Kurt Patino – Career Builder
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | It turns out that Confucius got it right, and Kurt Patino is living proof. The Chinese philosopher, who once posited that if you choose a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life, could have easily had Patino in mind when he dropped those pearls of wisdom on the world. Very few find their true calling. To spend time with Kurt Patino is to know that he is exactly where he should be, doing exactly what it is that he is meant to do. He loves actors. Smitten by their passion, courage, and creativity, Patino in many ways has followed the blueprint of the brilliant Bernie Brillstein, who earned his way into show business in the mail room at the William Morris Agency, and later founded The Brillstein Company, where he managed the careers of an array of stars. Patino, the founder and president of Patino Management Company, is laser focused on a small roster of successful actors who excel at their creative profession. The care and feeding of a select group of clients ensures that Patino has the bandwidth to help grow careers in a way that is unique in an industry overrun with half-truths and broken promises.
“My passion is developing all aspects of an actor’s career,” Patino says enthusiastically. “For me, it’s about doing the little things; helping an actor see the big picture, being there when doubt creeps in, providing sound business advice. You have to wear many hats, and you have to have your client’s best interest at heart. By limiting the number of clients that I represent, I’m able to provide the exclusive attention that every one of my clients deserves.”
To know Kurt Patino is to appreciate the unwavering commitment to those he represents. The faith-based, ambitious family man has cultivated a five-star reputation in the entertainment industry, and his eye for talent has led to the discovery of actors such as America Ferrera, whose breakout performance in Real Women Have Curves drew raves and launched her successful film and television career. For Patino, everything he does begins and ends with trust.
Patino Management Company
(Photo Credit: Sarahi Canchola)
“Trust is huge in this business,” he says. “Entertainment is very much relationship driven, and your credibility hinges on your words and your actions. Everything has to align or you come across as a phony. You don’t last long that way.”
Andre Agassi once said that image is everything. In this digital, cloud-connected, Fyre Festival world we live in today, so much of what we see is little more than veneer – professional-looking websites, slickly produced YouTube content, a constant stream of social media posts. Dig a little deeper and it’s all photo filters and selfie sticks. Kurt Patino doesn’t do veneer. Integrity is the currency at PMC, hard work serving as the gold standard. Raised in the North Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patino learned that being authentic with a strong work ethic maintains a longer career than relying on style with no substance. He watched his dad thrive in his career because of his incredible dedication to doing the job right, doing it ethically, and doing it well.
“I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and led a regular, suburban childhood,” he says, reflecting on his idyllic childhood. “My dad was a CPA and my mom was a homemaker, and I was fortunate to have a really good home life and a really great family. They taught me right from wrong at an early age. There were a lot of older kids in the neighborhood who were fun to be around, and who taught me things. We played a lot of sports. And, I am still friends with some of them to this day. It was a good time. It was a really fun time growing up.”
Sports not only played a big part in Patino’s childhood, they set the tone for future success at Patino Management Company. He went to St. Patrick’s Catholic School in North Hollywood, right across the street from where he lived, playing tee-ball first before jumping into the Burbank Parochial Baseball League. He dreamed of becoming a Major League baseball player.
(Photo credit: REX/Shutterstock)
“Growing up, sports were really my thing,” he says. “I played from the time the sun came up until the time the sun went down. I have a younger brother, and we would have epic basketball games in our backyard. If no one was around, I’d act like I was pitching in a baseball game and throw racquet balls or tennis balls at a target against our garage, which really helped my control when I pitched on my baseball teams. I later pitched in high school, at Bellarmine-Jefferson. By then I got involved in school politics, and was elected senior class president. Sports really gave me confidence and brought me out of my shell. It also fed my competitive juices, both of which helped prepare me for what I’m doing now.”
As a high-schooler, Kurt Patino was popular with his classmates, the kind of kid with a warm, magnetic personality that drew you in and held you in its orbit. He wasn’t a partier – you wouldn’t find him standing around with a beer in his hand – and he was just as apt to stay home and watch TV than go running around with his buddies.
“Actually, I got excited about the entertainment industry by watching television and going to the movies as a kid,” Patino says. “There was just something about the way that stories affected me on these really deep levels. I was drawn to them by the way they made me laugh, and made me cry. The stories about good and evil, where there were very clear heroes with big dreams against all odds, helped form my desire to strive to be the best, while practicing humility at the same time.”
(Disney Channel/Eric McCandless)
Even back then, Patino was a nose-to-the-grindstone type of guy. He finished at the top of his class with a 3.9 GPA, the good grades generated by hard work and sheer force of will. And despite his popularity, extroversion wasn’t something that came naturally to him.
“Being around a lot of people can drain an introvert’s mental and emotional energy, because it takes work on our part to stay engaged when there’s a lot going on. However, I’ve learned to develop my extroversion and be more social with the goal of creating strong relationships that might not be immediately beneficial to my business, but will be down the line. The key is following the careers of business associates and finding opportunities to congratulate them and thereby find the right timing to pitch a client or project. Social media allows me to stay in touch with casting, directors and producers by showing genuine interest in their lives and accomplishments. I’ve learned so many fun & interesting things about colleagues in the industry through Instagram and Twitter, and I even once in a long while make a pitch through LinkedIn or Facebook. It’s always fun to mention their posts I liked before getting down to business. It always makes them smile.”
Patino’s wife-slash-actress-slash-client is Kelly Stables, easily recognizable as Melissa in Two and a Half Men and more recently as Kelly in the current NBC hit comedy Superstore. That the two of them are able to balance career and home life speaks volumes to the foundation they have as a family, and is reflected in the very fabric of Patino Management Company.
“Kelly was my first client,” Patino says with a smile. “What impressed me most was how well-grounded she was. She works very hard, but her first priority is always family. One of the reasons I pursued a relationship with her is because she’s different than a lot of actresses. She thinks about the big picture in life rather than just waiting for her next audition. That really fit with who I was and what I wanted to get out of life.”
When it came time for college, Patino chose the University of Southern California. He emerged from school with dreams of becoming a screenwriter. After a series of production jobs and five years as an agent at Defining Artists (the theatrical arm of the Bobby Ball Agency), Patino decided to shift gears and jump headlong into the management end of the business.
“I started out as a production assistant and then worked my way up to 2nd second assistant director,” Patino says, reflecting on the early years. “At first it was exciting work, but after a while you come to the realization that the job isn’t as glamorous as it had seemed from the outside. Filmmaking is exciting, but it’s also slow and laborious. There’s a lot of standing around on set, just waiting for something to happen. Well, I’m standing in the rain one day and I think to myself, ‘What am I doing out here?’ I was soaking wet and freezing. And for what? I spent a lot of my time waiting – waiting for someone to give me my next instructions, or waiting to fill out my paperwork at the end of the day, or waiting for a problem to solve. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to do that anymore, so I applied for a job at Bobby Ball, which, at the time, was a very successful commercial and dance agency. They had a lot of the top dancers, and also one of the top commercial departments in the business. They also had this little theatrical department that represented some TV actors, but the majority of them were commercial actors looking for film and TV work.”
Patino got his start as a runner, pulling pictures and resumes from huge file cabinets, then stuffing them in manila envelopes before hitting the road.
“We’d drive all around town delivering those envelopes,” he says with a laugh. “Olympic Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, all over the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica…that was the way agenting was done before everything went digital.”
It wasn’t long before Patino became an assistant for a theatrical agent, parlaying his hard work into more responsibility, and then into his own agenting gig.
“America Ferrera was a big discovery for me” Patino says. “I saw her in a showcase doing copy for a Coke commercial. A showcase is an event where an acting class will ask agents and managers to watch their students perform in the hopes of finding them representation. America just lit up the room. She had no credits – she was non-union, she was 17 – but you could just tell that she was a natural. She came in with such a charisma and a confidence that, as an agent, I was saying, ‘This is the kind of performer we want to have on our list. She just has something, and it’s very rare to see it.’”
Photo by John Salangsang
Patino signed the young actor, who immediately booked a Disney TV movie. And then, in quick succession, Ferrera landed her breakthrough role in Real Women Have Curves.
“She beat out hundreds of other actresses for the role,” Patino says quickly. “I went to Sundance [Film Festival] with her that year. She was nominated for a Special Jury Prize in the Dramatic Category, which she won. I remember her sitting with Robert Redford and being so comfortable and at ease. You could just tell that she was going to be a star.”
Patino didn’t stop with Ferrera. Over the next six years he worked with Rami Malek, who would later go on to star as Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody; Jessica Alba, who, at fifteen, was transitioning from modeling into acting; Nick Wechsler, best-known for his roles as Kyle Valenti on The WB teen drama series Roswell and as Jack Porter on the ABC prime time soap opera Revenge; and Sam Witwer, who has starred in shows such as Smallville, Supergirl, and Riverdale. He also worked with a lot of the soap actors during this time, people like Farah Fath, who had prominent roles on both Days of Our Lives and One Life to Live. And he met his future wife, Kelly Stables, during this period.
“I invited her to attend a friend’s birthday party, and she agreed to go. There was an immediate chemistry between us. We’ve been married since 2005.”
While Patino enjoyed agenting, he also aspired to produce – something that had been with him since his days as a college student at USC. There was a small hitch.
“Agents could not produce at that time. It was against SAG rules,” explains Patino. “I decided to become a manager so I could start producing. I partnered up with another manager and we started our company, and then we ended up merging with another manager. Career-wise, the timing was right for me to make the move into managing. As an agent, if a client’s not doing well, they’re just not doing well, so you kind of move on to the people who are hot at the time. As a manager, I wanted to find out why they weren’t doing well, and what I could do to help better market them. I wanted to be someone who could stay on top of our client list and really guide them along the way.”
Kurt Patino’s creative side emerged in 2009, with the release of the independent web series Soul Fire Rising. Patino wrote and co-produced the series, which stars Jodi Lyn O’Keefe as Lilith Reborn and Kelly Stables as Eve. The series’ premise – that Demons and Wingers fight for human souls in the ultimate battle for supremacy – is enough to pique the interest of any sci-fi / fantasy fan. Lilith, a demon rebel with her own agenda, takes advantage of the vices Earth has to offer, while also taking many souls. The Winger Gabriel summons Lilith and makes her an offer she can’t refuse: Capture and return Eve to Gabriel, and as a reward, Lilith will receive entry back into Heaven.
(Photo credit: Jacob Gaitan)
“The idea for Soul Fire Rising came to me in a hospital where my sister-in-law was having her first child. Everyone was sitting there waiting for the birth to happen, and I was trying to come up with a project that I could shoot. I just started jotting down ideas on a legal pad. I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that angels and demons exist, and I’m a fan of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so that whole world really interested me. I thought it would be fascinating to have a demon be asked by Heaven to save a fallen angel on earth before demons capture the fallen angel’s soul and use its power to take over the world. It’s an interesting concept, because none of us are completely pure. I think we all have this dark side to us, so it was me exploring the good side of someone who is dark. She accesses that, and agrees to search for and protect this angel from Heaven.”
Soul Fire Rising, directed by Dale Fabrigar, was a labor of love for Patino in many respects.
“Dale is an extremely talented director and producer,” Patino says. “He read the script and really enjoyed it, and after some discussion we decided to finance it ourselves. We shot four webisodes and put them on Koldcast.tv, which doesn’t even exist anymore. We were able to raise the financing needed for the remaining four episodes, and then we were able to secure a deal with Starz Digital, who turned around and worked a deal with Hulu. The entire 8-episode series was on Hulu for five years.”
While Soul Fire Rising is currently mothballed, the memories of putting the series together remain as fresh as ever.
“It was a ball to shoot, really exciting,” Patino says. “We shot in downtown L.A., and we were looking for the right car for Lilith – a car that you’d expect a demon to be driving. We found this great car at Bob’s Big Boy on Riverside Drive, in Burbank, of all places. The restaurant would put together these classic car demonstrations every Friday night, so all these people would come out. Kelly and I happened to be there one night and saw this really cool classic car. It had skull locks, so it just looked like the perfect car for Lilith. We approached the owner and offered to pay him to use the car in the series, and he agreed – we couldn’t believe it. I remember shooting in a factory warehouse in the middle the night, and he brings it out and drops it off. We took really good care of it. We were so proud of how the entire series turned out.”
If Kurt Patino’s eye for talent is the lifeblood of Patino Management Company, his commitment to his clients is its heart. The intangibles – the innate ability to sense what’s coming around the corner, the gut instinct to know what levers to pull – add a dimension that is often missing at other firms in the talent management space. Patino is equal parts nurturer and Nostradamus, his emotional intelligence in tune with his clients’ psyche, his finger on the pulse of what’s coming next. When pressed for his secret recipe, the answer is distilled down to one word.
“Trust,” he says flatly. “You want to have a good reputation, and it all starts with building trust. When people do business with you, they want to know that they can trust your work. They want to know that you’re doing the best that you can for their careers, and they want to know that you’re going to put in equal – if not more – work that’s needed to get a project set up, or to get a career started. If someone is putting their hopes and dreams in your hands, you want to handle that very carefully.”
A day in the life of Patino Management Company is one that’s heavily infused with communication, another core ingredient to the firm’s success.
“We’re always talking with our clients,” Patino says. “Whether that’s brainstorming ideas to help with a client’s marketing strategy, or researching ways to get them more activity, there is a constant flow of communication going on. We’re also talking with agents about ways to get more things started for our clients. We’re talking to casting directors and trying to figure out how they see an actor. We’re getting feedback after auditions so we can see how our clients are developing.
Clearly, acting careers take plenty of care and feeding. Patino relishes all aspects of his job.
“As an agent, you’re handling the business end of an actor’s career,” Patino explains. “As a manager, you are handling much more of the stuff on the personal end. You’re hearing all of the insecurities and fears that an actor has, and you have to build them back up when they have a bad audition or when they’re not booking jobs consistently, or when they feel depressed about a personal matter.”
Another key driver is having the client’s best interest at heart – which means shooting straight under all circumstances.
“We want to make sure that they trust that we’re making the best decisions for them, and that we’re advising them in a way that will help them grow both from a professional and a financial standpoint. We help clients believe in their worth. If a deal is bad, and it’s an average project, we’ll encourage them to pass on the project, because there’s no upside financially nor creatively. Actors will sometimes look at offers with short-sightedness. We evaluate every offer on how it can elevate a client’s career or their pocketbook. We have all the information. That’s why actors need good representation. We’re evaluating multiple factors with an offer. The client always has final say, but we explain the whole picture, so clients can make informed decisions about their careers.”
“Sometimes, helping them make the right decisions may mean advising them to spend money to take that extra acting class, pay for a new headshot, hire a publicist, or engage an attorney. They may complain – actors typically don’t like to spend money – but it’s my job to remind them that they’ve just landed on a series, or that they have a big movie coming out, and they need to build awareness. I’ve worked with a lot of actors through the years, and we’ve done really well together. Everyone that I’ve signed has gone on to do better, or they’ve done something while they’ve been with me. I’m very proud of that.”
Kurt Patino’s creative side reemerged with Tin Holiday, an adventure/comedy about best friends, Samuel and Jesse, who travel to London after Samuel experiences a life-changing event. It isn’t long before the vacation goes awry and the friends find themselves in trouble with the Punjabi mafia, Interpol, and in inappropriate couplings. Tin Holiday stars Juan Monsalvez as Samuel, Joe Camareno as Jesse, and Rosanna Hoult (The Lobster, Captain America: First Avenger) as Cassandra. While no release date has been set, the trailer hooks you from the jump. Tin Holiday won Best Story at the 2019 London International Film Festival.
“Joe Camareno is a close friend of mine,” Patino says, smiling. “We used to write sketch comedy together at a place called the Eclectic Company Theatre. Joe has really been a champion of me as a writer, which is another big passion. He approached me about a movie idea he had and asked me if I’d help him write it. So, we sat down at the Backstage Café on Olive and he showed me a draft of what was a dark drama. I told him that it was really dark and sad, and I asked him to consider turning the concept into a comedy. The premise of his idea was of a father whose wife dies in an airplane crash, and how he deals with the death of his wife. I thought about it, and I was like, ‘Dude, what if it’s this guy who doesn’t get along with his wife – she’s always screaming and yelling at him – and then, serendipitously, an airplane part falls out of the sky and kills her?’ Suddenly, the main character has the freedom to go out and explore a different life. So, he and his friend decide to go off on the anniversary trip that he had planned for his wife.”
And that’s when things get good.
“He gets involved in an international conspiracy at an underground poker game. His friend gets kidnapped. He falls in love with a British undercover agent. So, it turns into this huge romance-comedy-adventure. It was a lot of fun. My friend shot it in London, and I produced the L.A. end of it. It was a labor of love, really; we shot it, and then it took years to get the post-production done. We screened it at the American Film Market in Santa Monica this past November. We’re now working on distribution for the film, negotiating with buyers domestically and internationally.”
Like Bernie Brillstein before him, Kurt Patino continues to be himself and do what he loves. He’s charted his own course, done things his way, and the end result has worked out just fine. Successful business. Beautiful family. A new sports podcast with his brother, called 123SPORTS. Board member of the Burbank International Film Festival (www.burbankfilmfest.org). Yes, the competitive juices still flow, just like they did back in the day, when Patino was throwing that tennis ball against the garage and dreaming of fame and glory in Major League Baseball. The competitive streak, while still a mile wide, has been redirected in ways that have made his life richer.
Patino Management Company
(Photo Credit: Sarahi Canchola)
“My kids inspire me,” Patino says proudly. “I have a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, and everything that I’m exploring now is so I can prove to them that they really can do anything. I want them to know that I stepped outside of my comfort zone.”
A devout Christian, Patino has made sure to set an example for his children.
“When my first son was born it occurred to me that I had never read the Bible,” Patino says. “By that I mean, reading it from first page to last. So, I made it a goal to read the entire Bible from cover to cover. If you ask anyone who’s done it, it’s quite a feat. I tried to read a passage a day. It took me like four years to finish it, but when I encourage them to read the Bible, I can point to myself as an example of someone who did it. And if I can do it, they can do it, too.”
Kurt Patino is always pushing himself.
Like one evening in 2019, when he took the stage for TEDx Brampton and did something he never thought he’d have the courage to do.
“The TED Talk is something that I can cross off my bucket list,” he explains. “I’m a huge fan, and I was thrilled when a friend of mine connected me with a TEDx organization in Toronto and helped make the dream a reality. It was exciting, but it was also terrifying.”
How appropriate, then, that Patino chose fear as his topic.
(Photo Credit: Imaad Mian/Mian Studios)
“I wanted to face the TED Talk head on, and flip the script on the fear standing in my way. Fear, I’m now convinced, is a four-letter word for success, an acronym to help people keep fear from holding them back. The F reminds me to face whatever the fear is. The E reminds me to expect suffering. The A reminds me to avoid distractions. The R reminds me to remain patient. It was a thrill for me to share that concept with the audience, because I’ve had to work hard to overcome fear in my life. Professionally, there was a time when I had a couple of clients leave me, and I wasn’t sure things were going to work out. I was thinking of becoming a sportswriter instead, because this business can be so hard. At times there can be a lot of pain. You can invest time and energy in building up an actor’s career and push them up to the top of the mountain when no one believed in them, only to see them move on and sign with another company to satisfy their own egos. It hurts.”
Patino pauses. He smiles.
“I’ve learned to keep things in perspective,” he says quickly. “I don’t want to build an empire. I don’t have grand plans to take over the world like an Ari Emanuel. I want to spend as much time with my family as possible, and still fulfill my goals and enjoy my creativity. I am competitive, and I am ambitious. I do want to continue to grow my company and grow in my filmmaking, but those aren’t the most important parts of my life. I want to grow as a father, and as a husband. I want to be present and a strong mentor to my sons when they feel discouraged, or they feel like they are stuck and can’t move forward. Those are the things that are most important to me now.”
Ask Kurt Patino for a piece of advice for others breaking into the business, and he doesn’t flinch.
“I have three,” he says. “First, don’t be afraid to fail. When I was growing up, there was a stigma attached to failure. Today, failure means that you’re taking chances. I was chosen to make a pitch at the American Film Market. There were hundreds of submissions, and out of those they selected 16 people to make a two-minute pitch in front of experienced producers. It was in a convention hall in front of 250 people. One filmmaker who pitched before me just wasn’t prepared at all, and the producers just tore her apart in front of the large audience. Witnessing that raised my anxiety level tenfold. Thankfully, my wife was there, and she helped me break it down piece by piece, and we ran through the pitch until I was ready to go. Afterwards, one of the producers remarked on the confidence in my delivery. I was dying on the inside the whole time I was on the stage. But afterwards I was proud of myself for facing my fear head on, and for not being afraid to fail.
(Photo Credit: Lorenzo Escobal)
“Second, find a mentor. A good mentor will help you grow in ways you never imagined. Having someone who can help guide you, who can answer your questions, who can give you real world advice…mentors are invaluable.
“The last thing is to intern in the industry that you want to be in. If you want to be in sports, you should be interning in some sort of sports organization. If you want to be in entertainment, you need to be working or interning in the entertainment field. There are a lot of waiters in Los Angeles trying to make it as actors. You can throw a rock in L.A. and hit a writer. You should work your day job to pay the bills, but then go intern at Warner Bros. Go intern at a talent agency. Go intern at a post-production house. Those are the things that will make a difference.”
Kurt Patino works in the glitz and glamour that is Hollywood, but he’s a family man who values his home life and all of the ordinary things that go along with it. It should come as no surprise, then, that his better half is similarly wired and surpassingly compatible.
“My wife graduated early from the University of Missouri,” Patino says, “and her dad drove her cross-country to Los Angeles. She got a studio apartment and filled it with blow up furniture. The first thing that she did was find a church. The next thing she did was find a theatre. It was instinctual for her. The theatre provided a place where she could work steady stage productions, and the church was where she found her support system.”
(Photo Credit: Sarahi Canchola)
Like Kurt Patino, Kelly Stables has worked hard to achieve her own success.
“Kelly never stopped believing in herself,” Patino says, “and she eventually got to where she wanted to be, with a multi-season recurring guest arc on Two and a Half Men. That was a huge break for her, but the thing is, she stayed focused on her goals and didn’t get distracted by the Hollywood lifestyle, or going to clubs, or any of the other distractions that come along with success. I really admire her for the person she is, her values, and what she represents.”
Kurt Patino pauses again, appreciating the way things have worked out.
“We are truly blessed by the Lord. We have two beautiful children, and both of them were born while Kelly was working on a series called The Exes. If you ask any actress in Hollywood, being able to have your children while being a part of a show is a dream come true, and Kelly did it. Still, Hollywood is a business. It’s not like we’re home free, and it’s not like things are always positive. We don’t take anything for granted. We still work really hard. We still struggle to get to the next level. But we have our faith, and we have each other, and if everything else were to go away we would still have our family. That’s the most important thing of all. You know what I mean?”
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