Please tell us about your book and new live show My Heart is an Idiot.
Photographer: Dan Busta
Davy with book
I wrote a book called My Heart is an Idiot. It is all about my own misadventures in love and relationships. I think it is something everyone can relate to. Everyone’s heart is an idiot in one way or another. Some of the stories are kind of heartbreaking and one thing that I will be doing in the show is sharing some of the essays in the book and some of the essays from my radio show that I have been working on for 14 years now.
Another part of the show involves this magazine I make called FOUND Magazine. It’s all notes that people found on the street, literally, people’s real notes and love letters and journal entries that someone else found in the street.
They send them off to me and I just put them together into this annual print magazine called FOUND Magazine and a series of FOUND books.
There is also a website www.foundmagazine.com where every day we put our favorites of the finds that we received the day before. We put them up on the website. A big part of the show is actually me sharing some of the findings and when I read the finds they just get really a little rowdy. I try to read them with the energy and emotion they were written with and so I end up getting a little carried away. Some of the finds are really beautiful.
You are seeing people express themselves in a very unselfconscious way. They didn’t expect anyone else to ever read these notes. They were writing a letter to a friend or even writing it to themselves. Of course you change the names. I don’t want to put anyone in an embarrassing position but there is a real beauty to the raw intimacy of these notes. It is so truthful.
My mom describes the magazine as “people watching on paper.” Another friend of mine says that it is like reality TV but real. It’s a funny way to put it. They are so real and when we laugh at people we really laugh at ourselves. I know that I have written the same love note a hundred times myself. People just tend to laugh and have a good time. I think they are really feeling exhilarated, inspired and excited to go and find stuff of their own.
Photographer: Dan Busta
Book Cover
How long ago did you start FOUND magazine?
About 10 years.
How did you first come up with the idea for the magazine?
It’s funny. There was actually a note that was on the windshield of my car one night. I used to live in Chicago. I live in Los Angeles now. When I lived in Chicago I once came up to a note on the windshield of my car addressed to Mario. Folded up and put on my windshield. My name is Davy so I thought who is Mario? I started reading the thing and it said: “Mario, I fucking hate you. You said you had to work. Why is your car here at her place? You are such a liar. I hate you. I fucking hate you.” Signed Amber. “P.S. Page me later.” Even though she was so angry and she thinks he is cheating on her with some other girl, she still kind of ends it sweet and hopeful with “PS Page me later.” It wasn’t even Mario’s car. It was my car. She was confused in the first place. I really loved that note and I thought it was interesting because it had so many different emotions going on at once.
There is some larger story there. I started showing that note to all my friends and I actually was surprised how many of them had a great find to show me. Whether it was a kid’s drawing they found in the gutter or a Polaroid picture. Some of the finds they had were amazing. All the people in the kitchen would get to see it because they would tape it to their fridge. FOUND Magazine is like a natural way for everyone to get a chance to share what they are finding with everybody else.
Was that note the most memorable found note you have ever published?
It was certainly an important one for me because it kind of sparked the idea to do something larger. I always had the hobby of finding stuff but this was the one that gave me the idea to start a magazine. Since then, there has been hundreds of insane finds. At first it was just me and a couple of my friends looking for stuff. When you crowd source the material you have literally thousands of people from every state and dozens of countries around the world sending stuff to us. We get maybe a hundred finds a week. It’s so much fun to open the mail. Reading through these really powerful glimpses of other people’s lives and exploring humanity in all its wonderfulness and wickedness. There has been dozens of favorites finds and many of them I will share that night just by reading them out loud in Miami.
Why should everyone come out to the Miami Theater Center to see the show?
It really is unlike any show they have ever seen before. People will really laugh as hard as they have laughed in a long time and they may have some tears sneak up in the corner of their eyes at some point during the night. This is just what people tell me. It means a lot to me. I get emails and people tell me they leave these events and they are looking at the world in a little bit of a new way. That means a lot to me. I am happy to hear that.
This is your first live show in Miami since 2004. What are you looking forward to the most upon your return to Miami?
I am really looking forward to the event and the stories but I am also eager to get a glimpse into the art scene of Miami. From my friends who live there I have heard about all the new galleries and I am interested in seeing things that are happening in the art, theater, music and film world in Miami. It has always been a vibrant city, a creative city, but I hear that it has really been exciting in the past few years. I will be in town long enough to get a chance to check out some of the stuff that is going on.
Photographer: Dan Busta
Davy Rothbart
Are you touring with the show?
This is just a one-off event. I did a tour of 57 cities last fall, September through December, but I did not come to Florida at all. I have some friends in Miami. They are actually shooting a film. I am going to be in a couple of scenes in the film as an actor, which is funny because I am not really an actor. So, since I am coming to town and I haven’t done an event in Miami for 10 years, I thought it would be great to set this up.
So we are getting a special and exclusive show here in Miami
Exactly. I am doing a tour right now for the film Medora. It is about a small town in Indiana where things have gotten pretty hard. They call it a meth town. It’s about a basketball team. The boys on the team are trying to overcome some challenges in their home life but also on the basketball court. It is a team that never wins so we are trying to win one game. The film actually had a television premier on PBS on March 31, 2014 and I am doing a bunch of screenings of the film this month. That is the newest project.
"My Heart is an Idiot" at the Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami Shores. 7 p.m., Friday, April 18. Admission, $10.
