Hollywood-based producer and director Matt Aaron Krinsky has very notable Chelsea roots. His grandparents, the late William and Doris Waxman, were well-known in the city – William, as the owner of the Waxman Insurance Agency on Broadway, Doris as a community leader and member of the Chelsea School Committee.
His mother, Debra Waxman Krinsky, graduated from Shurtleff School and Chelsea High School and became a teacher at the Shurtleff School, while his father, Marty, was a beloved teen director at the old Chelsea YMHA on Crescent Avenue. His uncles, Ronald, a board member at Temple Emmanuel, and Steven, a Chelsea firefighter, are still active in Chelsea.
Matt has fond memories from when he was a child and would visit his grandfather William’s insurance office “right next to the fire station.”
“We spent hours there as kids, and also on Cottage Street [where the Waxman family lived],” said Matt. “Those were great days.”
Matt Aaron Krinsky will be returning to Chelsea this month in rather spectacular fashion – as the producer and director of the independent film, “All Saints Day.” Krinsky, one of the rising stars in the film industry, will be shooting his darkly comedic movie in the city.
The movie is about four estranged siblings from an Irish immigrant family that come back to Chelsea and try to get their oldest brother on to a better path in life.
The story unfolds on All Saints Day, a Christian holiday that is celebrated on Nov. 1.
At Brandeis, He Set the Foundation to a Career in Film
Matt Aaron Krinsky grew up in Peabody, attended Cohen Hillel Academy in Marblehead, and graduated in 1996 from Peabody High School. During his formative years, he would often attend shows with his family at the North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly.
Matt graduated in 2000 from Brandeis University where he majored in psychology and minored in film studies and art history.
“I was pre-med at first, but during my sophomore year I got an epiphany that I thought maybe I wanted to do something a little bit more creative,” said Krinsky. “Basically, I ended up picking psychology as my major because I thought, how could an understanding of the human psyche not help a film director?”
He also attended a summer semester program in film studies at New York University (NYU).
Off To Hollywood
Following his graduation from Brandeis, “I somehow convinced my parents to let me move cross country to Hollywood,” related Matt. “I had no job, no friends, not a lot of money. My mother and I had an epic road trip adventure across the country. She helped me look for an apartment for about a week, and then I stayed here, and she boarded a plane back home. That was 22 years ago in August.”
Krinsky said he “got really lucky” and took his first job as a production assistant at Quentin Tarantino’s production company.
“I observed and learned a lot in that position,” said Matt. “Then I moved on and took a two-year acting conservatory program at the Baron Brown Studio in Santa Monica. I went to one audition for a manager, hated it, and realized I didn’t want to be an actor. The experience in acting was incredible, though, because now one of my strengths is directing actors. I can speak their language. I understand their process and I have the utmost respect for their craft.”
In 2005, He produced his first large-scale film, “An Eye For An Eye,” starring Sally Kirkland, a past winner of a Golden Globe and a nominee for an Academy Award. “I got to direct her, which was fun,” said Matt.
During his career, Krinsky has directed several short films and worked with playwrights to develop new works in theatrical production.
Bringing “All Saints Day” to the Big Screen
Krinsky said his current film project, “All Saints Day” was seven years in the making. “It started as a play called “All Saints in the Old Colony.” Julianne Homokay was the playwright and she asked me to direct the first staged reading of it,” recalled Krinsky. “We did one performance and as I was standing in the back of the room, I realized that this play lent itself well to a lower-budget indie film: a small cast, one main location, incredible dialogue, and lots of heart and humor.” Krinsky said he asked Homokay if she had any desire to adapt the play into a screenplay and do a feature movie and she agreed to join him in the project. “It took about five years to put the project together, and the last two years, we started really getting ready to shoot it,” said Krinsky. “We will be shooting the movie in Chelsea throughout December.” Matt Aaron Krinsky, once the little kid who would visit his grandparents in Chelsea, is now poised to bring some big-time Hollywood excitement to the city.