Famous Hollywood directors attach themselves to films produced by famous Hollywood producers — your Jerry Bruckheimers or Joel Silvers. When first-time filmmaker and Riverside native Patrick Creadon prepared to make his documentary “Wordplay,” he attached himself to his wife, Christine O’Malley, kid brother Michael and a buddy from Fenwick High School, Patrick Walsh.
Turns out this collective of producers landed a million-dollar deal from the Independent Film Channel and saw their little film about crossword-puzzle enthusiasts playing on big screens across the country. So heads up, Bruckheimer.
Creadon got his first taste of the industry as a child actor, performing alongside brother Michael and Walter Payton in McDonald’s commercials. After starring as Tom Sawyer in a CBS version of “Huckleberry Finn,” in which Anthony Michael Hall and Cynthia Nixon also appeared, the high school freshman decided to stop acting and focus on student government and the school newspaper at Fenwick.
“That film experience taught me two things,” he says. “I don’t want to be an actor when I grow up, and wouldn’t it be great to work behind the camera? I probably spent more time with the camera crew and director than fellow actors. They seemed to have the much-cooler jobs.”
Unsure he could eke out a career as a filmmaker, Creadon studied international relations at Notre Dame. After graduating in 1989, he landed a job with a public television program called “The 90’s.” The program ended long before the decade did, but Creadon had developed skill behind the camera and a yearning to do more, so he enrolled at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. There he earned a master’s degree in cinematography.
Eventually migrating to Los Angeles, Creadon began a career as a cameraman for hire. “The great thing about L.A. is that almost anybody can get job on a film set doing something,” says the 39-year-old. “It’s one admirable thing — probably the only thing — about low-budget filmmaking. People learn their craft.”
While learning his craft on such projects as the “Sweet Valley High” television series, Creadon met Barrington native and Columbia College Chicago grad Christine O’Malley, who was, as she describes it, starting at the bottom of the industry.
“I knew I wanted to produce,” says the 34-year-old O’Malley, “so I was trying to learn everything I could.”
Eventually, O’Malley became a producer of biographies for the A&E channel. She married Creadon, and they found the inspiration for their first project in the books of crossword puzzles they solved together. “I’ve got to admit, I was like, `Crossword puzzles?’ I didn’t get it at first, but I trusted their instincts,” says Creadon’s brother Michael, 38, manager of a bond-trading firm at the Chicago Board of Trade and 14 months Patrick’s junior. “We had a standing agreement that [Patrick and Christine] should let [me and Walsh] know which project they wanted to pursue. So they pitched us this idea and told us how much money it would be.”
“`Creads’ is as close to me as a brother,” says Walsh, a futures trader at the Board of Trade who studied with the filmmaker at both Fenwick and Notre Dame. “If he were to say, `I need a camera.’ I’d say, `Let’s do it!'”
In that initial round of funding, both brother and buddy — serving as associate producers under O’Malley’s producer title — cut checks for $15,000. (Over the course of filming, their contributions would reach a total of about $150,000. The film would ultimately cost O’Malley Creadon Productions $500,000 to produce, thanks in large part to purchasing rights to music and video footage.)
Meanwhile, the couple refinanced their Los Feliz, Calif., home and braced themselves for a year without incomes.
“It was a big decision to work on this exclusively,” adds Creadon. “We knew we had to be extremely focused; we had no desire to spend seven years on this and never finish it.”
They set a deadline of one year, left a voice mail for New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, and when he returned their call the next day, the process of making their movie was on. As it turns out, they didn’t get a full year. After only nine months of filming Shortz, celebrity puzzle fans such as Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart, and competitors at the annual New York Times crossword tournament in Stamford, Conn., Creadon and his crew rushed to submit their film to the 2006 Sundance Film Festival on the last possible entry date — Sept. 30, 2005.
Out of 760 documentaries submitted, “Wordplay” was one of 16 to be accepted. Crowds loved the quirky film and its puzzling characters, some famous, others ordinary folks with extraordinary crossword-skills. A bidding war ensued, and by the end of the festival, all that time and all that money started looking like a good investment.
“I told [Patrick Creadon] I’d financially back him on five projects,” says Walsh. “I knew one would hit, I just didn’t think it would be their first.”
“From an investment strategy, this was quite risky,” admits Michael Creadon. “We figured the film would at least become a DVD, or we’d get it on TV. But all the pieces fell into place. The baseline objective was that everybody gets paid back, and Pat and Christine advance their careers. And both happened.”
“Wordplay” has garnered strong reviews from critics. (It is showing locally at Chicago’s Landmark Century Centre Cinema, Evanston’s Century CineArts 6 and Highland Park’s Landmark RenaissancePlace Cinema. It opens Friday at AMC South Barrington 30, AMC Cantera 30 in Warrenville and Oak Park’s CC Lake Theatre, where Patrick Creadon is hosting a Q&A session after the first showing.)
Creadon and O’Malley, the parents of two young daughters, are already toying with a few new ideas for films as they work on the “Wordplay” DVD to be released for Christmas.
But Michael Creadon downplays the film’s success.
He and Walsh are returning to their lives in Chicago’s financial district, shunning the trappings of the Hollywood lifestyle.
“I guess you’d say I’m a producer, but I’m not even sure of the terms of our contract, because I didn’t really read it,” says Michael Creadon. “I’d be the last guy to give creative insight,” adds Walsh.
That’s what they say. Yet just a few weeks ago, when friends and family packed the Century Center Cinema for a “Wordplay” preview, there were three faces beaming particularly brightly.
The wife, the brother and the buddy — Hollywood producers.
