American High

Thank you.

So I've been interning at American High for, I believe, since January.

Yeah, since January.

My boss, Haley, she's been wonderful for this whole process.

yeah, yeah.

Or as some people like to refer to you, the girl who does the American high shorts.

Yes, yes.

Grace Reiter is so happy to get to spend some time with you today.

No,

this was for the Hunger Games.

But Syracuse is where American High is and where the school is.

Which

So let's quickly jump over to the news.

okay and now for some news on the news today for the news today i have two stories here first being that snl is going to have its first online creator as a host um which is really interesting that that person is going to be drewski which i think is just perfect um snl has been kind of pulling from the internet recently with its cast members like grace ryder who i've been watching on tick tock for Like three years now, she was on American High and she's just like really funny skits and really great.

And I believe Jane Wickline is also from the Internet.

And I know Veronica is also I was watching her skits on TikTok before she was on SNL.

As that era of thriving theatrical comedy wound down, Gerelich took unconventional steps in hopes of being part of the next incarnation, launching a production banner with its own film studio birthed from a decommissioned middle school in upstate New York.

And that company is American High, which in less than a decade has produced more than 20 features, most of them for Hulu.

Alongside partner Will Phelps, Gerelich has at the same time built a digital comedy operation with billions of views, landed an assortment of major brand deals, and operated a working film academy out of the company's Syracuse campus.

And now with two major October releases, American High is at an inflection point.

The first of these projects is Rolling Loud, a music festival comedy starring Owen Wilson and Matt Rife that marks the company's biggest wide theatrical release to date.

The second project, Minimum Wage, a 28 episode Netflix comedy adapted from their own viral low budget web series, is about to test whether the low cost talent and IP pipeline the company has spent years quietly building can perform on the biggest stage in streaming.

And so today we get into the thinking behind one of the more unusual companies in the comedy business.

plus what this moment means for American High and where they go from here.

And she's

also – I met her like three years – me and my friend Natalie maybe two years ago went and did American High, which is like – are you familiar with them? No, I'm not.

So it's a production company.

They bought a high school and converted it into a production office, and there's like a house around there.

And they – pay and give opportunities to and house you know people that it started like um as like you know kind of a college program but they'll like house people and they get to basically make sketches every week and there's visiting artists that come in and they have podcasts and make their own series they just made their own series um my friends julia it's the micho twins i forget who else i think hide is in this and our other friend tommy and grace all just are on this new like netflix vertical short that they're making from this and american high also like they as a production company have movie deals with Hulu.

So like my friends, Britannic, their movie pizza movie, like, again, this is also me in my, in my, in my bag right now, shouting out my friends and then the, for the future gen, the next gen, the previous gen, like, but they're, they're all getting in and, and Grace has just been working so hard.

Uh, so I'm, and, and is the loveliest.