The scene

Star and bars “I’m not an actor, but I’ve had a lot of wild life experiences,” says Patrick Gleason (pictured), the unlikely star of Fancypants, between takes of one of the film’s many wrestling scenes set at the Congress Theater. “I don’t know if you’re aware,” he says nonchalantly, “but I just got out of prison.” In the early morning hours of March 12, 1989, Gleason, who is from Maywood, shot an off-duty Oak Park police officer and another man outside a now-defunct nightclub in west suburban Stone Park. Convicted of attempted murder, Gleason served 15 years. Upon hearing his childhood friend was out on parole, Fancypants’s cinematographer, Jim Andre, phoned the hulking Gleason, saying he’d be perfect for the role of Leo the Blue Lion, a wrestler nearing the end of his career who’s paradoxically afraid of conflict outside the ring. Gleason nailed his auditions at DePaul University, where director Joshua Russell teaches, but there was one problem: The would-be star was on house arrest, tethered to an ankle monitor. “Lucky for me my parole officer was a film buff,” Gleason says. “He found out about me doing this movie and was kind enough to go to Springfield and get me cut loose four months early—the day before we started filming,” he says. “From the big house to the big screen, it’s been a crazy journey.” Fancypants, which also stars former pro-wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper, Robert Carradine (Revenge of the Nerds) and TV veteran Richard Kind, will be released in 2009.