Indie filmmaker Anthony Lucero smacked into a huge roadblock in the casting process of his touching, heartfelt beauty of a second feature, “Paper Bag Plan”: All the actresses he and his producer wife Ke’alohi Lee Lucero wanted to offer one of two lead roles – that of a terminally ill parent embarking on ways to help a disabled 25-year-old son become more self sufficient for when he departs the world – said no.
Director and East Bay followed up his indie hit “East Side Sushi” with the poignant drama “Paper Bag Plan.” (Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images)
“I actually got turned down from 25 or so actresses,” recalls the Oakland-born Lucero, the director and writer behind the 2014 Oakland-set charmer “East Side Sushi” – a radiant indie breakout hit about a Mexican immigrant finding her place as a sushi chef. His latest along with that first feature continue his intention to tell stories about everyday working-class people, characters too often that are given short shrift by Hollywood.
A major reason for the actress’ rejection, Lucero found, was how grassroots and low budget their self-financed production was (it was shot in Burbank and briefly in Oakland) and how the scrappiness (a grocery store offered the crew to shoot in it for free when it was closed) necessitated that there’d be no actors’ trailers, a requirement the majority of actors want.
“Paper Bag Plan” is a true indie through and through and a labor of love, blood, sweat and tears and came about minus posh bathrooms, fancy rigs, huge catered meals and was shot over six months. It’s one of the most poignant film treasures of 2025, a crowdpleaser that keeps winning awards.
It opens in select theaters this week: the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland and will screen Sept. 18 at the Smith Rafael Film Center and Sept. 19 at Cinelux Almaden Cafe & Lounge, San Jose.
Since Lucero and his team were well-versed on how to be industrious, his wife floated an alternative: “‘Why don’t you change it to a father and son?’ She’d never seen father-son stories, especially compassionate films like this,” he recalls The San Francisco State University alum mulled that one over. “OK, I can write for that space.” His wife also suggested just the right actor to play the functioning alcoholic dad Oscar – Lance Kinsey, best-known for “Proctor” in the “Police Academy” franchise.
An alumnus of “Second City” Theatre in Chicago, Kinsey specializes in improv and comedy and has won awards for writing and acting and has taught acting and improv classes. Lucero and Kinsey’s paths crossed while on the festival circuit – including at the Napa Valley Film Festival – when Lucero was promoting “East Side Sushi” while Kinsey was touring with his award-winning directorial debut “All-Stars,” which he also wrote. The two hit it off so well that they collaborated on the 4-minute short film (which they pulled off in eight hours) “Pay It Forward.” Lucero directed, wrote and produced.
“He’d never done drama, but we knew he could do it,” Lucero said. “We knew he could pull this off.”
And does he ever and is collecting awards too including a best actor honor at the Montreal Independent Film Festival.
Kinsey signed on immediately, even without that trailer.
“It’s just a beautiful, beautiful script,” he said in a Zoom conversation.
“It’s obviously a very personal story and I could see that and after I read it, I talked to (Lucero) a bit about it and learned more about his family history. And you know it comes from such a place of truth and experience, and the role of the father I absolutely related to. I mean you don’t have to have to have a disabled child to relate to this movie. If you’re a parent or you have a parent, everybody will be able to relate to it. All every parent wants is the best for their child.”
The most critical casting decision though, came in selecting the actor to play Oscar’s smart, A’s loving and likable son, Billy, Lucero said.
Cole Massie, voice of Finnegan Wake – a character in a wheelchair – on Nickelodeon’s “Monster High,” blew them away.
“If I could not find my Billy, I just wouldn’t move forward,” Lucero said. “We went through about 50 or so actors with disabilities. He was the last one…My casting director said ‘I think you’re gonna like him.’ We auditioned him and I was like yeah he’s my Billy.”
The pairing of Massie with Kinsey clicked immediately, even though they didn’t have much time to rehearse. Others on set noticed that special something happen between the two actors.
“We had one of our production assistants on sets and it’s like day one or two,” Lucero recalled. “She said ‘Did you get a real father and son?’ I was like: ‘Oh, that was the best compliment we can get.’”
Film fest audiences agree about that connection (Massie nabbed an actor honor from the Santa Monica Film Festival) and more since “Paper Bag Plan” keeps collecting numerous best feature awards while on the festival circuit, including a best drama one from the South Bay’s Poppy Jasper International Film Festival and the SF IndieFest. (Lucero, in fact, sports a Poppy Jasper T-shirt during the interview, and is bouncing back from a bout of pneumonia brought on from his busy schedule promoting the film).
Lucero speaks with emotion about what motivated him to make a movie that major studios would sadly most likely pass on. Two women – his mom Elsie Lucero who cared tirelessly for his late-brother Eddie, who was physically and mentally disabled, and his late sister Margie who died of cancer in 2018 and adored her daughter Sarah who has Angelman Syndrome, an extreme form of Down Syndrome. (Lucero made a 5-minute documentary “Angels and Wheelchairs” showcasing his mother’s committed love to his brother)
The question that consumes a parent or caregiver is what will happen to my child after I’m gone. It figure into and informs every empathetic yet realistic scene in “Paper Bag Plan.”
“It’s a very complicated issue,” Lucero said, who addresses the bureaucracy and long wait to get care or even answers to questions.
The film continues to resonate with anyone who sees it. In fact on the very day of Lucero’s interview for this article, he received a text that touched him.
“It was from my wife’s friend Herb and he said ‘I have a favor to ask. My developmentally disabled 58-year-old son, who lives with us, is not prepared for our passing. Sandy and I need to see ‘Paper Bag Plan.’ I would like to share it with her. Share with her the reality we both worry about, but don’t discuss.’..That was what I woke up to this morning.’”
In addition to changing the gender of one lead character, Lucero made other adjustments and that included setting the majority of his film not in Oakland – his original choice – but Burbank.
His love for the Bay Area has deep roots, though, and his passion for Oakland shines through it all (after all one of his main characters is named Billy Martin, the late Berkeley-born Oakland A’s manager and Billy’s room is full of A’s memorabilia.). Meanwhile fans of “East Side Sushi” can pick up another East Bay Easter Egg – a restaurant scene featuring “Sushi” star Diana Elizabeth Torres. (She offered to come from Mexico to shoot it.)
Lucero grew up in East Oakland and is thrilled to be coming to the Grand Lake Theatre. He had relatives who were functioning alcoholics – a theme potently addressed in the film. He didn’t want to overstate it, rather frame it as a “fact of life.”
“My family had tragedy when I was younger and it’s like the way my family dealt with it was through alcohol,” he said. “They were high functioning alcoholics – they still worked and they still took care of their children. It’s a reality and a lot of people around us are high functioning alcoholics. They’re no less a parent because of it…When I was a kid growing up in East Oakland, we didn’t have therapy and things like that. It didn’t exist. What we had was alcohol and that’s how people coped with their misery.”
After graduating from SFSU, Lucero worked for Industrial Light & Magic as a VFX artist (“Star Wars: Episodes I & II,” “Iron Man” and more). He enjoyed that experience, but felt there was something more he wanted to accomplish.
“The thing is working on a lot of those VFX films, I felt like they didn’t concentrate enough on the characters or the story. I think that’s when I decided to make ‘East Side Sushi.’…I’ve got to stop complaining about those VFX films that don’t care as much about the stories and whatnot, and I’m going to make a film that’s completely centered around story and characters and acting and heart and all that.”
“Paper Bag Plan” is all that and more.
(Lucero will be appearing at a series of Bay Area post-screening Q&As: at the 6:45 p.m. screenings Sept. 12 and Sept. 13 at the Grand Lake Theater and after 7 p.m. Sept. 18 screening at the Smith Rafael Film Center.)