FILM STUDY
Off the court, Thunder forward Patrick Patterson is serious about cinema
The call came before the movie started, and Patrick Patterson had insisted to his mother that it was nothing.
More than two hours later — after the credits rolled on the “Hunger Games” sequel they’d gone to see in Sacramento, Calif., — Tywanna Patterson’s son broke the news to her.
Before the previews even began, he’d been traded from the Kings to the Toronto Raptors.
“People said, ‘Why wouldn’t you tell your mom?’” Tywanna Patterson said by phone on Sunday. “He said, ‘I didn’t want to ruin the movie for her. If she knew, we wouldn’t be able to focus on the movie.’”
And that should tell you a little something about how important the cinematic experience is to the Thunder’s new power forward.
Since his childhood in Huntington, West Virginia, Patterson has been entranced by a day at the movies. His father, Buster, a Navy veteran, frequently worked weekends at Walmart, and Tywanna would take her son to the ornate old Keith-Albee Theatre. He’d see kiddie flicks and comedies — and the occasional grown-up drama — and he fell in love with it.
“It was a way of her bonding with me, us spending some time together,” Patterson said late Saturday night at the Harkins Bricktown Cinemas. “We’d go to the movies once a week.”
It’s a tradition he’s carried into his adult life.
On Saturday, Patterson posted an invitation on his Twitter account for fans to join him for a late-night showing of “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.” Those who showed were treated to gift cards and handshakes and posed photos outside the theater.
“It was so out of the blue for an NBA player to do that, but so awesome,” said Michael Gilliam, who coaches basketball at Family of Faith Christian School and came to the theater with two of his players who recently graduated. “We were talking on the way home about how cool it is that he seems to want to feel a part of the community and throw himself right in here in Oklahoma.”
There scarcely could be a better place for Patterson to make his introduction than at the movies. Whether he’s at home or on the road, in season or out of the country, Patterson makes “a conscious effort” to see at least a flick a week, he said.
If there’s a film that set him on this path, it’s “Set It Off.”
At 7 years old, Patterson probably was too young for the R-rated film, he admits, but Tywanna and her best friend took him to see Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith play bank robbers, and the experience has stuck with him.
“I actually cried at that movie, which is crazy for a little kid,” Patterson said.
His cinephilia hasn’t slowed since.
He and his parents made a habit of seeing movies, then going straight to dinner for discussions of what they’d watched, a tradition they maintain today. Each Patterson gives the movie a ranking on a scale of 1 to 10, and the debates can get heated.
Tywanna hates horror, and her son loves it. Patterson’s all-time favorite movie, he says without hesitation, is Wes Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” released five years before he was born.
As a college student at Kentucky, Patterson would host movie nights, inviting teammates to eat pizza and watch a flick once a week in his dorm room. In the NBA, he’s known to send a group text to his team shortly after its arrival in a new city — a movie, a time and a plan to meet in the hotel lobby.
He’s a frequent film watcher on flights, and when he has time to kill, he’ll often make his way to a multiplex, where he’s comfortable sitting alone to dig in and study a movie.
And his interest doesn’t stop at the theater.
Earlier this summer, Patterson did a two-week internship with Open Road Films, a production and distribution company, getting an inside glimpse at the business of show. He learned about visual effects and editing
and marketing, studying “a side of the movies most people don’t get to see unless they work in that industry,”hesaid.
The first trailer before “Valerian” on Saturday was for “Home Again,” a Reese Witherspoon comedy from Open Road that will open on Sept. 8.
“Seen it,” Patterson said as the trailer began. “It’s good.”
At 28, Patterson is in the prime of his basketball career. But when the ball stops bouncing, he sees a future in film — perhaps as a writer, or maybe on the business side, acquiring scripts or independent films for a studio.
One day, movies might be Patterson’s business.
For now, they remain pure pleasure.
“It takes you out of your reality and into the movie,” Tywanna Patterson said. “For those two hours, you’re in movie land. He loves that. He’s always loved it.”