JAMIE PATRICOF: Producing ‘Half Nelson’

Jamie Patricof’s film is not going to play East Hampton. Even though Mr. Patricof spent his summers at a family house on Huntting Lane and still visits frequently, “Half Nelson,” which he produced, is probably too much of an art movie for the Main Street theater, and he’s okay with that. For now.

Instead, the film, which stars Ryan Gosling, will open at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Friday, Aug. 25. It premiered in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza theaters last Thursday.

“Half Nelson” appears to be the kind of film that grabs critics by the lapels and gives them a firm shake. Certainly the subject, a white, crack-addicted, inner-city teacher who befriends a 13-year-old student, is one that can get plenty of attention. It was an audience favorite at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, earlier this year.

Hunting Lane films, Mr. Patricof’s company, produced the movie, the first full-length project by Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who wrote it about five years ago. Mr. Fleck was its director. A friend, Mr. Patricof said, had showed him the script almost in passing about a year and half ago. A meeting with the filmmakers followed about a week later.

Following college, where he was a political science major, Mr. Patricof worked for a short time at Def Jam records. Then he pitched an idea for a television show to a production company, which took an option on it. This led to producing gigs for ESPN and VH1. His series, “The Life,” a behind-the-scenes look at athletes’ lives off the field on ESPN, was nominated for an Emmy.

“Point and Shoot,” a low-budget film he produced, was screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival. “Half Nelson” is Mr. Patricof’s first feature film credit. Three years ago he moved from New York City to Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, Kelly, and their 4-month-old daughter, Riley.

Other producers passed on the opportunity to make “Half Nelson,” Mr. Patricof said. Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden were first-time filmmakers, which can worry some producers. A script about a drug-addicted teacher put others off, he said.

“The standard time from when a film is written to when it’s made is about five years,” Mr. Patricof said, and “Half Nelson” held more or less true to that pattern. Mr. Fleck and Ms. Boden wrote it after finishing film school in 2002, but they realized that there was no way that they would be able to get it made at that time.

So they made a short film, “Gowanus, Brooklyn,” based on the same material. It won a grand jury prize at the Sundance Festival in 2004. That was the launching point for a trajectory that eventually led to Mr. Patricof’s desk.

“When you are making an independent film, the script is important, but the more important thing is the people who make it,” Mr. Patricof said on the phone at his family’s house in East Hampton. “After my wife and my parents, I probably talk to the filmmakers as much as anyone. It’s been that way for a year and a half now.”

“My family reads everything I do. They thought I was crazy. I didn’t really want to make a film about a drug addict. But it’s not a film about a drug addict, drug use just happens to be his addiction; it doesn’t make light of the subject.”

The movie was filmed almost entirely in Brooklyn, save for one shoot for which the crew decamped to New Jersey. Mr. Patricof was a constant presence. “I was on set every minute of every day, every scene,” he said. “You’re behind the scenes. Our job as producers is that the creative people get to focus on the creative work.”

He described his first day on location, arriving to see a street filled with trucks for the production. “I asked, ‘What are all these trucks for?’ ” Then he realized they were theirs. “The difference between a $100,000 film, a $1 million film, and a $100 million film is how many people you have to do different jobs, he said. On “Point and Shoot,” his truck had been pretty much the only production vehicle.

The average age of the crew was about 27, younger if you factor out a single sound mixer who was “older,” he said. This made the set fun to work on, but also fit the theme of the script. “This is a story about being kind of lost and not knowing what your purpose is and that is something that many young people can identify with,” Mr. Patricof, 30, said.

Despite his strong support for the filmmakers and their script — and the actors, who include a newcomer, Shareeka Epps, and Anthony Mackie, who has a number of film credits — Mr. Patricof said he had no idea just how well the film was coming together until an early screening.

“I saw the assembly, a three-hour version of the film. When I saw that I knew we had a lot of work to do and felt we had something good here.” It was at Sundance, however, that the first hints of success could be identified. “People were sighing where they should, laughing where we knew that they would, laughing in places where we did not think they were going to laugh.”

“As the credits began to roll, we knew we had something really special.”

The laughter was fine, he said, and something the filmmakers and he had hoped for. “When you are dealing with tough subject matter, you need some humor in it.”

Mr. Patricof has a producing partner, Alex Orlovoksy, and he said that they would have been satisfied simply if they and the filmmakers were happy with the final product. They need not have worried, however: The critical reception has been almost unanimously positive. “On this film, that’s really satisfying,” he said.

Now, Mr. Patricof and company have the luxury of aiming higher. Mr. Gosling has become a recognizable face, and there has been talk among critics of a Golden Globe or Oscar nomination for his performance in “Half Nelson.” This could translate into screenings in more theaters, and into bang-up sales of the DVD release.

The big studios are courting the filmmakers. Mr. Patricof has a hand in several new projects, including a film with Mr. Flack and Ms. Boden about a Dominican baseball prodigy. His next movie is going to be “Blue Valentine,” a story by Derek Cianfrance about a dreamer who falls in love and how the relationship blooms, then falls apart.

Buoyed by the critics’ raves, “Half Nelson” had a strong opening weekend, Mr. Patricof said, taking in an average of $28,000 for the two New York screenings, about twice what he had hoped for. The distributor plans to roll the film in about 70 cities, something that will probably happen sooner now that reviews are so favorable. “The film will never be in a 1,000 theaters, but it could be on 100 screens,” he said.

“It’s not going to ever hit the malls and the megaplexes,” he said. Still, he’d love to see it in East Hampton, a five-minute walk from his family’s house. “It would be a dream to have it there,” he said.