RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The zine was called " Ritual ," and it was an immediate success, quickly selling out and creating conversation among cinephiles excited not only by its articles but the abundance of nostalgic art — anyone who grew up in the 80s was surely taken to a warm, happy emotional state by content like reprints of old newspaper ads from a time when Michael Ritchie's Robin Williams-Walter Matthau comedy "The Survivors" played in multiplexes alongside "Superman III" and John Badham's "Blue Thunder." Related Stories 'I Want Your Sex' Review: Gregg Araki Begs Gen Z to Be Horny and Vulnerable with Each Other in a Fun but Stilted Return to Form Ryan Gosling and David Jonsson Are Superheroes Now. Is Marvel Finally Putting People Over IP?
This August the second issue of "Ritual" is set to drop, with contributions from Shane Black, Jules McLean, Doug Benson, and more as it expands into additional retail outlets. (Copies are also available by mail from the zine's Instagram page.) The zine represents a true labor of love for its creator, Greg Longstreet — and a way of celebrating and extending his family's multigenerational history in the entertainment industry.
A veteran publicist who focuses on auteur filmmakers, Longstreet entered the business as a teen actor in the 1980s (the first issue of "Ritual" includes a funny and painful tale of getting cut out of what he thought would be his big break, the Lea Thompson comedy "Casual Sex"). "Ritual" is largely a love letter to the films of that era, but also to the kinds of upstart magazines that young people consumed to learn about pop culture — magazines like "VIBE," which gave Longstreet his first job out of college.
Working for "VIBE" as a hip-hop obsessed twentysomething made Longstreet fall in love with magazines, and he was already in love with movies. "Growing up in L.A., it's all around you," Longstreet told IndieWire, noting that his grandfather Stephen was a novelist and screenwriter and his dad Harry and stepmom Renee were writer-producers in television. "They were sort of blue-collar industry — they weren't the Steven Bochcos of the world. They made a living at it going from show to show."
Longstreet's exposure to the business was limited until his parents became showrunners on the TV series "Fame" when he was a senior in high school. "Every day, I would drive to the MGM/UA lot in Culver City and just hang out," Longstreet said. Longstreet had acted in school and started going out on auditions, but nothing ever really took off for him. "I would get callbacks, but the only part I landed was in 'Casual Sex,' and I ended up on the cutting room floor, which was devastating."
Longstreet always felt he would do something in the entertainment business, but left college unsure of what that would mean. In his spare time while working at "Vibe," he started writing screenplays, and eventually he sold a spec to producer Joel Silver. "I thought, 'Oh, I'm a writer now. That's my new career,'" Longstreet said. He had a couple more sales, but nothing actually got made and he started to see screenwriting less as a joy than a grind.
"There are writers who just love sitting in a room being creative," Longstreet said. "For me, I was so in love with movies from such a young age that it wasn't only about that. The audience was important. I equate it to painting a painting and not being able to show it to anyone." Longstreet wanted to feel like he was contributing to the industry in a more concrete way, so he pivoted again.
"I was good at pitching, and I loved artists," Longstreet said. "It was 2004 and I was already in my 30s, too old to become an agent or manager." Longstreet asked a publicist friend, Staci Wolfe, if he could just come work in the office answering phones. "I wanted to learn a trade and master it from the ground up, like if I was training to be a grip or a gaffer. She gave me an opportunity and I learned a lot of amazing stuff from her."
Longstreet realized he had found his calling and worked his way up in the publicity industry until he was able to start repping his own clients, many of whom were filmmakers he revered before he ever got a chance to work with them. Along the way, he says he found his people — not just at work but around town at theaters like the New Beverly and Vista that now carry his zine. "Those theaters are really about film fans, which plays into the spirit of the zine," Longstreet said, adding that one of the things he loves about the communal filmgoing experience is learning how other people in the industry do their jobs.
"I love meeting the people that make this town work," Longstreet said. "Whether you're selling popcorn at the Vista or you're an assistant or a manager or a producer, that's been the joy of this job, getting to be in the mix with the people who hold Hollywood together. And you know, I've been doing this for over 20 years now, so 'Ritual' is a way of putting everything I've experienced into something. I'm never going to write an autobiography, but in a way this is my autobiography."
As Longstreet sees it, "Ritual" provides an opportunity not only for writers like Patton Oswalt to write about his favorite novels adapted into film or Mike Ryan to wax rhapsodic about the virtues of Kevin Bacon's "White Water Summer," but for Longstreet himself to connect the Hollywood of today to his family's show business biography. " I'm trying to retain some family history because I feel like it wasn't really something my dad pushed on us," Longstreet said. "'Ritual' is a piece of that."
When reading the book "Mailroom," for example, Longstreet discovered that one of his grandfather's novels inspired CAA president and Universal Studios executive Ron Meyer to become an agent. "I want to tell that story," Longstreet said, adding that his family tradition is continuing with his daughter Casey, who works in marketing at Warner Bros.
"If she has kids and continues the legacy, I value that. It's like a family business, lik...
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