‘The Paper Bag Plan’: Working class hero!

Oscar Martin is a single parent raising a wheelchair-bound paraplegic son Billy. He is the driving force of Anthony Lucero’s moving new film The Paper Bag Plan.

Oscar Martin is a single parent raising a wheelchair-bound paraplegic son Billy. He is the driving force of Anthony Lucero’s moving new film The Paper Bag Plan.

Oscar is not tortured by existential grief. He doesn’t spend hours with his therapist trying to figure out his purpose in life or coming to terms with guilt and original sin. He’s not a trust fund guy or corporate titan trying to extend his financial empire. Nor is he an assembly-line Marvel Universe superhero whose charge is to save the world.

Oscar Martin is a common working-class father with one job and he is diligent about it. His job is to provide a life and prepare a future for his disabled 20-something son Billy.

In his 107 minutes of screen time, writer-director Lucero reveals little about either Oscar or Billy’s past. They live in a modest home. Oscar is an appliance delivery person. We don’t know what happened to his wife. She seems long gone from his and Billy’s life. Oscar persists in wearing a wedding band although he never mentions her. Lucero is determined to keep us focused in telling us this story!

What we do know is that Oscar is a closet alcoholic. Billy knows that, too, prodding his dad that if he can get a job, Oscar must stop his secret bingeing. Oscar has also been quietly consulting with his doctor about what turns out to be cancer. He won’t readily discuss it. When Billy gently confronts him, Oscar downplays it, mostly in dismissive complaints about medical care.

But it must be bad enough so that Oscar has begun preparing Billy for a life without him. He pushes Billy toward a job so that he can become self-sufficient.

At first Billy resists. But Oscar wisely concocts a plan based on the familiar, their grocery shopping expeditions, and pushing out into the larger world around them. Oscar will help train Billy to become a grocery bagger at their local market. To do this, Oscar engages the neighbors in simulating market conditions. He purchases and gets donated a wealth of groceries. They are assembled on shelves in his living room. Neighbors are invited to “shop,” selecting groceries which they must bring to Billy’s “counter” so he can practice the mechanics of bagging. The reluctant owner of the neighborhood market must also be persuaded to hire Billy once he demonstrates the required skills.

Much as he did in his last film, the award-winning East Side Sushi, Lucero tells a spare tale of working-class life. Through action he reveals character. The narrative deftly sketches out the challenges of what it means to be not rich in America. Lucero is so good at working with actors that the performances appear seamless. Lance Kinsey as Oscar and Cole Massie as Billy are nothing less than superb. Their interactions define this tiny at-risk family. And as with East Side Sushi, he sets his characters in the gritty East Bay neighborhood where they shop, take BART and go to the Oakland Athletics game.

The Paper Bag Plan is a deceptively simple story which lets us assemble what we know of contemporary life into a moral tale of real love and heroism. As John Lennon musically observed some years ago, “ a working class hero is something to be!”

As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small

By giving you no time instead of it all

Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all.

They hurt you at home, and they hit you at school

They hate you if you’re clever, and they despise a fool

Till you’re so fucking crazy, you can’t follow their rules

If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

The trailer can be viewed here.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Michael Berkowitz

Michael Berkowitz, a veteran of the civil rights and anti-war movements, has been Land Use Planning Consultant to the government of China for many years. He taught Chinese and American History at the college level, worked with Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org. with miners, and was an officer of SEIU.