Gifted Youth, the commercial production arm of Funny Or Die, has added director/writer/producer Alice Mathias to its roster for commercials. Having already made her mark in television and web, the multi-hyphenate Mathias recently made her foray into commercials. Most recently, she was hired by Wieden+Kennedy to direct the “Red Zone” tie-in campaign for Secret Deodorant and the NFL leading up to the 2017 Super Bowl. While Mathias has directed, produced, and written brand-direct content for the likes of Amazon, Dos Equis, Hangar 1, Jose Cuervo and Captain Morgan, the signing to Gifted Youth marks her first time being officially represented as a director for commercial work.
Mathias studied film at Dartmouth College and earned her MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she was the recipient of The Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award and The Subway Fresh Artists Award. After college, she joined IFC’s Portlandia in its first season as an intern before working her way up to become co-executive producer, and an occasional director. This led Mathias to be nominated for three Emmys as a producer on Portlandia, as well as two seasons of Documentary Now! Mathias has written and directed various projects with frequent collaborator Fred Armisen including Paul Simon at the NY Auto Show, Portlandia Presents: Talkative Driver, and the web series The Dominizuelan Consulate for Broadway Video’s Hispanic content division Más Mejor. Recently she also directed the pilot for Comedy Central’s digital series This Week in Betsy, hosted by Jo Firestone.
Dal Wolf, Gifted Youth’s managing director/executive producer, first became aware of Mathias from her Red Zone spots, and immediately knew he wanted to bring her talents further into the advertising world, saying: “It’s a really great fit, she’s exactly what Gifted Youth is: Each director we work with is a different shade on the comedy spectrum.”
Wolf added: “It’s very apparent, by looking at her work, that Alice knows how to tell a story with comedy that is not only smart but also ‘ha-ha funny’ without over-complicating it.”
Mathias said of her new ad roost, “This company has been making me laugh for years. I couldn’t be more excited to start contributing to their exceptional body of work.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More