Writer and Director Alyssa Lerner Talks About the Importance of Knowing Your Why
Alyssa Lerner is a queer comedy writer and director from Poway, CA. She combines her experiences and education to tackle themes of belonging and identity in her work in order to center and create a sense of unconditional belonging for those who are pushed to the margins of society. She is featured on the 2020 GLAAD List, a curated list of the most promising unmade LGBTQ-inclusive scripts in Hollywood. She is resident in the 2019 Black List x Women in Film Feature Lab. Her directorial debut "Bubble" won Best Narrative Short at aGLIFF32 and the audience award for best short at Frameline43 Film Festival. Jasmine D. Lowe, the Managing Editor at Q26, got the chance to interview Alyssa Lerner over the phone.
Alyssa Lerner
Jasmine D. Lowe: So, how and why did you become a writer and director?
Alyssa Lerner: I grew up doing ballet. I'm from Poway, it's this part of San Diego, and I grew up just like planning for a career in ballet. I never really thought about doing anything besides that. I didn't really know people like me could write or direct or do anything in entertainment. It wasn't until I had, I came out to my family, and because of kind of their reaction to me being queer, I knew that I kind of had to switch gears and what I wanted to do because doing ballet meant being at home a few more years after high school and auditioning and trying to get into companies.
After I came out, I was like, "I think I need to leave as soon as I can." So that meant going to college. I switched gears, I went to UC Berkeley, and I didn't know anything academic that I wanted to do. Cause I had really never thought about it, but I landed in ethnic studies, and I just learned a lot about racism and was able to place my experiences into a history that wasn't taught in public school, San Diego. I graduated kind of with this lens and mission for how I wanted to change the world, but not really a method to do it. Then I saw the Mindy project, and I realized that like Asian American women can do things in entertainment and can write for TV. It's the thing where if you don't see anyone else doing it's like, can you dream that? Anything's possible to imagine, but it's so much harder to dream it when you have to invent the dream in your mind completely.
I just had never thought of it before. I never saw it as an option. I was going to be an organizer or something. So, on a whim, I decided to apply to USC MFA in writing for film and television, and I got in. I kind of just tried to build up my comedy writing skills and learn about scripts for the first time. Eventually, I just realized how to tell the stories that I wanted to tell about my own experiences about being queer, and Asian-American. The way to do that was to direct because otherwise, you're just writing, there's a risk that your story becomes, you know, convoluted along the way, or it's very directed by someone who is white or someone who doesn't understand completely. I got into directing as a vehicle to make my stories as authentic to what I felt they could be as possible.
Jasmine: I wanted to talk about your short film, "Bubble." Was that something that took from your own background, or was it a story that you always had that you just wanted to tell?
Alyssa: So, the film is about basically a girl who is writing erotic fiction about her crush involving her in her fresh as a way to live out the things, but she's like too afraid to live out. Then her best friend asked her to send it to her. She then asks the best friend to ask her to send the writing to him because he loves love for some reason. She accidentally texted it to her crush. They decided to break into her house and delete the texts. It's about being able to tell people how you feel about them, but the reason I made this film was really because last year I made a different film that was a lot darker and it wasn't that funny.
We had done the festival circuit with it and which was so fun, but a lot of queer films are so sad. Our collective tragedy is very important. It's an important part of queer identity and like history, but after being bombarded with so many tragic representations of queerness, I really wanted to make something that just centered around queer joy and love and friendship and communities. That's where the story came from. It's not something that's ever happened to me, thankfully. I wasn't expecting to do anything with this film. I just wanted to make it to make something that would be fun to do with my friends. We made it for like $0, and I wrote it for the actor that stars in it. She's my good friend. I just wanted us to have a chance to laugh a little and not be bombarded with the pain of existing.
Jasmine: Is there a short film or feature-length film that you're working on now that you're hoping to get out there?
Alyssa: We shot "Break In" in January, and I always joke that we filmed the last kiss of 2020 because no one is allowed to touch anymore, but I'm writing a TV show right now as a staff writer on a Disney plus show called Diary of a Future President. It has a queer storyline, which is cool for a Disney show. That's basically what my days have been. Before the pandemic, we were going really hard to get a feature going. I wrote a feature that I'm trying to direct, but since the pandemic, everything sort of stalled, so it's hard to kind of say what's next, but, yeah, just writing, writing on that show, and trying to get this feature going.
Jasmine: You mentioned having to deal with scoliosis, a stutter, and having to wear an eyepatch while growing up. Like, what was that even like?
Alyssa: [Laughs] Well, luckily, it wasn't all at the same time. It was weird because, in ballet, you don't talk. If you talk, you get in trouble, and my mom is also a very powerful woman who is very comfortable speaking her mind. So, when I was younger, I never had a reason to talk, and I never had a reason to use my voice. If I did do it, at least during dance class, it would be a negative thing. So, I never really grew the ability to speak my mind at all. I had an eye patch when I was in elementary school, which was fine. I wasn't old enough for it to bother me at all. Then I had my scoliosis in high school and college, which was weird, but it was fine.
In high school, I also couldn't talk because I don't think the stutter was the actual issue. I think it was an anxiety thing, but sometimes I get caught up to this day where I get caught on words or something like that. I feel like I learned to speak a little bit later than a lot of people. Even when I was in college, every time I tried to talk, I would cry. I just had a lot of anxiety.
Jasmine: I can relate. [Laughs]
Alyssa: [Laughs] It's all to say that writing has really become my way of using my voice. I mean, obviously, I've learned how to, how to talk, but it's, it's a way that I can express myself and tell my story that's comfortable for me. That's why I think it's so important for me because I never ever shared anything for so many years. Now, my way of doing that is very indirect through film. I mean, nobody really made fun of me for all that stuff. People made fun of me for other things, but everyone gets made fun of--it wasn't a big deal.
Jasmine: What advice do you have for our young QTPOC readers who are thinking about writing their own stories and sharing it out there with the world?
Alyssa: The world is built in a way that the only people that are encouraged to write are white, cis, straight, and men. Anybody else who puts the pen to the page and puts their story down is doing a revolutionary act. The thing about revolution is that when it's in the moment, people are going to oppose it. So, you have to have a lot of confidence in yourself. You have to have confidence in yourself, you have to have your own purpose and always be able to ground yourself in your why, because nobody else is. I don't want to say nobody else is going to validate that for us, but people are less used to validating the efforts of people who haven't been validated over the years. I would just say always know your why, and any time you feel like giving up, just go back to that. Why am I writing this? And it can be because I want to or to remember this story or just because I like it. It can be so small, but queer people of color have to start out on these things, and we can't rely on anybody else to give us favors of letting us in. So, ground yourself in your why and know your purpose and just do it.
You can follow Alyssa Lerner on Twitter and Instagram at alyssalerner, and visit her website at alyssalerner.me to keep tabs on her upcoming projects.
Read the print version of this article and other stories by downloading a copy of QTYPE’s summer issue!