When H. Alan Scott looked up through the mikvah waters, he says he saw the shadows of his past and present lives undulating above him: Poor Mormon kid. Gay man. Comedian. Cancer survivor.
Then his head broke the surface for the third time, and he felt that at last he had emerged with an identity that fit perfectly: Jew.
That was five years ago.
Now Scott, 35, is celebrating another milestone: This month he’s throwing himself a bar mitzvah.
If you think the story of a gay, former Mormon cancer survivor trying to find his place as a Jew sounds like the stuff of a movie, Scott agrees. He’s been chronicling his journey from his Mormon boyhood in the Midwest to his big Hollywood bar mitzvah in a film he’s making called “Latter Day Jew.”
Scott now lives in Los Angeles and works as a stand-up comedian and co-host of two podcasts. One, “On the Lanai,” has been featured on Fusion TV and Entertainment Weekly’s list of best podcasts of the week. Scott and co-host Kerri Doherty watch and dissect an episode of the 1980s sitcom “Golden Girls.”
Scott has over 37,000 Twitter followers, and his writing has appeared in OUT, Vice, Thought Catalogue and MTV News. READ MORE
