Film, theatre and television producer Michael Alden’s journey to working in the entertainment industry centers around two words: serendipity and resourcefulness.
The path to his incredibly accomplished career began when he was just a little boy. A sickly child, he spent a great deal of time in front of the television, where he fell in love with the romance and mystique of old movies.
Immersing himself in the black and white box of television, Michael shunned outdoor play for the escapism of the stories. But, his mother, wanting Michael to engage with others, decided that he needed to expand himself.
When he was 9 years old, Michael’s mother brought him to an audition for a local theatre company. Hoping he would get past his shyness and engage with others, he not only completed the audition for a children’s theatre piece, he snagged the role of Puck in A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
And from there, the road to performing began.
Like so many young people in Hollywood, Michael became a starving actor. This is where his resourcefulness kicked in. While he went by the professional name of Michael Alden, his legal name was Michael Krieger.
So, Michael established The Krieger Agency, a talent agency with only one client: Michael Alden, and he began representing himself. While auditions came in, and he had some moderate success, he needed to find a way to earn consistent revenue.
A natural salesman, he started selling frozen food products wholesale to restaurants. Being an innate entrepreneur, Michael turned out to be successful in that endeavor.
One day, his next-door neighbor came to visit and saw the elaborate notes Michael had made for this job. Impressed with his organizational skills, the neighbor offered him a job at a movie studio, where his chief focus was to inventory and keep track of film equipment.
Not knowing the names of the equipment he was hired to inventory, he found a way to keep track and simply named them after elements in a salad. Once again, Alden excelled at his job…in his own way. And once again, it seems clear that serendipity and resourcefulness are what has guided his life.
Alden swiftly climbed the company ladder to become Vice-President of Post-Production at Cannon Films and would eventually hold the same post at MGM Studios. As Michael says, “to this day, I still don’t know how to turn on an editing machine.”
7 years after this unexpected beginning in post-production, the department closed. Filled with trepidation, Michael still believed that he didn’t know anything about his field. But a phone call from someone asking him to post-produce a project directed by John Turturro in New York changed that. He took the job that was slated for only 9 weeks and flew to New York.
The 9-week gig turned into 30 years and New York would become Michael’s permanent home. He went on to serve as producer on multiple feature films including The Hours, Kissing Jessica Stein, My Beautiful Stutter, Studio One Forever, and the fashion forward Unzipped.
Looking back on the series of events that shaped his career, Alden remarked, “I sometimes forget to remind myself how serendipity played such a big part in my life.”
While post producing the movie In and Out, he was invited to see an off-Broadway play at a 55-seat theatre. The play was The Last Session about a musician with AIDS who believed he was at the end of his life, and Michael wanted to produce it. That was Michael’s first theatrical production with a budget of $350,000. To raise the capital, he went to every editor in the building where he worked and asked for the money.
That began a more than 20-year journey as a theatrical producer. In the years to follow, he produced theatre in London, New York, and around the country.
Alden has been represented in the West End with the Olivier Award winning Come From Away, David Seidler’s play The King’s Speech and Bat Boy The Musical. His Broadway credits include the Tony nominated Come From Away, the Pulitzer Prize winning Disgraced, Grey Gardens and Bridge & Tunnel, the recipient of a special Tony Award.
Things shifted again dramatically in 2020. When live theater was shut down during the pandemic and the prospect of living a simpler life called him back to Southern California, Michael heeded the call.
Today, he is an equal opportunity producer, working in live events, theatre, film and television.
Wishing to spend his next act producing projects that celebrate community, Alden has just joined forces with the award-winning content creation company, Just Do GOOD Entertainment, and its co-founders, Monty Hobbs and Valerie Smaldone.
Alden and Smaldone are dear friends. When Alden cast Smaldone as a guest actor in Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell which ran off-Broadway, Smaldone credits that as one of her all-time favorite professional credits. But the two always wanted to collaborate in the producing space, so when the opportunity to work with the team presented itself, Alden jumped at the chance. One of the projects under the Just Do GOOD umbrella is the award-winning reality series, Divine Renovation, hosted by television icon Erik Estrada.
Looking to further expand the Divine Renovation franchise, Hobbs and Smaldone recognized Michael’s unwavering desire to produce quality content that brings people together. As their beliefs and missions are the same, the three took the leap to team up.
Currently, Michael Alden is taking the lead to procure resources for the third season of Divine Renovation. Seeking deep brand integration in the show, with the motto “small fixes can make big miracles,” Alden is in the process of speaking with major companies looking to align with the prospect of doing good in communities in the Nashville, Tennessee area as well as Long Island, New York.
As he embarks on yet another type of entertainment vehicle, Michael is excited to begin. “Community is everything,” he stated. “And if I can help Valerie and Monty preserve that notion on a television show, I have fulfilled what I set out to do.”
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