Biography

Robert Patton-Spruill is an independent film director, screenwriter, producer, professor, master distiller, and real estate empresario. His company, FilmShack, was based in Boston. Spruill lives in Winchester, New Hampshire where he founded New England Sweetwater Farm and Distillery in 2015. Spruill was a professor at Emerson College, where he was Director in Residence until his retirement in 2020. Spruill was born in Roxbury and raised by theatre artists James Spruill and Lynda Patton, who worked with the New African Company. He is a second cousin of Boston's first black and first female mayor Kim Janey through his maternal side. He attended Boston University as a history major, but decided to pursue film instead, and wrote the screenplay for his first film Squeeze while still in college. Squeeze (1997) was shot on a US$155,000 budget, and was cast with young Boston theatre students whom Spruill taught at the Dorchester Youth Collaborative. Squeeze was bought by Miramax at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, after which Spruill was signed for international representation by the William Morris Agency in Hollywood. Patton-Spruill later moved back to Boston where he subsequently directed three more motion pictures. He currently resides in Winchester, New Hampshire with his wife, Patricia Moreno, who he met during his time at BU and his only child, Alejandra Spruill, a Boston Latin School and Emerson College graduate.