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Springfieldian produces indie film for national distribution

‘Paulie Go!’ will debut at Minneapolis film festival May 19

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A Springfield resident is about to see the result of his first experience as a movie producer premiere at a Minnesota film festival before its release on pay-per-view.

Coming-of-age comedy “Paulie Go!” is set to debut May 19 as part of the closing night of the 41st annual Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. Co-producer Larnelle Foster plans to attend the event, which he sees as an opportunity to celebrate the long road to get the independent film project completed.

Foster said “Paulie Go!” is being distributed by film studio 1091 Pictures and will be available in viewers’ homes as a pay-per-view option, beginning May 24. In August, it will be available via subscriber-based streaming services. However, the platforms are yet to be determined, he said.

“We’re betting on ourselves in the way we decided to distribute the film,” Foster said, noting he and the other producers felt it best to partner with a studio to spread word of the movie.

The production team hopes to pay back its investors and eventually make money by people renting, buying or streaming the movie, rather than releasing it into movie theaters. Its budget was $1.26 million, he said.

“This isn’t ‘Spider-Man,’” Foster said with a laugh.

The movie follows two teenagers as they track down a professor in northern Minnesota who rejected one of them from entry into a world-renowned robotics lab. Foster said it’s based on the short film “Paulie,” created by Andrew Nackman. A University of Southern California film school graduate, Nackman also directed the feature film and serves as one of its producers.

Foster is a graduate of Northwestern University and holds a bachelor’s degree in theater. He moved to New York in 2005 after graduation, where he started working as an agent assistant for talent agency William Morris Endeavor. A promotion to the motion picture literature department led him to Los Angeles for five years beginning in 2011. He decided to go out on his own in 2016 to focus more on the management side rather than agent work, forming his own company, dubbed LF MGMT.

Foster said he wanted more personal relationships and a smaller client list.

“I realized if I could do that, I could also produce and be involved in their actual projects,” he said. “That was really important to me. You can’t do that as an agent.”

Finding balance
“Paulie Go!” is the first movie produced by Foster, who is balancing his growing career in the film industry with work as director of operations for a trio of Springfield businesses: wine bar Q Enoteca, Big Momma’s Coffee and Espresso Bar, and restaurant Queen City Soul Kitchen. Lyle Foster, Larnelle’s father, has ownership in all three ventures.

Lyle Foster said his son, who moved to Springfield from LA in 2016 to help him out with Q Enoteca and Big Momma’s, has done a good job balancing his work demands.

“In a lot of ways, it mirrors what we do in the small-business world because it is seven days a week and not always set hours,” he said via email, regarding the work cycle in the entertainment industry. “This works well because sometimes it is spontaneous, and the work is required as needed.”

Lyle Foster said there have been a few occasions when his son has been out of town on a film project, and he realized how much he missed Larnelle’s contributions to the Springfield businesses. Still, he’s thrilled his son can do something that he loves.

“Because I know his schedule, I am able to balance his work contributions with what he is doing with his entertainment activities,” Lyle Foster said.

Larnelle Foster said family and friends have long supported his entertainment industry dreams, which included making an independent film.

“I’m always supported here and felt like I could always come back to Springfield and get what needed to be done with the wine bar and Big Momma’s,” he said.

Pandemic challenge
As with most any film made in the past couple of years, Foster said coronavirus pandemic-related challenges were present during the production of “Paulie Go!” The film originally was scheduled in early 2020 to begin shooting in May.

With their plans upended, the filmmakers got on a call to investigate options.

“It wasn’t a call full of fear,” he said. “It was actually a call of ‘What is our plan? We’re making this movie.’”

After a couple months’ delay, a cast and crew of 48 people assembled in Park Rapids, Minnesota, for a 30-day shoot. Extreme COVID-19 guidelines were in place as requested by the Screen Actors Guild, and these included extensive mask wearing, a COVID officer on the set and testing cast and crew for the virus three times a week.

“With all the COVID protocols, we added another $250,000 to our budget,” Foster said, adding the film originally was expected to cost around $1 million. “If one person got COVID, that would mean we were done.”

However, he said the budget increase was negated by a 25% income tax credit through the state of Minnesota. Foster said since so much of the movie was supposed to be in Minnesota, he connected with film producer Laura Ivey, whom he credits as being instrumental in finding its crew in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Along with friend Jake Greene, who teamed with Nackman to expand the original short film’s script to feature length, Foster said the three went on a 2018 trip to Minnesota to scout locations and eventually find a way to make the film.

“None of us had ever done anything like this before,” Foster said. “I didn’t even know how to start. But I said yes.”

With the journey of “Paulie Go!” wrapping up with its debut this month, Foster hasn’t left filmmaking in the rearview. He just returned from a 21-day shoot in Melbourne, Florida, for the next film he’s producing, “Shepherd,” a drama about a pastor of a small church struggling with his faith after his son’s death. He said the target is for a 2023 release.

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