We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Patrick Roberts. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Patrick below.

Patrick, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you signed with an agent or manager? Why or why not?

While I’ve never had an agent I have had a manager which, for a writer, is probably equally as powerful in terms of just having someone to help get your work out there and get you meetings and so on. I got signed by Zero Gravity Management which is a rather large management firm in Los Angeles.

The way it all came about was basically because I was included on an email chain by a producer with whom I had had some dealings about a script I had written a few years earlier. I wasn’t supposed to be on the email chain as it was about something totally unrelated to me or any of my work and I was clearly just a fat finger addition to the email chain.

However, one of the things I’ve never been shy about doing is reaching out to people I don’t know at all who might have an interest in my work. I have a sales background so this was second nature to me. So when I got this mistaken email I searched all of the people on the email chain to find out who they were, what they did, etc. In so doing, I found one who happened to be a manager and a producer at Zero Gravity Management.

I sent him an email explaining that I didn’t recall exactly how we met but we must have met somewhere as I was on an email chain with him (this was obviously a bit of creative fiction on my part, but hey, I’m a writer, right?) and I had a new project on which I was working and I wondered if he might take a look at the script.

He was kind enough to agree to read the script (largely because I had enough credit to have been on whatever email chain it was with him) and, while the script wasn’t something that worked for what he was looking for, he liked the writing. That led to him reading two more scripts that both didn’t hit the mark in terms of the type of material he wanted to represent, but, again, he liked the writing. Finally, I pitched him an idea on which I had been working and he very much liked it so when I sent him the script he read it and signed me within the hour.

We’ve collaborated on and off up to this very day even after he left Zero Gravity. So I guess the moral to the story is that you can’t be afraid to shoot your shot.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

So I have a rather interesting and winding life path to where I’ve wound up today as a writer/director of films.

First of all let me be clear that I have no formal training in the arts other than having once taken a film and photography class for a semester in my junior year of high school. That said, I lived in Wyoming until my sophomore year of high school when I moved to a little town just outside of Champaign Illinois. I was not a ranch kid in Wyoming (for those who don’t know this, not everyone lives on a ranch in Wyoming) however, my best friend lived on a ranch and I worked as a hand on his ranch for two summers in 8th and 9th grades so I used to know how to cowboy to a degree.

Illinois was also a small town, Far smaller than the one in which I lived in Wyoming in fact. However, it was a bedroom community to Champaign which had the University of Illinois so there was a population hub nearby. I graduated high school early and attended the University of Illinois majoring in History and Minoring in German.

During both high school and college I worked in a variety of different jobs, most of which were sales related. I sold everything from vacuums to advertising both door-to-door and over the phone and when I finished my degree I applied for exactly one job – that of a stock broker.

The firm was a dodgy little outfit in Chicago located one floor below the Playboy office headquarters on lake shore drive so I thought I’d hit the bigtime when they hired me straight away based on my years of sales experience. Needless to say it was a total boiler room firm. In fact it is almost PERFECTLY portrayed in the movie “Boiler Room” the type of firm it was.

The first month I was there I was “rookie of the month” and opened more accounts than anyone in the firm that month. The next month I realized I was likely to wind up in jail for some kind of securities fraud rather than rich if I continued to work for that company and my motivation and production dropped to nothing so I started looking for a way out.

I wound up quitting and going to work at Guitar Center in Chicago in the guitar department. I had played guitar during high school and college and enjoyed working there but, ultimately, it wasn’t where I needed to be to pay the bills, so I got hired on at a reputable stock firm that had been a founding member of the New York Stock Exchange.

While there as an apprentice broker or “caller” I worked for a great guy and he taught me a lot about the markets. I also got my license as a commodities broker. I found commodities much more interesting than stocks and eventually found my way down to working at the board of trade in the grain room as a runner.

At that time, I was wondering how to get ahead and I knew that the U.S.’ largest grain trading partner was Russia, so I wanted to learn Russian somehow. I had always had a fondness for languages having studied French and German in High School and college. However, Russian was a whole different ballgame. And, ironically, Russian was one of the classes I had dropped in college!

I also had always had a desire to serve in the military which worked out because the military would teach me Russian for free as well as pay off my student loans which was fine by me. I enlisted and wound up serving in Germany with the special forces as a Russian linguist for the 4 years I was in.

When I got out in 2000 I actually went back to the financial sector first at the mercantile exchange as a commodities broker and then as VP of operations at a financial management firm started by the broker for whom I had worked as a “caller.” I lasted there for about three years before I realized that, despite making good money, the work was ultimately soulless to me.

I decided to leave the firm and went back to get a Master’s in Russian linguistics at the University of Illinois, Chicago. I did wind up working as a commodities trader for a firm who backed my trading financially, but when I blew out there, I decided I would finally just write a screenplay because, “How hard could it be?”

This was in roughly 2004-2005 when I wrote my first screenplay. It took me literally 4 days and I thought it was good. Of course in hindsight, I know it wasn’t great. But the concept was strong. Also, this was really before the internet was what it is today so it wasn’t like there were tutorials about how to write screenplays everywhere out there online.

I remember, I had actually gotten my first book on screenwriting from a friend while I was in Germany. She had sent me a copy of Michael Hauge’s “Writing Screenplays that Sell”. I didn’t follow much of the advice in it except how to format the script. In fact, I don’t think I read most of the book.

So, armed with that first script I did what I did best, get on the phone to try and sell it. And, because of my sales training, I was able to get an offer on the script from the second company I called. Now, granted, the script had its weaknesses, but the concept was very strong.

I was offered an option of $12,000 against a purchase price of $250,000 if the script was made but there was a catch, the company wanted to pair me up with an established writer to help me rewrite the script. I didn’t trust that (because I was a fool) and so I asked for $50,000 up front. The company said no and that I was making a mistake but I held firm and so the deal fell apart and, ultimately, they were ABSOLUTELY correct. it was a huge mistake that set my career back a number of years.

However, this was the same company that would ultimately mistakenly include me on the email chain that I used to find my manager with Zero Gravity Management so there was some small silver lining.

At this time I was scuffling around Chicago, writing, trying to sell my screenplay, and I got involved in helping to raise money for a feature film with Barry Bostwick and Cheryl Ladd. I knew I could raise money and that film actually got made and sold with not much benefit to myself other than a producing credit.

However, the writer/producer of that film did inspire me to move out to L.A. So I sold everything I had, was given a van by a family friend, and moved out to L.A. to live in the van until I somehow managed to land on my feet.

That was a long time ago and since then I’ve sold a couple of scripts that never made it to the screen, been hired to write a small tv film, and done a lot of work writing and directing corporate commercials and documentaries as well as shorts and videos.

In 2017 I wrote and directed my first feature shot for $15,000. It was a ridiculously small budget and we had no time or money but the people who worked on it worked hard and were awesome and the film won the Best Thriller award at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival where it premiered in 2019. We also managed to get distribution on comcast and similar services like Amazon and Tubi so we’ve managed to make money off of the film.

Right now I’m in pre-production on my second feature which I’ve also written and directed which has a seven-figure budget and very established producers on board so I’m very excited to see what we can do with that film when we start shooting in November in Kentucky.

I think the most important thing I would say about everything I’ve gone through to make it in the entertainment industry is that you cannot be afraid to reach out to people and show them your work. You’ll find out quickly if you have any talent. Obviously you HAVE to have some talent. But if you’ve got even a little bit and then you’re willing to do the work and keep at it you can learn everything else and meet the people you need to meet.

It is a war of attrition a lot of times but you just cannot be afraid. You never know who you might meet and who will wind up being a mentor to you.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I would say that one of the greatest things in filmmaking that has helped me these days is the Team Deakins Podcast. Obviously that has only been around for a few years but I will say that it if you want to learn anything about filmmaking it is literally a masterclass for free (or whatever you pay for your spotify or wherever you get your podcasts). Every week they have the most amazing professionals and it’s just a conversation about how pros do the things they do. How they became the pros they are. Funny stories, illustrative stories, technical stories – I’ve learned more from that podcast than perhaps any other source in my entire time as a filmmaker.

The other thing I would say is there are a number of free video essays and tutorials on youtube for example. I’ve not gone to film school and I don’t think one necessarily needs to because there are SO many resources available online now.

The main thing to remember is that there are a LOT of people out there who started from nowhere with no connections that just learned and hustled and met people.

If you can do that you’ll always have a shot at success.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist or creative for me is literally the act of creation. I’ve written a LOT of screenplays at this point. And maybe 5 or 6 of them are actually good. But whether they’re good or bad, one of the most satisfying feelings I’ve ever experienced is that moment when I finish a new work.

It ALWAYS feels good because writing a screenplay is REALLY hard. REALLY hard. Even if it’s a bad one it’s STILL the same amount of effort. But the one thing that has never lessened is the satisfaction I’ve gotten at the end of writing one. It ALWAYS feels the same and I love that feeling so much.

I guess just the idea that a world and people that never existed only exist because I (and other filmmakers who do the same things) put them out into the world is a huge feeling to experience.

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