John Armstrong, producer of “The Good Catholic” film that is shot in Bloomington, said this is an Indiana film.
“We all met at IU, and we wanted to make this film here,” Armstrong said.
He and fellow filmmakers and IU alumni Zachary Spicer, Paul Shoulberg and Graham Sheldon spoke about the making of their film during a panel, “In the Mind of a Hoosier Filmmaker,” Tuesday at IU Cinema.
Filming for “The Good Catholic” wrapped Saturday, Feb. 13.
“The Good Catholic,” written and directed by Shoulberg, follows a young priest, played by Spicer, who falls in love with a woman after meeting her in confession. Other actors include Danny Glover, John C. McGinley and Wrenn Schmidt.
The story is loosely based on the meeting of Shoulberg’s parents, who were a priest and a nun before they fell in love and left the Catholic Church.
While the film has been classified as a romantic comedy, Shoulberg said that wasn’t all true.
“There’s a lot of romance and a lot of comedy in it,” he said. “I wouldn’t pair it with ‘Love Actually.’”
Sheldon, a producer of the film, said one of the film’s strengths is Shoulberg’s ability to bounce between humor and severity with every line of the script.
Sheldon said Indiana provides talented people and diverse locations for a project but lacks support on the state level to make more films here.
Since most of a locally made film’s budget would be spent in Indiana, Sheldon said tax incentives from the state would encourage more filmmakers to shoot here.
Spicer said he considers their production company, Pigasus Pictures, a blue-collar film company.
“Nobody here is an expert at what it is that they’re doing,” Spicer said. “But it’s the fact that, if we don’t know how to do something, then we try to figure out how we can do it.”
As graduates of the IU Theatre program, Armstrong said they have drawn from what they learned from their coursework, where the four originally crossed paths.
“People say, ‘Why do you get a degree in theater? You can’t use it,’ but — and here we are making a movie,” he said. “The stuff that we learned here is — you know — is invaluable.”
