Jilian Alexander

Jillian A. Alexander is an American writer and production designer based in Los Angeles, California. Born on August 18, 1986, Alexander's birth certificate lists her as residing on "No Name Road" in "Zero, Mississippi". Little is known about Alexander's personal life, and her affinity for aliases and pen names makes it difficult to assess the scope of her work. Raised in the backwoods of rural Mississippi in a community called "Zero", she and her brother were largely isolated from the world. She is quoted as saying, "We didn't have cable television or anything, so MTV, Nickelodeon, all the typical 90's kid things, we didn't know about any of that stuff, we just had Simon and Garfunkel records and books". She attributes her meandering narrative writing style to time spent alone in the woods as a child, "I had a lot of time, and I spent it listening to The Doors on my Walkman, tromping around the woods with a BB gun, thinking", as well as an early ADHD diagnosis, "The school put me on Ritalin, you know, speed, when I was nine. That's when I really started writing". Alexander's unconventional art direction, often compared to Wes Anderson's mise en scène, draws on these same attributions. As a child, Alexander had a home-kit HAM radio station in Zero, Mississippi with her brother Jeremy, airing looped mixed tapes they created using Disney Storybook Cassettes and their mother's LP collection with bantering commentary and turntable tricks performed on a Fisher Price record player. It's short range meant the broadcast could only be heard on radios in their own home. Expelled from school at least ten times before reaching 9th grade, usually for outlandish offenses, Alexander often weaves these stories into her narratives, letting the characters play out her childhood follies. She is believed to possess degrees in History, Psychology, and Philosophy. Alexander has frequently collaborated with actor James Franco.