Boston Speaks Up with author and former Hollywood assistant Kiel Servideo
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Kiel Servideo is a former Hollywood assistant who’s always found comfort with a pen and a notebook. He moved out to Los Angeles a year after graduating from Boston University where he hustled various temp agency jobs before landing full-time gigs with Hollywood titans such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Shawn Levy. While living in LA, Servideo wrote his first novel — The Preposterous Dreams of Tucker Adams — a modern tale of manifesting one’s destiny in the competitive Hollywood industry.
In the Fall of 2019, Servideo and his wife left their life in Los Angeles and each accepted jobs abroad teaching English to grade schoolers in Seville, Spain. Half way through the school year, a global pandemic changed everything. Servideo spent much of 2020 in lockdown with his wife, utilizing Airbnb to see more of Spain while remaining in isolation.
Servideo is now living in a 300 year old farm house in Umbria, Italy, and he and his wife are working for DTC nail services startup Olive & June.
As Servideo continues to life hack the pandemic, he’s discovering authors, reading, writing and reflecting on the divisive politics in America from Europe. We’re grateful to begin 2021 catching up with Servideo for all to hear.
We’ve included below a written version of our Q&A with Servideo. You can listen to the podcast here:
Here are a few photos below from Kiel’s travels abroad. Below that, enjoy an abridged version of our interview with Servideo.
What was it like growing up in Methuen, MA?
Safe and entertaining. There was always something to do: exploring the woods on our street, play pickup sports with friends, or just ride bikes around town. It was also a hilarious childhood. I’ve never lived among more funny people than I did in Methuen, including the comedy writers I knew in Hollywood.
Tell listeners a fun story about growing up with yours truly as a brother.
One year in high school, our parents took our sister to Florida for a dance competition, leaving us alone in the house. Because you were a popular junior trying to seize an opportunity, you threw a big party in our little house. Because I was a scared freshman afraid of adult situations, I was furious at you for it. Rather than join the party and let loose, I refused to go participate. I hovered around the outside of the house the entire night with my best friend Tom, keeping an eye on things and making sure they didn’t get out of control, until the early morning hours when the last people left. I don’t think I told our parents but I held it against you for a while.
I think that story sums up the difference between young Zach and young Kiel pretty well.
How did your childhood shape the man you are today?
That’s obviously a huge question with a lot of answers. One I’ve thought about a lot the last few years: My childhood made me feel like I was special, which wasn’t easy to shake as an adult. Thinking your special leads you to believing a prized destiny will come to you without working for it.
Also, being a middle child was a gift. I think I’m a good mediator as a result. I’m also flexible and can assume different roles across relationships. I got to be a little brother and a big brother, and I still see myself fulfilling those roles with people I meet to this day. My friend Ohia from Spain calls me “the world’s little brother” because I’m always pestering her.
What was the first career you remember wanting to pursue?
Professional baseball player, and there was no doubt in my mind that it would happen.
How did Boston University reshape your understanding of the world and your goals in life?
It made me realize that we were from a unique place, and the people I was going to encounter as my journey extended beyond Methuen were going to be quite different than the people I grew up with. Even peers from other Boston suburbs were nothing like Methuenites. We had a reputation, for better or worse.
At BU, I found a balance between pride in where I came from and welcoming opportunities to adapt. Methuen was full of loyal and scrappy people, and I’ve been that person in any job I’ve ever had (not to mention the soccer field). But I could not have been the hard-headed Methuen kid and managed social or education success in college, and I certainly couldn’t be that person once I moved to Los Angeles.
What drew you to screenwriting and Hollywood?
I’d written for fun occasionally as a kid, always secretively because it didn’t fit my identity, but in high school I felt comfortable enough to share. I did some sketches in theater arts classes, worked on a movie that I shot (partly) with some friends, and wrote for the school newspaper with a section devoted to “Kiel’s Korner.” Then there was the poetry journal, but no one has ever seen that.
I was drawn to the connection a writer could forge with its audience. There’s still nothing like sharing something like people respond to. At the same time, I was discovering Vonnegut and realizing that all writing didn’t have to sound like a dusty thing from the 1800s. Your personality could be baked into the language. You could live and breathe on the page.
When it was time to pick a college, it was time to pick a major. Sreenwriting felt like a practical application of writing potential, more than general creative writing to one day write fiction. I was always the class clown so I thought I’d be writing the funniest comedy movies Hollywood ever made, but it turns out I was a different kind of funny. It took me years to remind myself that screenwriting was never the kind of writing I wanted to do, and I wasn’t good at it for a reason.
What is the biggest lesson you learned working for elite Hollywood producers?
People who have money, power, and fame sacrifice a lot to obtain it. You can’t dip your toe in the water to be a producer or director or actor. You should be all in. The work should be the goal.
Why did you decide to drive for Uber instead of continuing your career in Hollywood?
Connected to my last response. That career didn’t consume me, and I began to question what I was doing wasting my time and my employer’s time. I literally felt like I was in someone’s way who thirsted for a Hollywood career more and could benefit from the great position I held. I threw myself back into the ocean until I realized what I wanted, hoping the vacuum would lead to a lot more writing. Uber was my “financial bandaid” in the meantime. I was waiting until I wanted to do something passionately or felt compelled to do something based on some external push, but nothing came around for a while. And as I waited, I grew to enjoy the work and what it gave me: freedom, adventure, amazing conversation, unpredictable experiences. If I was in the US and had a normal job, I’d still do it on the side for extra cash and fun. It was enriching.
What was the rationale behind you and your wife moving to Spain?
In the simplest way: It was something we wanted to do more than what we were already doing or what we could have done instead.
The world felt too fragile and life felt too short to defer a dream.
What’s been the biggest challenge to surviving a pandemic abroad?
There are many, and the common thread running throughout them is lack of control. I miss soccer and have never gone this long without playing since before I could walk, but it’s an impossible activity given the state of the world, even on a continent obsessed with the sport. I’d love to be able to plan my upcoming travels, including my next trip home, but that’s not happening now either.
As much as my wife Anne and I have nomadic lives that look unpredictable from the outside, we actually do a fair amount of planning. We exhaustively discuss and weigh our options before we choose a path. The last few years have been thrilling because we have pieced life together bit by bit. Now the playing field has shrunk quite a bit. We’ve made the most of our situation and then some, but we can’t think beyond one month because the situation is so fluid. We know where we’ll be in February but March 1st is anyone’s guess.
How’s it been keeping in touch with family and friends?
I think it’s been great. I feel like our family is doing well during this, and no one is giving me cause to worry with irresponsible behavior. On a personal level, I’ve been in a better emotional space since the pandemic started, which has hopefully allowed me to be a positive part of the lives of my family and friends compared to what I had been before.
Can you describe how your European friends view the United States in light of America’s management of the pandemic and the widespread political divisiveness?
Some are confused because they still had a good image of America in their mind. Some aren’t surprised at all, which hurts more. I’ve also heard frightened people because we can destroy the world in a heartbeat with the power we have, if we’re reckless with it, not to mention the fuel we give to far-right movements in important European countries.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to be an ambassador for my country, especially in a trying moment for our public relations. I was obviously never going to come to Europe as the arrogant American, but it’s a hard time to feel and display pride. America is hard to love in the best of times if you view its history honestly, but you can still find a path to patriotism. I have a full, honest picture of America, ever-evolving, but I love it dearly.
But a lot of what we love about ourselves is a mythology the world sees straight through because they don’t need to love America the way Americans want to feel patriot ardor.
What have you been reading? Can you share some books and authors that you’ve discovered that are lesser known in America?
Lately I’ve been reading what’s been available in English sections of used bookstores, mainly in Rome and before that Nerja. I don’t like e-readers so I’m desperate for physical books. That has led to a lot of fairly popular authors, especially Philip Roth, which isn’t the worst thing since he’s an amazing writer with a deep bench of novels.
My favorite author in the last few years has been Jim Harrison, and I’d devoured about half of his books before moving abroad. But after a year and a half of digging through bookstores in Sevilla, Madrid, Granada, Costa Del Sol, Venice, Rome, towns and cities across southern Germany, not a single Harrison book to be found. Then, last winter while Anne and I were on a German road trip during our Christmas break, we hopped across the French border to visit the city of Strasbourg for less than twelve hours, and what did I discover? An entire shelf of Jim Harrison novels, several of which I’d never read. Turns out he’s a hit in France, enough of one to be available in English. Not sure what it is about him, but he translates to a French audience.
This past summer I rolled the dice with a book from the shelf of the farmhouse Anne and I called home for the month of July in rural Almeria. The book was by Julian Barnes, an author I’d never heard of — an indictment on me, not him. “The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters” was a unique, hilarious, and insightful book in a completely unexpected but entertaining way. I hadn’t had such a jolting experience with a book and a new writer since “Slaughterhouse Five” leveled me in high school, introducing me to Vonnegut.
I’m a completionist. I find a book I like and then seek out everything by that writer until I’ve read it all, which means there’s very little room for surprise or experimentation except for the rare occasions I try a new author. I’ve now read four novels by Julian Barnes, and have great respect for the unique ways he tells his stories.
You wrote the book The Preposterous Dreams of Tucker Adams — a fiction largely based on your pursuit of Manifest Destiny. How would you describe the book to would-be readers? And how would you describe the experience of completing it?
The book was about a person trying to understand his story. He’s stuck, and he doesn’t know why. He was once full of enthusiasm and confidence. He chased his dream and had momentum…but then he just stopped. He doesn’t really know why, which I think is an interesting thing everyone experiences in life: I’m here, and I know I put myself here, but how did it get like this? So Tucker reflects on the experiences that constitute his personal narrative — the story that drove him forward until he stopped — hoping he’ll know how to move forward if he can retrace his steps and see where he went wrong.
The book about a protagonist trying to understand his story was written by a writer figuring out the book as he wrote it. This is not an advisable strategy to write a novel. The story was me, obviously, stuck in life and frustrated that I wasn’t creating, that things didn’t go according to plan, etc. I used downtime at the office or after work at cafes creating whatever I had inside me. As I wrote and changed, my idea of the book changed, what I wanted it to say, where I thought it was leading, and so on. Ultimately the editing process was reconstructive surgery of all the threads I’d sewn into it, which felt impossible.
But I finished it, and I completed my vague vision. It was the hardest and most satisfying thing I’ve ever done. It took me about three years, which is why I also felt pretty damn proud. And determined to do better the next time, even if it has taken longer than expected to feel ready for the next time.
You’re always journaling. What have you been journaling about in recent months?
Mainly that I have nothing to say. That life is paused but it’s fine. I feel like my life the last few hours was a contained story. Now I’m in a lull between stories. For the first six weeks I was in Umbria, I wrote a lot about the colors in the landscape because they’re like nothing I’ve ever seen — the brilliant foliage lining the vineyards of Umbria’s wine country was stunning — but now it’s just cold and gray. I make sure I record powerful moments I’ll want to remember one day- (like how Anne and I started crying in our Italian grocery store when we found out Biden was the projected winner in front of the toilet paper). but when I’m really dedicated to the journal, I don’t need to single out the beauty. It finds its way through the pen when you don’t realize it. There’s no better feeling than going back in the record and reading a detail I probably thought meant nothing in the moment and seeing that you actually captured something special.
What book topic(s) are you pursuing next?
The story I feel like I lived through the last few years. I’m still exploring the idea, but I see the full picture and believe in its potential. I don’t want to say too much about it yet as it’s evolving.
What are you most looking forward to upon your eventual return to America?
Seeing our grandmother. Attending a family party. Anything that assembles a lot of my favorite people.
What’s the biggest challenge you’d like to see the world tackle in the next decade?
There are two massive problems that can’t be ignored: the climate emergency and post-truth politics. The former is existential, but every issue that stems from the latter (authoritarianism, science skepticism, conspiracy theories) prevents us from tackling what would be, if we did it, the most heroic accomplishment in the history of our species. It could be beautiful, but instead we’re trying to convince tens of millions of people that, No, the new political party in power is not operating a worldwide pedophile ring.
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