As a young child at primary school, Louisiana native Alicia Allain announced to her teacher that when she grew up, she wanted to work in Hollywood. At the age of 18, she moved to Los Angeles in an effort to make her dream come true.
Following an extended period making a living as a hair stylist on a number of productions, including Bonnie & Clyde: The True Story (1992), Dead Beat (1994) and The Apostle (1997), Ms. Allain moved into producing full time, working on her first film in that capacity, Notes from Underground, released in 1995.
She spoke to me while on the road with her current collaborator, John Schneider, star of The Dukes of Hazzard, Smallville and The Haves and the Have Nots, among other things, and filled me in on how they first became acquainted.
“I used to work for Robert Evans, the film producer,” she recalls, “and then I went back to Louisiana to raise my daughter. Hate Crime was then the first one out of the gate. I developed it for a few years and shot it in the latter part of 2014, and that’s how John and I met.
“Subsequently, we did Like Son and Anderson Bench and Inadmissible and we are now focusing on the next three projects we’re gonna do for the remainder of the year. They’re very broad – there’s not one particular brand that we’re going after. We’re definitely pushing the envelope in a lot of different genres.”
“One, he is an abstract thinker and he’s very quick on his feet, which I love… He doesn’t like to waste time and neither do I. We have a shorthand with each other that is unmatched in my lifetime. It’s great because it cuts a lot of the BS out and we can get down to business, which is what we’re both about.”
Alicia’s production credits include 2002’s The Badge (starring Billy Bob Thornton), Bark! (featuring Lisa Kudrow, also from 2002) and Auto Focus (starring Willem Dafoe and Rita Wilson). “I finished my first film as a producer, Notes from Underground, in 1992,” she remembers, “and I originally started off doing hair and makeup when I was 18 years old.
“I ended up marrying my husband at the time, Pat Dollard. He worked for the William Morris Agency and he gave me a lot of encouragement and an insight into how the studio system worked.”
“No, I’m more about helping the storyteller tell his story and shaping things that way,” replies Alicia, when asked if she’d like to move into other areas of film such as directing. “John is more the director and I’m more about putting the pieces of the puzzle together and guiding. I’m definitely not the director type.”
For more information, visit the studio website, or the Facebook page, of John Schneider Studios.
