There’s a scene early in “Paper Bag Plan,” the lovely and award-winning indie released this summer, in which the main character gets so hilariously drunk that he takes a pratfall down a short staircase.
As played by Cole Massie, the inebriation is so convincing that it’s fair to wonder: Just how much method acting was involved here?
“Everybody asks me that,’’ Massie said with a laugh. “It was Coke and water!”
While the whiskey was fake, everything else about “Paper Bag Plan” is profoundly and gloriously authentic. This is what can happen when a film grounds itself in reality to share stories about people with disabilities and the caretakers who can spend a lifetime by their side.
The movie has received a warm reception everywhere, but never more so than at Reel Abilities Film Festival, a nationwide celebration of disability-themed films.
“That was an unbelievable reaction,” Massie said in a recent interview with the Geena Davis Institute (GDI). “I mean, applause and crying and clapping. Let’s just say that Kleenex made its money that day.”
A March 2025 research study by the Geena Davis Institute showed that only 3.9 percent of characters on TV have a disability. So the Reel Abilities screening in New York marked a rare opportunity for audience members to see themselves represented on screen with complexity, depth and nuance.
But it’s also a film that appeals to any crowd. “Paper Bag Plan” captured the Audience Award for best narrative feature at the Naples International Film Festival and was selected for best premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival in Indianapolis.
Jillian Mercado, who plays Billy’s best friend in the film, said: “These are very hard topics to talk about, especially if it’s a lived experience. There are so many people who were able to relate to it. They may not have a disability themselves, but sometimes things happen in life and they have to take care of their loved ones. You look at the world a little differently.”
Writing and acting from a real place
Anthony Lucero, who wrote and directed “Paper Bag Plan,” spent his early career at Industrial Light & Magic, an experience he called “amazing.” However, he grew disenchanted with making movies with dazzling effects and stories that fell flat.
Lucero vowed to do something about it by making films with “more heart, more character, more story.” In “Paper Bag Plan,’’ he went 3 for 3.
The narrative film tells the story of Oscar (Lance Kinsey), who, facing cancer, trains his disabled 25-year-old son Billy Martin (Massie) in grocery bagging, hoping to secure him a job and independence before time runs out.
It’s a bittersweet tale that comes from lived experience. “The inspiration,’’ Lucero said, “was my mom.”
Lucero’s brother, Eddie, was born mentally and physically disabled. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk. His mother, Elsie, would puree his food and spoon-feed him.
“That was the extent of what my brother Eddie could do,’’ Lucero explained during a screening at the Smith Rafael Film Center in September. “He could open his mouth, and that was it.
“My mom, up until her late 70s, would lift him out of that bed. She’d walk down the hallway into the shower and bathe him. She’d take him in and out of a wheelchair.”
When Eddie was born, doctors told the family that he wouldn’t live past age 1. When he defied those odds, doctors revised the prognosis to say not past 2. “Then past 3, then past 10,” Lucero recalled.
Eddie died in 2009. He was 47.
“I’m 100 percent sure it was because it was my mother’s love that kept him going,” Lucero said.
The film serves as a love letter to caregivers. The other half of the story is an homage to his sister. Margie died in 2018 and left behind her daughter, Sarah, who has Angelman syndrome, a severe developmental disability. “So that really kickstarted the story of what happens when a parent of a child with a disability leaves Earth,’’ Lucero said. “What happens with that child?”
The power of authentic casting
As an actor with cerebral palsy, Massie is accustomed to the tropes surrounding roles for people with disabilities. Many scripts tend to follow a familiar pattern.
“When we get those roles, we’re usually the sick, dead or dying one,’’ Massie said. “In medical dramas, we’re the patient.”
Then, suddenly, there was “Paper Bag Plan.”
“When this script came through my door, I thought, ‘Huh. A movie where I’m not the one sick?’ I found it interesting this time around that it was the caregiver who had a terminal illness,’’’ Massie said. “Then, of course, I read it and was absolutely blown away. I thought: ‘This is my movie. I’m doing this movie come hell or high water.’’’
First, he had to audition against dozens of others. When Lucero set out to fill the role of Billy, he called casting director Russell Boast, who specializes in representing disabled actors. Boast is a former winner of the SAG-AFTRA Disability Awareness Award.
In all, Lucero looked at 49 other hopefuls for the role.
Then No. 50 walked in the door.
“He was the last one,’’ the writer/director said. “Russell said, ‘I think you’re gonna like this one.’ And sure enough, he was a handsome man. He looks good. Let’s see if he can act.”
The last piece of the puzzle? Massie had to demonstrate that he could bag groceries, a key plot point in the movie. Earning employment serves as a symbol of independence – and marks a far cry from a role that asks him to die in a hospital bed.
“Right. And it’s not a sympathy job, either,’’ Massie said. “It’s an, ‘I’m a 25-year-old kid. I need a job, so I’m gonna go get one.’ But I practiced. Billy practiced and he worked at it. He got the skills because someone taught him.”
A Geena Davis Institute report on the state of disability representation in television noted that, overall, 21 percent of characters were authentically cast with actors who have the same (or a similar) disability.
The number troubles Jillian Mercado, who plays the effervescent Ruby in “Paper Bag Plan.” As with Massie, she saw herself in this script from the start, and recognized her lived experience.
“I’ve told Anthony like a thousand times. I cried,’ said Mercado, who has muscular dystrophy. “Because I saw my mom in it. I saw how much she had to go through. I’m the firstborn in my family and I have two younger sisters. My mom came from the Dominican Republic when she was 19. … She went through so much raising me. But also I feel like, as I’ve grown, she’s had to figure out how the world sees me, but also the reality of it and how we move forward.”
Mercado (“The L Word: Generation Q,” “Dying for Sex”) has much respect for great actors in any form, but called it “alarming” to see how many movies have won Oscars in which an able-bodied person portrays someone with a disability. Because even with a stellar performance, the truth can get lost in translation.
“Unfortunately, there have been too many movies where people have gotten it wrong,’’ Mercado said. “I see a movie that has a character or a storyline that has someone who has a disability, but I don’t relate to it at all. Because it’s always through the lenses of somebody who doesn’t (have a disability). So they don’t know the lived experiences, the real lived experiences that we live through.”
Fighting unexpected challenges
Lance Kinsey, the ailing father in the film, is best known for his comedic performances. He played Sgt. Proctor in the “Police Academy” movies. But, he, too, infused “Paper Bag Plan”with poignant authenticity.
Lucero cast him in part because he noticed how “real” Kinsey was between the comedy.
“What I didn’t know,’’ he added, “was that his wife had died two years prior from cancer. So he pulled from that experience, for the chemotherapy and the decline of someone who has cancer.”
Kinsey’s deeply moving performance as Cole’s father, in which he blends vulnerability with tough love, provides another welcome screen role model. A GDI study on male caregiving, titled “This Is Us,” analyzed 225 TV shows. While the report revealed a shift towards more men in caregiving roles, those depictions were often flawed.
Male caregivers were nearly two times more likely than female caregivers to be shown as incompetent — a perpetuation of the “apprentice dad” trope.
As part of that research study, GDI put out a plea for balanced, realistic portrayals and advocated for breaking gender stereotypes.
Kinsey’s father delivers just that, as Lucero found out when he showed the film to his neighbor.
“She saw it, and she could not stop crying,’’ he said. “She’s just like, ‘I can’t believe what that father did for his son,’ as if these were real characters.
“It is a nice reflection that it comes back and it hits the audience so deeply. I’m not trying to manipulate the audience; it’s just a natural response. But yes, of course, I do love the response that people have to it.”
The Geena Davis Institute works with creatives all over the world to enhance on-screen diversity and ensure nuanced portrayals.
Any future filmmakers looking for a way to do it right can use this movie as an example. As it turns out, “Paper Bag Plan” is a blueprint worth following.
- The film is still in select theaters and will be available on digital January 9.
- Anthony Lucero will be a panelist at the Institute’s State of Disability Representation in Television virtual event on December 3, 2025. Please join us!