Hollywood on the Mississippi? Comedy filming in West St. Paul is east metro’s second movie this year

While students and teachers sleep in during spring break at Heritage E-STEM Magnet School in West St. Paul, at least one former student will be hard at work there.

“Good Sport,” a comedic spoof of rousing sports movies such as “Hoosiers,” begins an 11-day shoot at the school and other east metro locations Wednesday. The shoot will extend through spring break the week of March 24, and one of the filmmakers is Heritage graduate Dillon Orth.

“It’ll be an R-rated movie. It takes place over one [basketball] game and it’s a satire on youth sports, or how parents act in youth sports, especially when the kids are about 12. We’re definitely making fun of that, but it will have some heart, as well,” said the 25-year-old Orth. He co-wrote the movie with director Andrew Zuckerman, 24, and is co-producing with Zuckerman and John Cronin, 25.

All three were in youth sports in the West St. Paul/Mendota Heights area. Their movie will draw on bad behavior they witnessed there — although not, they are quick to add, by their own parents.

“John and I first met in third or fourth grade, playing baseball in West St. Paul. I played basketball in the same gym we’re going to be shooting in,” said Orth, who has a film degree from Chicago’s DePaul University and whose father is a youth sports coach.

“There is quite a bit of inspiration from how we, as kids, felt,” added Zuckerman who, like Cronin, graduated from the University of Minnesota.

“I just saw a news story today about a bill that would fine parents for crazy behavior at sporting events,” Cronin said. (Similar bills have been proposed over the years).

The film will feature “Ted Lasso” semi-regular Mike O’Gorman as an unruly coach and local actor Sam Landman as a good coach who’s having a bad day.

Orth knows that territory: “In high school, I went back to ref that same league I played in and plenty of parents were getting quite upset — at a third- or fourth-grade basketball game.”

Esera Tuaolo, the former Minnesota Viking, and Michelle Hutchison, who played one of the prostitutes in the movie “Fargo,” will have small roles in “Good Sport,” which also features “A Serious Man” star Sari Lennick and local kids as the athletes.

The $150,000 movie is the second for the trio, who made “Undergrads” with Twin Cities friends during the pandemic and who raised the money for “Good Sport” from private investors. (”Undergrads” can be rented on Amazon, Apple TV+ or viewed for free on Tubi.)

“We’re a lot more confident going into this one and it’s great to have a professional cast and crew behind it,” said Zuckerman. “Knowing the different stressors and things that come up, we’ll have a better grasp on dealing with them.”

Their plan is to finish the movie this summer, so they can submit it to festivals and try to find distribution. The cast and crew are complete, which is a good thing since there’s been a mini-boon in local production, including the movie “Unholy Communion” and TV series “Love Is Blind.” Mostly, that’s a coincidence, said Melodie Bahan, executive director of Minnesota Film and TV Board.

The state has increased its investment in local production but Bahan noted that bigger-budget productions are in a holding pattern, slowly resuming after last year’s Screen Actors Guild strike while awaiting resolution of contract talks with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

“We’ve got a lot of interest in projects coming to Minnesota but until IATSE’s contract gets settled, probably not a lot is coming in,” Bahan said.

“Good Sport” is not benefiting from the state’s incentives — the timing didn’t work — but Bahan notes that productions of all sizes help establish the filmmaking community here.

For their part, the collaborators are happy to have a chance to make a movie at home.

“This is what I’ve been wanting to do forever. So, even though it’s super-stressful right now and preproduction is difficult, once we get on the set, we know it will be fun,” Zuckerman said.