Patrick Quinn ’04 was a three sport athlete with a GPA good enough to garner attention from Ivy League and NESCAC athletic programs alike.  Though he lettered in football, basketball, and baseball even earning All-State honors as a senior pitcher, he admits high school athletics never clicked for him.  “I thought I was pretty good at everything I guess, maybe better than I actually was, and the coaches didn’t always agree,” he said with a smile during an interview at the school while he was in Rhode Island for a visit.

He ended up playing baseball at Bowdoin College in Maine only to opt for a change of scenery after just three semesters, transferring to Boston College.  “I’d be lying if I said the change wasn’t at least partly driven by athletics, I wanted to play Division One and after a pretty good performance at the Cape Cod League try-out, I was convinced I could.” 

His success was short-lived.  An injury to his pitching shoulder curtailed his career and after a season and a half with the Eagles, he found himself cut from the spring roster.  “It was devastating of course, but it opened my eyes to a world outside baseball… I started writing screenplays, doing stand-up comedy, and a friend actually talked me into walking onto the football team.”  That friend was his former East Providence rival and now NFL player – Jamie Silva, a name that brings a smile to Quinn’s face. 

By the end of his senior year at BC, Quinn, a finance major, was done with sports and looking at a career in the banking industry… or so he thought.  “I had this degree and all these interviews lined up, but I knew in the back of my mind I was dreading it.  Drew Yanno, my screenwriting professor expressed he thought I might have some talent, but to me, the idea of ‘moving to Hollywood’ seemed silly.”  That was until he saw a YouTube clip of the Farrelly Brothers giving the 2007 commencement address at RWU.

“They just talked about how being young meant no life-restrictions, that everyone thinks they have to ‘stay on a certain path’ but in reality there is no real path yet, there’s still time to make your own… it blew my mind.  Just one of those astounding moments of intense clarity that life hands you once in a blue moon… I was lucky really”  The decision was made -- he was going to follow the dream.  “I turned to my girlfriend at the time, God forgive me, and told her right then and there that I was moving to Los Angeles, and that we were breaking up,” Quinn said shaking his head with a smile.  “I cancelled all my interviews and booked a flight.”

Luckily, Yanno had set Quinn up with an associate out in LA -- fellow BC grad, Kris Meyer.  Kris, one of the Farrelly Brothers’ producers hit it off right away with Quinn and assured him he’d have a job on the upcoming Farrelly Brothers movie.  Well, with the writers’ strike of 2008, Quinn quickly learned a valuable Hollywood lesson.  “Basically the whole business is a crapshoot, people spend decades of their life putting together their passion piece, their artistic contribution to the world, and it falls apart in 10 seconds,” he said with a sad smirk. “Their world is destroyed, and nobody cares.  Everyone just moves onto the next thing.  Believe me, no tears were shed over Pat Quinn losing his job of ‘coffee fetcher extraordinaire’… I just realized I had to move on too or I’d be looking for a nice cardboard box to sleep in.” 

So move on he did -- he became a salesman, a door-to-door salesman no less.  Selling everything from 3-Hour cruise vouchers to LA Clippers tickets to corporate shipping packages.  “It was miserable.  I had moved out to LA to be in show business and I was walking through Compton trying to peddle luxury cruise tickets.”

An entire year passed before something in him finally clicked.  “I realized I was wasting my time, that I was never going to make anything of myself if I kept running around as a salesman.  So I weaseled my way into an interview at one of LA’s biggest talent agencies and I wouldn’t leave the guy’s office until he hired me.”  But being the assistant to a big-time Hollywood executive wasn’t all glitz and glamour.  “It was awful, if there’s two things I’m bad it, it’s secretarial work, and getting yelled at… and those are the two biggest parts of that job.”  But it wasn’t wall bad he said, “I learned a ton, my boss was a real pro, I learned the business.  I also realized that the industry was too fragile to try to climb the ranks the conventional way.  I saw film after film fall apart for any number of reasons.  I realized the only way I was going to get a film made was to make it myself.”

And so he did, he wrote a simple script, raised some money from equally ambitious young friends in the business and moved back home to shoot his first feature film, “B.E.N.NY Go Home”.  “I had shot a few short films in college and worked as a Production Assistant on Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, so I had a basic idea of how it all worked, and I thought, what’s the worst that can happen?  I’m only 24 and if I fall flat on my face it won’t be the first or the last time.  It all goes back to the Farrelly’s and the idea that you can never get stuck on what you think is ‘your path’, leaving that job in LA was hard, there were a lot of options for me, but ultimately I knew I had to change the course if I wanted to get anywhere.”

Quinn’s movie was shot in Rhode Island using real people, with only a handful of professional actors.  Quinn plays the lead role and John Siravo, a life-long friend and now NY-based actor who went to St. Ray’s acts in the film and doubled as a camera operator.  “To say we were short handed would be an understatement.  We had no crew, my little brother, who can’t spell even spell cinematographer, shot a good amount of the film and did a helluva job.  It was crazy and stressful, but it was fun, I mean, we were just all in it together, willing this thing to happen.  Jennan was my go-to cinematographer, she and I were pulling 16-18 hour days for a while.  She was awesome.”  By Jennan, he’s referring to LSA ’05, Jennan Al-Hamdouni, and old friend and Emerson graduate.  “She’s a fox, man, definitely easier to talk your way into using certain locations to shoot when you have her with you.”  Quinn also cast his neighbor in a lead role, playing his father and a local casting director to play his mother.  He said he originally had asked his own mother play the role but she turned the offer down, “too many curse words” she said.

Quinn believes the film has potential and he plans to enter it in some film festivals.  He’s currently shooting music videos in New York City and Washington, D.C. as well as a few local commercials.  He plans to head back to LA sometime at the end of January.

Quinn still keeps in touch with a few of his La Salle grads.  He says he and Ashley Mills (who brought Quinn’s story to our attention) keep in touch and see each other whenever they’re both in town.

“God, she hated me early on, but we became good friends our senior year.   We used to cut our Advanced Placement classes and go get Antonio’s pizza,” said Quinn.  He also spoke fondly of Coach Marcone, “He was the only guy who gave me a chance, no way I would have been All-State without him… smart guy” as well as his 11^th grade English teacher Brother Paul.  “The man is just old school, wise doesn’t even begin to describe it.  I remember him quoting Kurt Vonnegut, ‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.’… I figure I’ll keep faking it ‘til I make it, so maybe that Vonnegut was onto something.

To see the extended trailer of Quinn’s film click here