Filmmaker Statement

When I moved to New York City, I bartended in a comedy club. My nights were full of tasteless jokes that made me fall in love with the city. Comedians and audience members alike were all chasing their dreams down one of our many avenues of success; Broadway, Wall Street, Madison Avenue. That’s the backdrop that drew me to Alli Brown’s script, Nuke. It’s a story about a struggling comedian who, on the night of the “big break” she has been ferociously chasing, has to confront the absurdity of a nuclear missile threat in NYC. And it leaves her to face one core question: Were my dreams worth it? In directing Nuke, I wanted to bring to the project not just my experience in the comedy club, but also my years of producing at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Because as much as Nuke is about dreams, it is also the headlines we see every day that warn us of unprecedented tensions between world powers, and how the world around us has the ability to make our biggest dreams feel so small.