stabilized for a minute a doctor sat next to me. I told him I had my ‘no blood card’ (something every Jehovah’s Witness must carry), in my wallet in my pants, since I was naked with tubes going in and out of veins and orifices.

I remember this part. He said, “I don’t care what’s in your wallet, you’re going to die, we need to give you a blood transfusion.”
I said: “No.”
He said: “Well, let me at least start to prep the blood because it may take time and if you change your mind and we don’t have it prepped you could already be dead.”
I said: “I’d rather die.”

And I meant it.

I became a Jehovah’s Witness superstar. After a couple of months of healing, and six days in the hospital, I was celebrated for my faith. Part of me is impressed that I had that much faith, that death was a fine bargain. Part of me feels sorry for that indoctrinated kid who almost lost opportunity to explore life.

Then a friend of mine was disfellowshipped, aka excommunicated, which means we can’t even acknowledge that person’s existence, and he killed himself. It hurt my soul. I didn’t get it. I didn’t ask questions before, there’s a path for the excommunicated to come back, a dark path, but, they can still come back. I reached out to the elders to help me with my grief. They told me he was already dead in Jehovah’s eyes and I need to just start being a better Witness for Jehovah. That was a veiled threat. I didn’t tell them I was having suicidal thoughts. I couldn’t, that would lead to meetings with the elders, more interrogation than spiritual help, so I knew something was very wrong, but, I also still had complete faith in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I just knew they weren’t communicating too well with Jehovah.

That’s when I started going to the library. I never spent time in a library. I went to the psychiatry section looking for books on how to not kill yourself. I found Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer. I know they’re goofy, but, they were my gateway drug. Somehow on those long nights when I’d go to the library after work and sit in the stacks for hours I ended up in the poetry section. I read Pablo Neruda, an anthology on Jazz poets in the 1920s, I checked out jazz records and brought the poetry home, and somehow I ended up in the fiction section and that’s where everything changed.

The first novel I read that wasn’t skimming something for school was Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. I remember the gay love story being a little disconcerting as a Jehovah’s Witness, but there was something about the heart of the story that went straight to my soul.

From there I couldn’t get enough, and it was off to Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and every other author gateway drug for young men begging for hope.

But, I didn’t leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses yet, I got married, a virgin at 25, no longer a virgin about 12 hours after the vows were exchanged, and I stayed in the belief system. At 29 I read Che Guevara’s biography by Jon Anderson and that was my wake up call to stop attending any bible study meetings at the Kingdom Hall. I still 100% had faith that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were the only way to survive impending armageddon, but, I knew something was a little off, and I knew that what was off was probably the elders and leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, not Jehovah. I also knew that after reading Che, Che didn’t keep his mouth shut, he declared the injustices of what was happening in South America. I only knew I had to not go to the Kingdom Hall again, which my wife at the time freaked out, but, when I told her I was stand up when they made single moms feel bad from the platform, when elders without kids would give talks about how to make your kids behave at meetings, I knew that I had to stand up and question that in front of everyone. I also knew that meant I would be disfellowshipped, so, my way to not get disfellowshipped was to just stop going to the Kingdom Hall, which I knew Jehovah would forgive.

My reading and my love for film never stopped. I read and went to film festivals constantly. I started a Film Festival called Filmjunkie in San Francisco. I took writing seriously, and went beyond my poetry and started writing short stories, giving myself a deadline with a webzine I started called Cherry Bleeds that ran from 2000-2010. I started Drinks with Tony in 2001, which was originally called The Cherry Bleeds Webstream (Podcast wasn’t a word yet), and segments were broadcast on the news show on KFJC, Los Altos Hills, but in 2002 I changed the name to Drinks with Tony, and from there episodes aired on Pirate Cat Radio and via podcast.

Drinks with Tony was mostly me interviewing authors on how to write, because I wanted to learn how to write. I read and wrote everyday, which is 90% of learning how to write. I wrote a terrible novel called Heartbreak about a couple going through a breakup. Then, I dared to read apostate literature about the Jehovah’s Witnesses because I still believed, I was still 100% faithful, I just knew something was wrong with the imperfect leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, not with Jehovah. I read a book called Crisis of Conscious by Raymond Franz. A banned book for any Jehovah’s Witness to read from one of the leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who was ex-communicated.

I read that book and wept. Sobbed. I had no clue how bad it was. My faith was shattered. It all clicked. I developed agoraphobia and anxiety. I couldn’t leave the house. I had constant panic attacks. I thought I was dying. I was still married to a Jehovah’s Witness, and I didn’t dare tell her about the book because I didn’t want her to know. I didn’t want her to feel how I was feeling. I still drove her to the Kingdom Hall for her meetings, but I didn’t go inside.

That’s when I finally realized I had to write a book about myself, my identity as a Jehovah’s Witness, who I was before the dam burst, before I was crippled with anxiety that had already been there, it just became a constant lightning bolt to spine as I sifted through the brainwashing wreckage.

For three years I worked on Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk. I wanted to get it just right. It started as a memoir, but my journey on the page was boring, who wants to hear about ten years of life when I can compress it into one, when I can give my doppelgänger the large brushstrokes of my life, my struggles, and compress them and craft them. I wrote the book out of love for myself, out of love for growing up a Jehovah’s Witness, I wrote it so when people who read the book would see a Jehovah’s Witness at their door they’d be kind to them because they could see a glimpse of what’s truly going on in the soul.

I was giving myself a hug of sorts, being okay that I firmly believed in things that I no longer believed in. It made my agoraphobia and anxiety even worse. It wasn’t therapeutic, it was scraping open scars from the past to bleed even more, but, it felt urgent.

I plugged along, doing my radio show and podcast, since Drinks with Tony was in studio at Pirate Cat Radio by then, I found my way into writing for magazines and being a regular contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle covering books, music, and film, and I started submitting my manuscript to agents and publishers.

Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk was published by Soft Skull in 2010. In 2011 it was optioned by Hunting Lane Films, who had recently produced Half Nelson and Blue Valentine. While working with them on a TV series pitch I checked myself into the hospital because my agoraphobia and anxiety reached the point where I had a hard time getting out of bed to even go to the bathroom. Taking a shower was a chore where I’d drink a triple shot of Jamison just to get in there. I somehow functioned in a drunken haze, but, it got to the point where I couldn’t live anymore, I couldn’t have that much anxiety running through my veins. I knew I wanted to kill myself.

And other family and friends had suicided out by this time, some I paid tribute to in the novel.

I checked into the hospital.

“How are you going to kill yourself?” the intake coordinator asked.

“I don’t know.”

I really hadn’t thought that far ahead, I just knew life was done. My answer meant I wouldn’t be 5150ed, but, I was on a list to get in within six weeks.

That six weeks was my only hope. I knew I had to stay alive for six weeks to see if the hospital would help. I didn’t know if it would or not, but I knew I had to try.

I was in out-patient with strict rules. I had to take a day off to meet with my producer on the TV show pitch because he wanted to come up to San Francisco and have a meeting. He had no clue that I took extra Xanax and I was turning in pages, treatments, receiving notes and adjusting our angle on the adaptation, he had no clue I was getting a day off from the hospital that had to be approved by multiple people. It was our checkin with the writer, and the writer seemed alright.

I felt like a spy in a film pretending to be someone else for three hours. He dropped me off back at my apartment and I collapsed until I had to be at my first group meeting check-in the next morning.

That deal fizzled out, the hospital gave me hope, just enough hope, and I continued on, until I was approached by Eric Stoltz for the possibility of a film adaptation that he would direct and I would write.

We made that happen and the film came out in 2018.

I progressed slowly out of my agoraphobia and anxiety, slower than I would have liked to, I’m still progressing, I still have internal dialogue with myself reminding me I’m okay, that it’s okay to be a non-Jehovah’s Witness, but when it’s in your DNA, when the brainwashing has its hooks in you, it never truly goes away, I’ve learned that over time the thick mist of it all dissipates here and there. Just knowing it’s headed in that direction keeps my head in the game.

Was it easy? Absolutely not. Did it ever become easy? No, but, how lucky am I to struggle on the page with the new lease on life I’ve been given. I cherish it, warts, bumps, and all.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
The Magic Castle is a must for out of town visitors, so I’d take them there.

Tacos at Guisado’s in Echo Park.
A film night at Hollywood Forever … a day at Hollywood Forever and Westwood Village cemetery. Always gotta say hi to Don Knotts and Marilyn Monroe.
Musso & Frank for dinner.
Check out flamenco at El Cid, or other cool events there.
Figaro Bistrot is a must because it’s a little bit of Paris in Los Feliz.
Hike from Trails Cafe up to the Griffith Observatory, preferably early morning before the crowds.
Take the metro downtown as so many people don’t realize Los Angeles has an underground.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Reading books has gotten me where I am. Not self-help books, though, I do read those, but novels, classic novels, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Victor Hugo, and many others have shown me the inside of life. Novels are the prescription for the soul. Novels let us travel through time to realize we’re just vessels of flesh in a present that will be a past fairly quickly, we’ll all be worm food soon enough, in the years we have above the dirt we get to work through the puzzle of this story we create for ourselves and others.

Some people might say I’m the feel-good movie of the year.

Website: https://www.tonydushane.com

Instagram: @tonydushane

Linkedin: Tony DuShane

Twitter: @tonydushane

Facebook: @tonydushane

Youtube: @DuShaneTony

Other: https://www.drinkswithtony.com

Image Credits
Tropic of Cancer, Obelisk Press, 1934
Giovanni’s Room, Signet, 1967