Written By: Rori Mohakabe Staff Writer

Edited By Kimberly Henry Senior Staff Writer UNSUGARCOATED Media

May 19,2021

Storytelling has never been about simple entertainment. Since humans learned to communicate, we have used stories to survive trying times, educate, and share values. Nobody understands the emotional and  social impact of a story like Jeff Gomez, who has spent his career re-shaping the way Hollywood tells stories through transmedia. 

In Ep 55 of UNSUGARCOATED with Aalia, your favorite host sits down with Gomez, a film and TV producer who overcame disability and a hard scrap childhood to work on some of the biggest franchises from Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Sony. Aalia and Gomez share a painfully candid  conversation about bullying, abuse, and the power of transmedia storytelling to provide escape and growth to both victims and perpetrators.

Born in a women’s shelter in Staten Island, Gomez’s  tumultuous childhood in foster care nurtured his love for reading and shaped him into the storyteller he is today. Gomez shares with Aalia how his hypermasculinity and ableism impacted his childhood.

“I was seen as someone who was an alien. To be into studying dinosaurs, fairy tales and mythology. For a three year old, it wasn’t strange,it was seen as feminine,” Gomez admitted to Aalia. Soft spoken and born with a disability that paralyzed one-half of his face, Gomez was subjected to homophobic abuse at home and bullying at school.

To survive, Gomez turned inward to the world of fantasy and comics, shutting out tormentors . He tells Aalia that stories not only provided him with hope to escape his childhood, but they helped him understand his bullies as well. Gomez explains to Aalia that “bullies were just like him.” The stories Gomez read showed him that so often the bad guys and villains were victims themselves.

But how could Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man teach a young victim of bullying to empathize with his tormentors?

Gomez explains that it all comes down to what he calls a “modality of reconciliation.” This philosophy of compassion is Gomez’s guiding star in both his filmmaking and his anti-bullying work in schools.  He realized that the key to resolving the cycle of harm was empathy.

“[When] you genuinely listen to an individual, you get their attention, and they come to value you,” he says.

That’s why Gomez went into filmmaking, to create spaces to listen to individuals whether they would fall on the hero or villain side of the story. But when Gomez got to Hollywood “listening” was not something he saw studios investing in. 

Gomez shares with Aalia how, as Hollywood has developed through the ages, directors and executives lost touch with the audiences for whom they make films. “The architecture of listening has been abandoned in mainstream media. … You have to validate and appreciate the different voices of your audience.”

How do you get a massive industry like Hollywood to listen to its viewers?

For Gmes, the answer is transmedia— storytelling across platforms like books, TV, comics, games and film. Throughout their discussion Gomez explains to Aalia how paying attention to the stories that viewers have already shown they are hungry for can reconstruct the bridge between studios and the viewers that buy tickets.

To hear more about Gomez’s impact on Hollywood, his anti-bullying work in schools, and even stories from the set of Avatar, listen to episode 55 as Aalia brings out Gomez’s life story while keeping it, as always, UNSUGARCOATED.

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To learn more about Jeff Gomez, visit his Instagram: @slrgomez

To stay up to date with UNSUGARCOATED Media, visit UnsugarcoatedMedia.com and follow us on Instagram: @unsugarcoatedmedia.

Stay connected with Aalia on Instagram: @aalia_unsugarcoated, as well as on Clubhouse and LinkedIn.