Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Heller.
Hi Alex, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I guess the beginning of my time in entertainment was in New York when I started doing standup comedy. I was living on my brother’s sofa, working an internship and taking an improv class at UCB when I realized that all the people who I admired the most in the comedy business had started in Standup. So I went to an open mic night and- I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing- but I did pretty well and was immediately addicted. Sometimes I wish I’d done terribly and just quit since my life would’ve been so much less complicated.
Anyway, I did whatever I could to stay in New York so that I could keep doing comedy, always with a view to honing my chops and becoming a writer-producer. I always wanted to be someone who wasn’t in front of the camera. I fell in with Caroline Rhea, who mentored me- I remember our first meeting, where she asked me to do 5 minutes in her living room- and, as I got better she started taking me on the road to open for her. It was an incredible experience and I’m really grateful to have had a mentor like her.
Eventually, a good friend and I wrote a pilot that got some big producers attached and we started coming out to LA, then eventually moved here. That’s when I had to leave the country because my Visa wasn’t able to be renewed. I took a job at Just For Laughs, the comedy festival, and started working for their TV Development and Programming teams…and then the pandemic happened.
I was stuck in Montreal living in what I thought would be a temporary room with two guys- Eddie and Frankie- who were 43-year-old best friends from high school. They smoked a lot of weed and watched a lot of Iron Man, and I started planning my next move. I figured that, while I had some experience on the creative side of things, specifically as a writer, I needed to learn more about actual filmmaking and the business side of entertainment. I applied to AFI as a producer and got in. Now I’m back in LA and excited to be making movies!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
By far the biggest struggle has been my Visa. It’s such a complicated process, and as a young comic in New York, you really don’t think about that kind of thing. You’re doing 3-5 shows a night, just trying to get better, not thinking about who your lawyer is or how many credits you can accumulate to make a good case for an O-1.
Other than that, it was still (and remains!) extremely hard. Self-doubt, competition, money…there are so many reasons NOT to do this. But when it’s going well, it’s the greatest thing.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At AFI I’m focused on bridging the gap between “serious” film and comedy. If you ask people in the industry, a lot of them will tell you that comedy is the hardest thing to do. But at the same time, it gets so little respect from a craft perspective. It’s rare to see a comedy of any kind in an awards race. So I wanted to spend my time at AFI learning as much from my colleagues who are making art films and shamelessly steal those techniques for my own purposes.
Truthfully, I love comedies of all types, and that’s why I love being a producer. Working with different writers and directors (and also finding the right creatives for projects that I’ve originated myself) is so rewarding. The dream is to work on several different comedy projects at once, each one a reflection of the unique group that’s involved. An unscripted show with a friend from my standup days. A more personal, low-budget feature with a director from AFI. A big, goofy studio project. That’s the dream.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Paying off my student loans. Honestly, if I could be making comedy movies, be debt-free, and have enough money to be like “I’ll just take an Uber” and not actively worry about the cost- that’s a win.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @originalheller
