Former Student’s Film Attracts FEARnet
October 22, 2009 • By Brandon Hyman,
Print This Post
Email This Post
Patrick Cassidy, creator of the controversial JMaddy.com and former JMU student, recently had his film “Lullaby” picked up by the Lionsgate company, FEARnet.
The film was produced by Jack Steinberg (“Planet of the Apes” (2001), “Whip It”). U. Va.’s student film festival played it, and friends in the movie industry showed it around.
Cassidy grew up in Herndon, where he attended high school with friends and future business collaborators Shy Pahlevani, Eric Sollenberger and Collin O’Brien. He often visited the Fairfax Academy for Communications and the Arts where his brother worked and participated in film projects there. After coming to the Shennandoah Valley, he first got on the map with his creation of JMaddy.com.
This student-run Web site hosted a collection of videos and photos and drew nearly 50,000 hits per month at its peak, between 2004 and 2006, according to Cassidy when he ran the site. Merchandise ranged from T-shirts to the celebrated JMU Girls Swimsuit Calendar, which, according to Cassidy, once sold more than 15,000 copies along the East coast with its debut edition in 2006.
The Web site still receives praise from students and the lexicographers at Urban Dictionary who remember its glory.
However, not all acknowledgement was positive. In 2006, Glamour mentioned JMaddy.com in an article entitled “Click Here for your Worst Drunken Nightmare,” implying that the site preyed on inebriated young women in order to capture photos of them baring large amounts of skin. Cassidy threatened to file a libel suit against the magazine through his Web site.
The Glamour incident echoed Cassidy’s somewhat controversial presence on campus and brought into question the intentions of his cohorts.
In addition to the site, he worked closely with SMAD majors, helping students work on videos for their classes though he never declared the major himself.
“I f—ed around at JMU, but I ended up later majoring in English.”
He also became more involved in comedy, and he and a friend produced a short film over winter break entitled “Dang! That’s Meth’d up!” during his last year at JMU. The filmed played at Grafton-Stovall Theater and chronicled two boys, Danny and Brian, who sold methamphetamines to pay for Brian’s mother’s breasts augmentation, so she could get a job at Hooters and have a better life for herself.
The film was another example of Cassidy’s sometimes harsh brand of offbeat humor, but an example that proved more popular as it went on to win an award at the 2007 Georgetown Film Festival.
Cassidy graduated JMU in 2007. He soon moved to Austin, Texas, where he helped establish the comedy production group, Who Do You Know Here?, with friends Eric Sollenberger and Eric Hurt, among others.
Hurt started a production company, Pillage and Plunder Pictures, and wrote a script with Cassidy. The two decided to make the script into a short-length film with Hurt’s company.
“We said, ‘What’s the most artsy town in Virginia,’ ” Cassidy said. The team settled on Charlottesville, where both Hurt and Cassidy had many friends interested and involved in film production. “They’ve got a pretty decent film scene over there, I mean for Virginia at least.”
They shot and produced the horror film, “Lullaby,” in just over two weeks in November.
Cassidy describes the day the film showed, saying “it was amazing; a really good day…you don’t expect anyone to see it.”
Shortly after the film premiered, the company FEARnet, owned in partnership with Sony/Lionsgate and Comcast, showed interest in buying the film.
Horror fans can view the film On Demand through Comcast and soon will be able to view it on FEARnet’s Web site. Later this year the film will be released on DVD.
Cassidy resides in Austin, performing regularly with his friends in Who Do You Know Here? and plans to continue making films. He hopes to come back to the Harrisonburg or Charlottesville area to produce the full-length comedy script he is working on with Pillage and Plunder Pictures.
“JMU’s a great place, great school, coolest place I’ve ever gotten to hang out,” Cassidy says, but affirms that his experience in starting and running JMaddy.com helped him the most, saying “it’s the best business school I’ve ever had… I mean JMU’s a good school, but JMaddy, that’s real.”
Contact Brandon Hyman at hymanba@jmu.edu
Comments
Got something to say?
Best of the 'Burg Supplement
April 29, 2010 Issue in Print
