Interviews

Interview: Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky (The Patron Saints)

Published on September 18, 2011

We’ve been keeping tabs on this husband-wife filmmaking team the first time we herd about them via Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of 2007 and finally Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky appear poised to make their big entry into feature filmmaking with their lyrical, humane, creepy, moving portrait of a nursing home in The Patron Saints (we’ve raved about it) and later on in 2012 with the Melissa Leo starrer Francine. In my audio interview with the pair, we discuss how they stumbled upon this project, how they stumbled upon their narrator and their chosen methodology in terms of aesthetics and narrative decisions.

Related Topics:Brian M. Cassidy, Melanie Shatzky, The Patron Saints, U.S. Indie Film

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).