In 1993, Kelly Funke graduated college on a Sunday and moved to Los Angeles 36 hours later to start an internship for a rising pair of film producers. She left behind her childhood cat, Hollywood, her mother and her three brothers, to pursue a producing career.

In 1999, she convinced one of those brothers, Patrick Macmanus, to spend his Spring Break as an extra in a graduate film she was working on. He was looking for a new passion after his dream of working in politics was proving less appealing than he had hoped. And while he had no lines in the film and slept on a ridiculously uncomfortable quasi mattress for the duration, he got bitten by the bug. Two months later, Patrick graduated college on a Sunday and moved to Los Angeles 36 hours later to pursue an acting career.

Time passed. The brother worked at restaurants and bars and eventually decided that an actor’s life was not for him; the sister worked on a private jet to support her slow moving producing dreams. One morning over a Bigger Better Breakfast at Norm’s, Patrick talked about trying his hand at writing. Brother and sister met often and argued much about his projects, but the fruits of that first script, a 30 minute comedy called Stacey’s Mom, got optioned by Gavin Palone in 2005.

The day they got this first kernel of encouragement, the sibling duo decided they wanted hats with their company name on it. So they headed to a kiosk at The Grove and had two brown baseball caps with the name of one of the streets they grew up on, Littleton Road, embroidered across the brim. The address meant something special to both of them; it was a house of hopes and dreams. (Thanks, Bruce.)

In the months that followed, dozens of scripts were churned out by Patrick the writer, each one relentlessly reviewed and fought about several times a week by Kelly the producer. During that time, she moved into her car to save cash and he moved over to the main bar at The Abbey to keep his weekdays open for pitches. More scripts. More meetings. More kernels of encouragement.

Eventually, the writer fell in love with a girl from Greece and the producer fell in love with a guy from Massachusetts. That was 2009 and the brown hat duo said their goodbyes on a rainy November Sunday. Patrick was headed to Asia with his USAID wife and Kelly was settling in NYC with her husband to start a new job at the global sportswear brand FILA.

Over the next decade, Patrick kept Littleton Road going. More scripts led to writer’s rooms on Marco Polo and as the #2 on Happy!. Content creation never left her blood as Kelly worked her way up the ladder at FILA, leading their marketing and ecommerce teams during the 100 year old brand’s resurgence. Eventually, in the fall of 2019, Patrick found himself with a lot of projects, looking around for someone to sit at Norm’s to argue with. Not just for him, but for the many talented writers whose projects he had started to champion with his overall deal at UCP.

So here we are. 25 years from Patrick’s first visit to Los Angeles. 15 years from a bittersweet goodbye on a street corner in New York. Littleton Road Productions hopes you will consider joining us on the ride. We have some really nice hats in case you’re interested.