Director Of The Week: Tim Van Patten

Tim Van Patten was born as Christopher Van Patten on June 10th, 1959 in Brooklyn, NY.  A half brother of Dick Van Patten, he first established himself as an actor in the late seventies, playing Mario "Salami" Pettrino on the TV series The White Shadow, and as a protege to Lee Van Cleef on the short lived ninja show The Master.  He's best remembered as the piano virtuoso and psychopathic gang leader Peter Stegman from the punk classic Class Of 1984.

Starting in the early nineties, he did directing work on TV shows as diverse as Homicide and Touched By An Angel, until he gets his big break in 1999;  directing an episode from the first season of The Sopranos.  Since then he's become one of the core HBO team, going on to direct twenty more episodes of The Sopranos, as well as several episodes of Sex And The City, Rome, Deadwood, The Pacific, Boardwalk Empire and The Wire.  He's currently working on HBO's upcoming fantasy series Game Of  Thrones.                                                                                                                                        

The episodes that he directs are often some of the best in their respective series.  His Sex And The City episodes include the two part series finale An American Girl In Paris, which gave a much more moving, and hilarious, coda to the show than either of the feature films.  On The Sopranos, he directing the intense Season Five episode Long Term Parking, in which Adriana has a startling revelation for Chris;  he also acted as a writer on the Steve Buscemi directed episode Pine Barrens, in which Chris and Paulie chase a seemingly unkillable man through the woods (arguably the best Sopranos episode ever).  On The Wire, he directed the devastating finale to Season One (IMHO, the best season).

He gives his episodes the scope of a feature film, but they always remain character focused;  that's his strength.  Since HBO shows are often violent, it makes it even more heart-wrenching when you grow to love the characters that are being effected.  HBO has always given the show's producers a lot of leeway and faith, but it's thanks to directors like Van Patten that there remains a certain consistency of talent.  Van Patten, while remaining a director, has moved into the production realm, having been a Supervising Producer on The Pacific, and an Executive Producer for Boardwalk Empire.

Will he ever make the leap to feature films?  I could see it happening, one day.  For now, I'm content to see that he's helping to make the shows on HBO something more than what you would expect from television.

I leave you with Stegman's Concerto.