Filmmaker of the Week Ali Keller

Filmmaker of the Week – Ali Keller

Episode 36 of Filmmaker of the Week featuring Ali Keller!

Give us a brief introduction of yourself, where you’re from originally and where you are now if different

My name is Ali Keller. I’m originally from Massapequa on Long Island and I now live in Astoria Queens so not too far from home.

 

What is it that first got you into the world of filmmaking?

Technically my first intro into filmmaking was working on broadcast theater productions. I think my first was Sweeney Todd with Live for Lincoln Center. That was the first time I was in a room with a camera team, but really my filmmaking career started with Zero Issue directed by Jim Fagan. I met Jim through a theater company and on the Live for Lincoln Center projects. We did some theater together and then he went more into TV and stayed in theater. And a few years later I reached out to him to grab a coffee and ask him about how to get more into film. (I was writing for theater and musical theater and always loved TV and movies and didn’t know how to write for it. And wanted to learn how something goes from idea to distribution.) And it was one of those fated timing things. He was just starting the Zero Issue process and asked if I’d be interested in interviewing for an Associate Producer position. And I got it and I learned a lot about the writing and filmmaking process on that job, and fell in love with producing as much as writing and the rest is history.

 

Share a little bit about your specialty in the film world

I think for writing my specialty is writing character driven pieces that make you question what’s really going on before it’s revealed in the piece. I tend to write a lot of dark comedies, funny dramas, or comedic horror pieces. The one exception to that is to have & to hold – which was a pandemic project where I had to prove to myself, I could write something sentimental and happy. Just to know I could.

As far as producing, I think my skill is protecting my team and their project. I think as artists sometimes we forget we’re also people and we need things. I like being the person on set that reminds them someone cares and has their back. I listen to everyone on that personal level and in a professional sense. Everyone has to be really tunnel visioned on their job, my job is to protect the whole. If we’re about to make a decision that contradicts something I heard earlier – like we’re about to purchase something they want in the moment but it means they can’t have something they said was essential to the film, I can remind them and make sure they don’t have any regrets later.

 

 What has been your most challenging project to date?

That’s a great question. Definitely Seven Fishes. It was my first time self-producing and it is the most vulnerable thing you can do. I saw other people go through it and totally thought I’d be fine. I had written. I had produced. How hard could it be to do both? So hard. The first time is so hard. But I learned so much. So when I produced to have & to hold, it was a totally different and super fun experience.

Tell us a bit about your latest project.

Writing:

As a writer to have & to hold is my newest produced short. Between myself and the lead actress, Lisa Purrone, we won two New York City Artist Corps Grants to make the project. And the script is currently a semifinalist at the Atlanta Film Festival, which is super cool. It’s about a young couple being forced to saying goodbye to one another. I know that doesn’t sound happy, but it’s really about trusting that love will bring you back together when you’re forced to say goodbye. Even if you just met. (I was also a producer on this.)

My script Bandit, has won a bunch of festival awards, which I’m very proud of. It’s about a cowboy-obsessed little boy holds his stepsister’s stuffed raccoon hostage in an attempt to prevent his stepmom from leaving and taking his sister with her. (It was the result of a panic I had when I had to write a wester for Daniel Talbott’s writing class and now it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written.)

And theatrically, I have two things happening. A commission with Norwegian Theatre Company Alt Eller Ingenting about how young men deal with mental health called Christen the Place. And an upcoming reading with HARP Theatricals of my experimental piece BLOOD/SWEAT/TEARS, which is a horror movie, inside of a musical, inside of play about the experience of being a female writer trying to get produced on the indie scene. It’s kind of like if Whiplash and Inception had a baby – and that baby sang like 50% of the time.

Producing:

I do the digital content for author and productivity expert Paula Rizzo and every Thursday at 2pm ET we do a live-streaming show on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube called Inside Scoop with Paula Rizzo.

I also reunited with the team that did In Defense of Civil Society to produce another one of Rafeh and Rouvan’s pieces, called When Life Gives You Lemons. It’s a satirical fable about a Little Girl who uses clever capitalism and market manipulation to take a sad lemonade stand to terrifyingly amazing heights. And then I just produced David Rosenberg’s (who people might recognize from In Defense of Civil Society) short It’s A Dog. That one is about It’s a Dog is a short film about the moment a guy goes from bald*ing* to straight up bald, and it’s about balding as the first step in a precipitous, depressing physical decline towards death. It’s about trying to hold on to your dignity even as you can’t hold on to your hair. Because it’s just hair, right? Or is it, you know, a metaphor?

I have another short film that I’m super exciting to be producing, but I can’t talk about it yet :).

 

What is one moment you’ve had in any part of the filmmaking process where you learned a really valuable lesson?

I don’t know that there’s any moment in filmmaking where I’m not learning a valuable lesson. If I had to pick just one, I’d say it was you can’t force a project to happen. It’s got its own life and timeline and if you fight with it, you’re in for a rude awakening and stressful experience.

We were supposed to shoot to have & to hold in the summer of 2021, but the week leading up to it, I looked around and thought there are so many big decisions to make and people will be scrambling to get everything done if we power through. So, I spoke with Lisa and we decided to push. It was sad, but what I had learned from other shoots was sometimes it’s better to wait and give people a little more time and support. Sometimes that’s better than making something right now because you want to. And right after we made that decision, we won grant money to really do it right. And it was a blast.

 

What are some of the 5-year goals for you as a filmmaker/creative?

A feature. I’d like to produce one. And I’d like to write one that someone else produces. Hopefully that won’t take five years since I have some things in the works, but we’ll see if what timing the universe has in mind.

There are a few short scripts I’d like to see get made – Bandit and a couple of short horror scripts. So hopefully I, or someone else can make those happen.

I’d also like to get into tv at some point. I’ve got some pilots and will keep writing them and will hopefully find my way into a writers’ room. But for now, I am very happy in film.

 

If you could work with one idol of yours, who would it be?

Grady Hendrix. Hands down. I am obsessed with his book The Final Girls Support Group and Satanic Panic.

To Have & To Hold

Name three films that have inspired you most in your journey.

I always find that so hard because my answer would change every day. I am always weirdly obsessed with Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. I just watched a Sundance short that’s being turned into a feature called Appendage by Anna Zlokovic. And Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman. And if I can add a fourth (just to prove I watch more than just horror and murder) I really love The King of Staten Island.

 

Where can folks find out more about you online?

My website is AliKellerPlaywright.com – you can basically check in on everything there. Or you can find me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.

@alikeller47 (Instagram)

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-keller-b9b72635/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ali.keller.315

 

Any last thoughts or pieces of advice to filmmakers out there?

Don’t forget why you’re making things. Don’t forget why it’s fun. Why you’re telling the story you are. It’s so easy to get caught up on whether it’s “successful” to outside eyes. Don’t worry about that. There are so many people who want to, but never write a word. Or want to make a film, but never do it. If you write it or make it, you’re successful.  Everything else is other people’s opinions. 

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