Speaker 1: Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Alana Glazer.
Speaker 2: Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
Speaker 2: women who dared to pivot out of one career and
Speaker 2: into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
Speaker 2: these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Hey, she
Speaker 2: Pivots listeners Today, I'm absolutely thrilled to have the spectacular
Speaker 2: and brilliant Alana Glazer on the show. You know her,
Speaker 2: you love her from Broad City, and you're sure to
Speaker 2: fall in love with her all over again with the
Speaker 2: release of her new movie, Babes. Alana is an actress,
Speaker 2: a writer, a producer, a change maker, and a mom. Today,
Speaker 2: we're talking about her latest film, Babes, and how her
Speaker 2: personal experience shapes the creation, as well as her incredible
Speaker 2: pivot into founding Generator Collective. Alana does what Alana does
Speaker 2: best in her new movie Babes, where she uses her
Speaker 2: sharp wit and intellect to explore the multifaceted lives of
Speaker 2: women and the crazy but beautiful moments of pregnancy and
Speaker 2: the ups and the downs that come with navigating life.
Speaker 3: All of it.
Speaker 2: It's in theaters right now, so grab your friends and
Speaker 2: get your tickets today. But of course Alana's many ventures
Speaker 2: don't stop there. Recognizing the need for real, impactful change,
Speaker 2: she co founded Generator Collective after the twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 2: and as someone who's worked in politics and is now
Speaker 2: working in culture change, I absolutely love what Alana is
Speaker 2: doing over a Generator. She makes politics accessible, engaging, exactly
Speaker 2: what we need in this political climate. From her advocacy
Speaker 2: to comedy to motherhood, Alana has always had the incredible
Speaker 2: ability to bridge her personal experiences with her professional work.
Speaker 2: I mean, her character was literally named Alana on Broad City.
Speaker 2: Excited to share this conversation, let's dive in.
Speaker 1: My name is Alana rose Blazer, and I'm a comedian
Speaker 1: and an activist.
Speaker 2: Did you always know that you wanted to be a
Speaker 2: comedian and actually also an activist?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: The activist part now that kind of like unfolded and
Speaker 1: revealed itself to me. But comedian, yes, in the way
Speaker 1: that I think people start to understand their gender and sexuality.
Speaker 1: Around seven and eight. My identity was becoming organized around
Speaker 1: being a comedian around seven and eight. When when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, it was like Rosie O'Donnell, Whoopie Goldberg,
Speaker 1: Robin Williams, Billy Crystal Musty TV Thursdays. It was like
Speaker 1: that was kind of the vibe those channels were pop in.
Speaker 1: At the time. There was so much TV to watch.
Speaker 1: I used to watch hours and hours of TV every day.
Speaker 1: It was crazy. So my brother also wanted to be
Speaker 1: a comedian, and my dad was awesome enough to be
Speaker 1: chill about letting us use the Sony camcorder. So my
Speaker 1: brother like really put me on when we were kids,
Speaker 1: and he, you know, we would make sketches from when
Speaker 1: I was four and he was eight years old. We
Speaker 1: would make hours and hours and hours of sketch comedy
Speaker 1: and it was based on SNL. We loved SNL and
Speaker 1: we loved SNL before we were like old enough to
Speaker 1: watch and throughout the years and all the generations from
Speaker 1: like Adam Sandler and Chris Farley and David Spade to
Speaker 1: like Tim Meadows and Will Ferrell and Cherio Terry and
Speaker 1: Molly Shannon to Tina and Amy. So we would make
Speaker 1: these videos in our basement for so many hours. So
Speaker 1: my grandpa, my mom's dad, Grandpa Dave David Wexler, he
Speaker 1: would make videos and called it KRIPTV was his like
Speaker 1: Joke Network, and we inherited it from him and took
Speaker 1: on that branding and then we had a rebrand GBS
Speaker 1: Glazer Broadcasting System. Yeah, we were obsessed. We were obsessed.
Speaker 1: And it's so funny at the time, like Elliott would
Speaker 1: edit in real time how you one used to do
Speaker 1: with film cameras where you're like you redo over the
Speaker 1: tape if you don't like that, take like crazy crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, when you started broad City, it was just a
Speaker 2: jump ahead a little bit. Here, wasn't that far off,
Speaker 2: Like you were doing it as a web series exactly,
Speaker 2: just sort of taking it upon yourself to organize some
Speaker 2: ideas and have the gumption to film it and like
Speaker 2: spend resources on it, you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 2: when Abby Jacobson and I were making Broad City, we
Speaker 2: were catering and waiters and nanny ing, and she worked
Speaker 2: at a bakery and then we worked together at a
Speaker 2: as sales people at a company that later my character's
Speaker 2: Alana Weser's job deal Steel Steels, was based on. And
Speaker 2: we were just like spending all our money on this
Speaker 2: web series and it was like are we crazy?
Speaker 1: You know? But even if like all the actualization that
Speaker 1: came to be of broad City. Hadn't happened, it would
Speaker 1: have been worth it to do that because we learned
Speaker 1: so much about like gathering people to make a project.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really hard to sort of fight entropy
Speaker 1: in that way and sort of will something to happen.
Speaker 1: We did it thirty five times. Actually, we had thirty
Speaker 1: five short films by the end of the two years
Speaker 1: that we made broad City the web series, And I
Speaker 1: think that obsession, that obsessiveness of making thirty five short
Speaker 1: films in two years was what proved our command over
Speaker 1: the world, Like you can't recast that shit, you know.
Speaker 1: And the first webisode we put out it was called
Speaker 1: making Change.
Speaker 4: Dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't have any cashman side wonderful? Kay I?
Speaker 1: Actually I have a ten if you could give me
Speaker 1: eight back or we're good. Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Yes, have a good day. Okay. And this
Speaker 1: is for the bagel.
Speaker 2: Thank you a lot.
Speaker 5: What the you doing?
Speaker 1: You make casture the holes for I just said thank
Speaker 1: you for the bagel. And right after that, Paul w
Speaker 1: Down's and Luccia on Yellow, the two of the three
Speaker 1: creators of Hacks, the third being Jenstatski wrote us and
Speaker 1: they were like, this is something, this is good, and
Speaker 1: they told us. I'm now remembering they told us about
Speaker 1: Ali Shakat and Elliott Page at the time had this
Speaker 1: project at HBO, and Luccia was like, you should try
Speaker 1: to like send this over to that team so they
Speaker 1: can see and if it goes, you could be writers
Speaker 1: on it. That was like what we That was what
Speaker 1: we were hoping for, to get a writing job as
Speaker 1: a duo, you know, like really couldn't have I don't
Speaker 1: like maybe maybe yes, could have dreamed. But like it's
Speaker 1: years later, it's like fifteen years later, and I still
Speaker 1: kind of am processing that the miracle happened and what
Speaker 1: we started the web series. I was twenty two. We
Speaker 1: ended the TV shows thirty two, and that was five
Speaker 1: years ago, so like fifteen years later, I'm like, damn, damn.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it's still kind of shocking. But
Speaker 1: we learned everything. We learned how to line, produce, show
Speaker 1: run right, direct, and act. And in that process of
Speaker 1: finding it, Amy Poehler had found you guys.
Speaker 2: I mean, given the fact that you had started imitating
Speaker 2: these incredible years of SNL right with Amy, I mean
Speaker 2: could you even believe it? Like, what was the first
Speaker 2: interaction in did you fall over? Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 2: have like chills thinking about it's so crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And she just texted us actually this
Speaker 1: like oral history of Broad City. It's like such the
Speaker 1: characters are almost like our little babies, you know, all
Speaker 1: of us at this point where we're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: like the characters and also young Abby and me not
Speaker 1: even knowing what was ahead. You know, it's so so wild.
Speaker 1: Amy was one of four people who started the Upright
Speaker 1: Citizens Brigade Theater. She and the UCB Improve and Sketch
Speaker 1: Group came from Chicago, planted themselves in New York and
Speaker 1: built this theater which became This is when like comedy
Speaker 1: used to be like real binary. You were either like
Speaker 1: Jim Carrier Robin Williams, or you were a stand up
Speaker 1: you know in clubs, or you were on SNL. And
Speaker 1: then like there became this like alt comedy scene and
Speaker 1: uh kind of kind of intersecting with like mumblecore, where
Speaker 1: like weirdness was allowed to kind of come up. And
Speaker 1: that's when like UCB was kind of getting into the
Speaker 1: planting its seeds in the New York comedy scene and
Speaker 1: making this like sort of third space, this third weirder space.
Speaker 1: And my brother was going to NYU and I was
Speaker 1: still in high school, and he was like telling me
Speaker 1: about this scene emerging, and we like planned to get
Speaker 1: into it when I got to the city. So Amy
Speaker 1: was one of the founders of UCB, and my brother
Speaker 1: and I and Abby at the same time time had
Speaker 1: been taking classes there. And I think it was almost
Speaker 1: like we prepared for the opportunity to meet her because
Speaker 1: we asked her to be in our thirty fifth webisode,
Speaker 1: this the finale, and so then we have this like
Speaker 1: huge portfolio of work that she could look at, and
Speaker 1: we didn't ask her to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: We asked her to you know, feature in it. It
Speaker 1: was a cold ask, and we were like a generation
Speaker 1: a part where our teachers had been her students. Before
Speaker 1: she got on SNL, way before Parks, she was teaching improv.
Speaker 1: This was like funny, like funny enough, I think years ago,
Speaker 1: like in her I don't know whatever press periods, she
Speaker 1: was always like I could always fall back on teaching
Speaker 1: improv again always, you know, can you imagine taking improv
Speaker 1: from Amy Poehler like that is magic and then also
Speaker 1: also funny because like, sure, I can idealize her, but
Speaker 1: she was probably a human being and complex and tired
Speaker 1: at some points or annoyed at some points, Like that
Speaker 1: is just so funny to imagine. So our improv teacher,
Speaker 1: like the head of UC at the time, had been
Speaker 1: her student, and we were like, would you ever consider
Speaker 1: forwarding an email to her? You know, like we didn't
Speaker 1: even like ask very directly, but he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's gonna love this. And then it turned out she
Speaker 1: had heard about us already. And then the ass was
Speaker 1: so I think finite and specific and you could grasp
Speaker 1: it right. It's a one scene featuring in one scene,
Speaker 1: and we'll shoot it wherever, wherever the hell you want.
Speaker 1: So she chose around the corner from her house. She
Speaker 1: has two boys under four years old. At this point,
Speaker 1: she and her baby and her youngest her nanny, walked
Speaker 1: around the corner from her apartment. We were already set up,
Speaker 1: ready to go, and we got her out in an hour.
Speaker 1: My parents drove from Long Island and we filmed out
Speaker 1: the back of their car. The director and DP of
Speaker 1: that episode shooting a camera out the trunk of the
Speaker 1: prius and Amy and us were running down Cherry Lane.
Speaker 1: I mean, just crazy without me, save yourself.
Speaker 3: You just leave her one set in my bag a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm telling you, it's like still, I'm just like, damn,
Speaker 1: was that a dream? You know, Like I'm so oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, so grateful for these memories in my mind
Speaker 1: and body. So we had a good time, Like we
Speaker 1: had a We got along very well and like lightly
Speaker 1: touched on expanding and we were like already planning to
Speaker 1: pitch it and writing a pilot to uh to pitch
Speaker 1: and go to LA for a couple months and try
Speaker 1: to sell it. And I feel like Jonah Hill was
Speaker 1: like also looking at the web series and we were
Speaker 1: like yeah, Like Jonah Hill is like you know, asked
Speaker 1: about it, just like yeah, yeah, and she was like okay,
Speaker 1: all right. But then afterwards we like sent her the
Speaker 1: episode and we had created these parties around a season
Speaker 1: one and a season two, so we had this event
Speaker 1: around the season two and people were like dying that
Speaker 1: she was on screen when we showed it, and then
Speaker 1: we formally asked her if she would want to attach
Speaker 1: as executive producer and she did and we were planning
Speaker 1: already to go to La and pitch it, but this
Speaker 1: time we were bringing Amy with us and it was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: We met her after that, after she agreed to be
Speaker 1: a part of it, and we had a pitch in
Speaker 1: a script, but we really needed her scope and her purview.
Speaker 1: We met up for lunch and she had like a
Speaker 1: legal pad with notes about what she loved about thirty
Speaker 1: four of the webisodes and that I was like floating
Speaker 1: out of my body.
Speaker 3: Before they knew it.
Speaker 2: Broad City was picked up and greenlit by Comedy Central,
Speaker 2: and it quickly had a cult following.
Speaker 3: Throughout its five season run.
Speaker 2: The show received critical acclaim and has been ranked among
Speaker 2: the best television shows of the twenty tens. Night They
Speaker 2: are the creators, writers, and stars of Comedy Central's Great
Speaker 2: broad City.
Speaker 6: Plea was welcome.
Speaker 3: Ho me tell you're sending a lot of geyser. Come on,
Speaker 3: I've not seen the show.
Speaker 4: It is very funny.
Speaker 2: I probably it's called broad City.
Speaker 1: You can watch it Wednesday night, ten thirty on Comedy Central.
Speaker 3: That's Abby and Alana everybody.
Speaker 2: But I feel like there's so many pieces in there
Speaker 2: that are applicable for people in any industry in any phase,
Speaker 2: Like you know, you guys were scrappy and putting it
Speaker 2: together and you willed it and you put the work
Speaker 2: in and you put it together and there's this dream
Speaker 2: icon Amy Poehler, and you found a way not just
Speaker 2: to get to her, but also to make it workable
Speaker 2: for her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like there's this like the scrappiness is something
Speaker 1: that I'm still accepting about myself. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: like it's kind of entire like a sense of entitlement,
Speaker 1: Like shouldn't it be more like streamlined or sleek the process?
Speaker 1: Like even this movie Babes Babes was as scrappy as
Speaker 1: making broad City, the web series like crazy. And Pamela
Speaker 1: Adlon is so scrappy too, And Michelle Buto has been
Speaker 1: doing comedy for twenty three years. I mean we just
Speaker 1: did Hoda and Jenna the other morning and it was
Speaker 1: like a trivia question she used to do, like stand
Speaker 1: up in a strip club and her payment was like
Speaker 1: hot food, you know, like we have just And Pamela
Speaker 1: is the scrappiest, Like the texture of her voice is
Speaker 1: her character, you know what I mean, Like she's down
Speaker 1: to get down and dirty, and like you know when
Speaker 1: we were making Babes. I was like, damn, like I
Speaker 1: wish this was. It was an indie movie, it was
Speaker 1: a small budget. We made it like hardcore. And Jeff
Speaker 1: Kimmer cinematographer, an elegant man, a man of beauty, like
Speaker 1: made this movie look like it cost twenty five million dollars,
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars. It looks like a nor Efron movie,
Speaker 1: or a or a Rob Reiner or a jud movie.
Speaker 1: But like it was so scrappy and it was seven
Speaker 1: million dollars. It was a scrappy indie movie that especially
Speaker 1: in New York City. Your dollar doesn't go afoot in
Speaker 1: New York City. And I don't know talking about this
Speaker 1: today and like remembering how that was actually the sort
Speaker 1: of like I'm thinking of guitar string, like the vibration
Speaker 1: on which we were meeting Amy, It's like that's who
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 2: As I do these interviews, it's always so interesting to
Speaker 2: live in both the past and the present with each guest,
Speaker 2: to listen to them as they discover their connections between
Speaker 2: what they did pre pivot and how it brought them
Speaker 2: to this moment. After the advertisements, Alana talks about her present,
Speaker 2: her latest project, Babes, which lives in that same guitar
Speaker 2: string she spoke about in Doing What She Does Best.
Speaker 2: Alana and her co writer Joshua Binowitz ridge the complexities
Speaker 2: of friendship, pregnancy, and parenting, all while being hilarious and
Speaker 2: deeply honest. It's a movie that showcases the wit and
Speaker 2: intelligence we all know and love for Milana more after
Speaker 2: the break. Okay, So I want to hear about Babes
Speaker 2: as a parent and specifically as a mom of three.
Speaker 2: I was so excited when I heard about this film.
Speaker 1: Babes is the story of two best friends who are
Speaker 1: in very different places their lives. Don played by Michelle Buteaux,
Speaker 1: has two kids and a husband, sort of a standard situation,
Speaker 1: and my character Eden is a free spirit and spontaneous
Speaker 1: and naive, completely clueless to the responsibilities that it takes
Speaker 1: to have a child. And when she gets pregnant by
Speaker 1: a one night stand, she decides to keep the baby
Speaker 1: and it tests the friendship of Eden and Down played
Speaker 1: by me and Michelle Buteau, this movie is I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, gotta be honest.
Speaker 3: It's hilarious.
Speaker 1: It's so funny you're missing jokes in the theater it's
Speaker 1: worth seeing in the theater to laugh with your damn neighbor,
Speaker 1: and then the cries sneak up on you. People keep
Speaker 1: telling me I did not know I was gonna be
Speaker 1: crying three times, and I'm loving it. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: get addicted to those tears.
Speaker 4: Crying my eyes out. I just got out of the
Speaker 4: New Babes movie. It was like a release premiere thing,
Speaker 4: and they did like a Q and A in the beginning. Anyway,
Speaker 4: Alana Glazer and Michelle Buteau. I love this movie so much.
Speaker 4: It really touches on like how friendships change after one
Speaker 4: or the other have a baby in the most beautiful
Speaker 4: way possible. Bitch. All I can say is, go watch
Speaker 4: it now, bitch, go watch it. Really.
Speaker 1: Am I pregnant? Yeah, single mom? She may not keep the.
Speaker 2: Baby in choice right right? Single that's friend gets so
Speaker 2: screwed over in adulthood.
Speaker 1: You and me, we're family. I'm scared of the decision
Speaker 1: I made, but it just feels like destiny, and this
Speaker 1: is Destiny's in file.
Speaker 2: The baby.
Speaker 1: So I am taking more pleasure in this press period
Speaker 1: for my new movie Babes that I have in press
Speaker 1: periods prior. I'm taking more genuine pleasure, enjoying it more
Speaker 1: than I have before.
Speaker 6: West twenty twenty four. I am beyond thrilled to be
Speaker 6: here with the team behind Babes. Your movie was wonderful.
Speaker 6: I love so much about it, in particular your chemistry together,
Speaker 6: your friendship. It just like radiates off the screen and
Speaker 6: it filled my heart.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, this movie is so good.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 6: And it's so funny, and you're so good in it,
Speaker 6: and I'm just I'm thrilled to death for it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, it's are you? Are you excited?
Speaker 4: Boy?
Speaker 1: It's coming out? When is it coming out? It's coming
Speaker 1: out in select cities May seventeenth, and expands and expands
Speaker 1: the twenty fourth.
Speaker 4: Did you yourself? Personally?
Speaker 5: Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess, Hilarious, Charlamage, the guy.
Speaker 3: We are the breakfast club. We got some special guest
Speaker 3: in the building who keep a job.
Speaker 1: Both from the new film day. Also, press is like
Speaker 1: such an insane part of the job.
Speaker 3: But to do it with Michelle we have been just left.
Speaker 1: Its sloopy.
Speaker 2: I don't I haven't figured out my dosage yet, but
Speaker 2: I don't need it.
Speaker 1: Just do press, you know what I mean? So Babes
Speaker 1: is interesting.
Speaker 2: I feel like this through line between Broad City with
Speaker 2: a number of pieces that you did in between and
Speaker 2: then coming now to Babes. Like the reason that I
Speaker 2: do this podcast is to kind of show like the
Speaker 2: intersection of personal and professional when we have this narrative
Speaker 2: that everything professional we do is just for professional factors,
Speaker 2: like that's a good job, it's a good movie, like's
Speaker 2: I made that decision, And then we also try to
Speaker 2: cover up things when we make them for personal reasons,
Speaker 2: so like if you leave the workforce to like have
Speaker 2: a kid or take care of a sick parent or
Speaker 2: move or something, we like come up with these ridiculous
Speaker 2: reasons why we did instead of just saying why we
Speaker 2: made these choices, Like how have you thought about this
Speaker 2: intersection of personal and professional?
Speaker 1: I feel like there's this conversation ten years ago of
Speaker 1: like women compartmentalizing, and it like feels so like harsh
Speaker 1: and untrue and binary to me of kind of what
Speaker 1: you're saying of like separating these pieces and keeping them distant.
Speaker 1: It has been hard to sift through and organize and
Speaker 1: understand and hold all of it because Abby's name is
Speaker 1: Abby and my name is Alana and that was our
Speaker 1: character's names. And I chose Wexler and that's my mom's
Speaker 1: maiden name. And Abbie chose Abrams for her character's last name,
Speaker 1: and that's her grandma's made a name. I think a
Speaker 1: big something that's been that feels very different for me
Speaker 1: in a personal sense is that broad City was like
Speaker 1: this character that I wished I could be. She was
Speaker 1: so free and she was so wild, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think, especially once Broad City became a thing, even
Speaker 1: a web series that people knew, but especially on TV,
Speaker 1: like a sort of painful self awareness kicked in where
Speaker 1: I was not as free as the character was. And
Speaker 1: with Babes it's been it's been so you know, broad City.
Speaker 1: I learned absolutely everything I've learned. I learned everything I
Speaker 1: know about this business from Broad City. We made fifty episodes,
Speaker 1: and ending broad City choicefully was like also kind of
Speaker 1: a miracle, you know, creatively, I think as artists it's
Speaker 1: a rare opportunity to be able to choose an ending.
Speaker 1: And with Babes, I mean, just the pleasure I took
Speaker 1: in the process, having gone through all the training in
Speaker 1: the boot camp of broad City, it was like it
Speaker 1: was so fun I felt like I was returning to
Speaker 1: camp actually, and it was really fun. And I think
Speaker 1: my character of Eden and Babes like I'm pushing less
Speaker 1: and more just like being being her more rather than
Speaker 1: like conjuring and adding and jumping and leaping. You know,
Speaker 1: it was I think I had a sense of being
Speaker 1: enough much more during Babes than in Broad City. And
Speaker 1: now my daughter's three, having a real kiddo, not just
Speaker 1: like a new born baby, I feel so rooted, and
Speaker 1: I feel like in the same way that I continue
Speaker 1: to discover things about my kN and she keeps unfolding
Speaker 1: and uncovering herself to me.
Speaker 2: I find the same thing with the movie.
Speaker 1: It's meaning. You know, we made the movie, we fucking
Speaker 1: did it, But then it's layers of meaning keep uncovering
Speaker 1: themselves to me, and it's magical.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a really interesting point about like the
Speaker 2: personal and professional that you did get to end it
Speaker 2: on your own terms. Was it because there were personal
Speaker 2: factors at play like that you were just done? I mean,
Speaker 2: as you're talking about them, thinking, oh my god, I cannot.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was not as funny or talented as you,
Speaker 2: But like if I had put something out that was
Speaker 2: a version of my twenty two year old self. I
Speaker 2: would have been cringe mortified by it immediately.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and like I'm you know, it's like I
Speaker 1: actually like haven't watched it since it aired, because it
Speaker 1: is like the most intense, nuanced specific photo albums or
Speaker 1: home videos. You know, it's like personal to me, and
Speaker 1: it's like I'm laugh and I'm crying. It's like so
Speaker 1: so emotional, but like it cracks me up. I love it.
Speaker 1: I am so proud of the series and of this
Speaker 1: as art and as a record of a time. But
Speaker 1: then there's also this cringe factor just that time has
Speaker 1: passed and that we're human and that I'm like X
Speaker 1: number of years further along my personal timeline. You know.
Speaker 1: We also felt like we had so thoroughly covered our
Speaker 1: twenties and wanted to push these characters into their new chapters,
Speaker 1: but not cover those chapters. You know. Creatively, we really
Speaker 1: were like this has been so funny and good and
Speaker 1: we are so proud of this, and it really felt
Speaker 1: naturally like it between us came to an end. You know,
Speaker 1: our contract was for seven seasons, and it was a
Speaker 1: really uncomfortable and painful conversation A series of conversations that
Speaker 1: we had to have to end it, but it felt
Speaker 1: like we really again. I was thirty two by the
Speaker 1: time the TV show ended twenty two when the web
Speaker 1: series started, so a third of my life I had
Speaker 1: been in this broad city vortex, which I loved and
Speaker 1: I still love, but had had to pull my head
Speaker 1: out of the sand to see who else I am
Speaker 1: and how we started this conversation, you know, where I'm like,
Speaker 1: these patterns they're not me, you know, they're not me.
Speaker 1: And my husband and I talk about it with just
Speaker 1: each of us, both of us all the time, where
Speaker 1: it's like these anxieties, these stories, even these desires and
Speaker 1: hopes and dreams. Like I also had tricked myself into
Speaker 1: thinking that productivity was an identity, you know, or a
Speaker 1: personality trait or something about me. And I've always been
Speaker 1: ambitious and generative, but there's such external factors and such
Speaker 1: like capitalism embedded in encouraging productivity, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to be a worker twenty four
Speaker 1: to seven. I also just want to be like a
Speaker 1: mushy pile that my kid can jump on, you know,
Speaker 1: Like it's I'm so I feel so grateful for having
Speaker 1: the opportunity to have a healthy kid, because it's just
Speaker 1: like those moments where the way that you think life
Speaker 1: is organized just isn't.
Speaker 3: Life always has a way of surprising us.
Speaker 2: I never thought i'd leave politics, but then I had
Speaker 2: my three kids and everything changed. As for a lot
Speaker 2: of the opposite happened to her after the twenty sixteen election,
Speaker 2: and she made another of her pivots into political organizing.
Speaker 2: When we come back, a lot of talks about founding
Speaker 2: Generator Collective and what's ahead with this year's election looming. Okay,
Speaker 2: I want to make sure that we're also cover your
Speaker 2: pivot into starting Generator.
Speaker 5: So twenty sixteen hit and Donald Duck as I like
Speaker 5: to call him, was elected president, and I found myself
Speaker 5: questioning things the way what this country is, who.
Speaker 1: I am in it? And I think also as a
Speaker 1: white person, I like really had to look at the
Speaker 1: system operating as intended and you know, you know, rather
Speaker 1: than being like, but this is awful, and it's like
Speaker 1: it actually was truly built this way or organized around
Speaker 1: this principle. And so I think, like my values that
Speaker 1: I I grew up with and also you know, expressed
Speaker 1: on broad city started, I started seeing them more clearly
Speaker 1: and being able to claim them and claim my role
Speaker 1: in advocacy and activism. And you know, we did a
Speaker 1: lot of different things. Generator as a collective had conversation
Speaker 1: like I, I'll host conversations with you know, I was
Speaker 1: lucky to talk to Gloria Steinem and Amanda Winn and
Speaker 1: Eric Holder and Jumanni Williams, the public Advocate for New
Speaker 1: York and Cynthia Nixon when she was running against Cuomo,
Speaker 1: which was an unbelievable Mitzvah dance party is called Jenny Socials,
Speaker 1: where we dance for twenty or thirty minutes at a time.
Speaker 1: Then we take the little breaks to get cheat sheets
Speaker 1: for the voting booth for whatever upcoming election is next.
Speaker 1: And then when COVID hit, we actually were on tour.
Speaker 1: I was doing a stand up tour in every city
Speaker 1: I was going to adding a Jenny Social onto that city.
Speaker 1: Because of lockdown, we couldn't do these Generator conversations. We
Speaker 1: couldn't do Jenny Socials, So we pivoted to digital messaging
Speaker 1: and owned our sweet spot there. We found that we
Speaker 1: can actually reach more people with cheat sheet for the
Speaker 1: voting booth as digital graphics and cover more ground. You
Speaker 1: can actually take this cheat sheet into the voting booth
Speaker 1: in Key States. Welcome to microdos democracy parrot by Generator. Okay,
Speaker 1: we are exhausted. Every four years we get screamed at
Speaker 1: for months about the upcoming presidential election and it's just
Speaker 1: it's just gross and a blows. So we're here because
Speaker 1: we don't want to trip balls on democracy next year.
Speaker 1: We want a microdose, take a little bit consistently over
Speaker 1: time to create foundational change. As a white led organization,
Speaker 1: we hear a generator collective are in a safer position
Speaker 1: to call out white people.
Speaker 4: So here goes.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, forty one percent of white millennials voted
Speaker 1: for Trump. What have you read a voting plan yet?
Speaker 3: Because it's not nothing. It's like who are you voting for?
Speaker 4: Work? Are you witting early?
Speaker 1: Are you voting asentee? Are you voting in person?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Make about a plan today? So you heard it here first,
Speaker 1: going to keep the House and keep the Senate. And
Speaker 1: this is the year that the most Gen Z and
Speaker 1: millennials are going to turn out for the mentrumps.
Speaker 2: You know what? So I'm asking people like, what is
Speaker 2: like the big thing that was so big that it
Speaker 2: cataclysmically changed your perspective and then you change your career.
Speaker 2: And I anticipated COVID coming up a lot, and it does.
Speaker 2: But something that came up that comes up more than
Speaker 2: I anticipated was twenty sixteen and the election of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: It actually comes up a lot. And like in in stories,
Speaker 2: I didn't think I would hear. I mean, yours is
Speaker 2: about founding a political organization, so I thought I might
Speaker 2: hear it. I don't know, but you know, you know,
Speaker 2: it really does come up a lot, which indicates to
Speaker 2: me when I think about when I kind of put
Speaker 2: my political strategists hat back on that there's something very
Speaker 2: visceral for women about that moment. It's not intellectual, but
Speaker 2: it's actually visceral and emotional. And although we get into
Speaker 2: like you know, this polling and this horse racing and
Speaker 2: the strategy right now talking about the presidential that thing
Speaker 2: will take over when we get into the fall. I'm
Speaker 2: hoping and that it's not going to be an intellectual moment,
Speaker 2: but it's going to be a visceral moment.
Speaker 1: I hope you're right, because I don't want him in
Speaker 1: office again. But you know, it's just I think, like
Speaker 1: the to once again see in the past seven months,
Speaker 1: the system operating is intended, this harsh way in which
Speaker 1: the world works, and we've accepted for so long, and
Speaker 1: it's just it's tough. And like what you say about
Speaker 1: the youth and this headline being a theme, a recurring themes,
Speaker 1: it's just the one thing that's different is that we're
Speaker 1: communicating at a higher speed and higher volume than we
Speaker 1: ever have before in human history. But I'm definitely just
Speaker 1: like in comedy, I'm trying to grow with my generation
Speaker 1: and keep you know, entertaining them and making them laugh,
Speaker 1: but also making a space in comedy, making a space
Speaker 1: for them to reflect and feel, and in politics, make
Speaker 1: a space for people to have the minimum civic engagement
Speaker 1: they need to change the system at a foundational level.
Speaker 2: So what is that going to look like for you
Speaker 2: over the next couple of months. You think you're going
Speaker 2: to stick with the online content, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: really know, Like I know we're sticking with the online content.
Speaker 2: I know we're going to be doing.
Speaker 1: Some We did also like a microdos democracy series where
Speaker 1: you know, people don't want to be like tripping balls
Speaker 1: on democracy and it's like vote vote and forced into
Speaker 1: a corner. So I believe we will be doing a
Speaker 1: cheat sheet for the voting booth and or a microdos democracy.
Speaker 1: But damn, this year, like things have really changed. You know,
Speaker 1: things were I think clear until I don't even know
Speaker 1: how to say this, but things have changed. I mean
Speaker 1: things have changed in the past seven months that have
Speaker 1: made I think the task at hand even more nuanced
Speaker 1: than before. People were like struggling to get it up
Speaker 1: for Biden in twenty twenty even and it's different. The
Speaker 1: landscape has changed. And something you know, so funny to hear, like, well,
Speaker 1: the youth even engage in politics. Oh my god, now
Speaker 1: we've seen eight years later, they're running politics and they're
Speaker 1: resisting the two party system within from within from the
Speaker 1: White House, like these young people who are working in government.
Speaker 1: I think those young people know more than I do.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I know that I know is
Speaker 1: how to say something funny and quickly. But it's like
Speaker 1: the ingredients for the stew are all there, but like
Speaker 1: the proportions are changing.
Speaker 2: So what is one thing that at the time you
Speaker 2: thought was like a total negative, Like I'm never going
Speaker 2: to get myself out of this I'm done, and now
Speaker 2: you see it in retrospect. It really launched you to
Speaker 2: where you are now.
Speaker 1: I got into NYU kind of by the skin of
Speaker 1: my teeth. I got into like, you know, I applied
Speaker 1: early decision to try to ensure a spot, and I
Speaker 1: got into this, like I didn't get into the normal
Speaker 1: college I was applying to. I got into this like
Speaker 1: general studies program more for like I think kids who
Speaker 1: like went to public school and needed to catch up
Speaker 1: on the basics before going to like the aftroviologe and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I had all this financial aid and like
Speaker 1: had all this like debt for you know, student debt,
Speaker 1: and all of those things were part of what motivated
Speaker 1: me to get into comedy. I wasn't in like, you know,
Speaker 1: a normal program there, and everybody in that school was
Speaker 1: working really hard to get to the college they had
Speaker 1: originally applied to, and the financial aid. I was like
Speaker 1: just obsessed with like working and saving money and being
Speaker 1: able to do, you know, to live and you know,
Speaker 1: then I learned how to make that money for broad
Speaker 1: City and spend it on the web series, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was really freed me up to be in the
Speaker 1: comedy scene night, every night, doing sketch, stand up and
Speaker 1: improv in those early days, starting at nineteen. So you know,
Speaker 1: while I felt like felt like I had been like
Speaker 1: Jack in a way and sort of like renting a seat,
Speaker 1: it was the motivation that really actually catapulted me straight
Speaker 1: into the comedy scene, where I staked out a permanent claim.
Speaker 2: You hit the perfect note, you got it all, you
Speaker 2: nailed it. Thank you so much, Alana, Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for having me. You're just so great to have
Speaker 2: a conversation with.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: You're the best.
Speaker 2: Alana still lives in New York with her adorable daughter
Speaker 2: and husband. I truly don't know how she does it,
Speaker 2: because not only is Babes the hit comedy of the year,
Speaker 2: but she's still running Generator Collective as a way to
Speaker 2: get us politically active and motivated.
Speaker 3: Be sure to go see Babes in theaters. It is
Speaker 3: a must see, so make a whole light of it.
Speaker 2: Get your friends, maybe even sneak in some of your
Speaker 2: snacks but you didn't hear that here, Get some popcorn.
Speaker 3: And tissues and enjoy tag us.
Speaker 2: If you go see Babes, and make sure to follow
Speaker 2: Alana on Instagram at Alana by the way, are you
Speaker 2: as impressed as me that she snagged that Instagram handle
Speaker 2: and her political org At Generator Collective for all the
Speaker 2: latest happenings talk.
Speaker 3: To you next week.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of she Pivots. If
Speaker 2: you made it this far, you're a true pivot So
Speaker 2: thanks for being part of this community. I hope you
Speaker 2: enjoyed this episode, and if you did leave us a rating,
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Speaker 2: Emily eda Velosik, Associate producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins,
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