User:MissyAllard/Robert Patton-Spruill

Robert Patton-Spruill is an independent film director, screenwriter, producer, and teacher. His company, FilmShack, is based out of Boston. Spruill lives in Roxubury, MA with his wife and daughter. Spruill is a professor at Emerson College, where he is Director in Residence.

Biography
Spruill was born in Roxbury and raised by theatre artists James Spruill and Linda Patton, whose work with the New African Company was groundbreaking for black theatre in Boston. Robert Patton-Spruill attended BU with a solid background in theatre, but decided to pursue film instead, and wrote the screenplay for his first film Squeeze while still in college. Squeeze (1997) was shot on a meagre $155,000 budget, and was cast with young Boston theatre students whom Spruill taught at the the Dorchester Youth Collaborative, and who went on to receive critical acclaim and pursue careers in Hollywood. Squeeze was bought by Miramax at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, after which Spruill was signed for international representation by the  William Morris Agency in Hollywood.

Robert Patton-Spruill also directed Body Count (1998) at age 25, which was a straight-to-video Showtime feature, after which he and his wife Patti Moreno began the 10-year process of opening up their own production company, studio, and rental business for low-budget filmmakers in his home town of Roxbury, MA. Since the opening of FilmShack in 2000, Spruill and Moreno produced numerous short films, music videos and independent features, including Turntable (2005). The music video Spruill directed for the popular hip hop band Public Enemy led to the production of the full length documentary Welcome to the Terrordome (2007).

Turntable