From Sibley to the Silver Screen

By Tim Spitzack | Editor | October 2026

The indie filmmaking team of Andrew Zuckerman, Dillon Orth and John Cronin have released their second full-length feature film, now showing at two theaters in the Twin Cities. “Good Sport,” a comedy that pokes fun at youth sports, is the culmination of two years of hard work and a decade-long learning curve that began while they were friends at Henry Sibley High School, now Two Rivers.

The film follows a struggling single father over the course of one really bad day in his life. His ex-wife is getting remarried, he’s hungover, and he’s coaching his 12-year-old son’s basketball game against their team rival. On the court he faces a half-crazed opposing coach and overly competitive parents, all while trying to reconnect with his son and be a good dad.

“I wanted to make something that was kind of a raunchy sports comedy similar to something from the early 2000s, but something low budget,” said Zuckerman, who directed the R-rated film and co-wrote the script with Orth. “That was the initial goal, and that comes with a lot of restrictions. The plan was to do something in one location setting, and that’s when we thought it’d be a fun idea to have the movie take place during one sporting event, and from there the story kind of built around that idea.”

The film’s budget was $150,000, which is meager considering it covered approximately 50 cast and crew, and production expenses. It was shot over two weeks in 2024, primarily in the gym at Heritage Middle School in West St. Paul. Orth, who attended Heritage as a student, enlisted the help of his father, Tom Orth, associate principal at Two Rivers, to secure the location.

“That was a massive help,” said Zuckerman. “We did look at other schools, but it ended up being really expensive to close down a school for a week.” The filming was done while students were away on spring break.

A common interest, a shared goal
Zuckerman, Orth and co-producer Cronin began making short films together in high school and their first film, a 45-minute western entitled “Rasco,” won the Best Student Film award at the 2017 St. Paul Frozen Film Festival and Best Student Screenplay at the 2017 Manhattan Film Festival. They continued collaborating after graduating in 2017, despite attending different universities. Zuckerman headed to New York University but eventually transferred to the University of Minnesota where Cronin was studying, and Orth went to DePaul University in Chicago. In 2021, they formed their own production company, Dapper Loon Productions, to follow their dream of making independent films. Their first project was “Undergrad,” a full-length 2022 comedy-drama that follows a group of friends on the verge of college graduation who examine their lives and their relationships. It was shot in St. Paul and won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival.

Entering film festivals is a great way for independent filmmakers to get noticed and find a distributor. “Good Sport” won the Audience Award in Competition Feature Category at the 2025 Dances with Films film festival in Los Angeles, and that led to getting a distribution deal to get the film into theaters and streaming services.

Finding funds and talent
While their early work was mostly self- and crowd-funded, Zuckerman has learned a few tricks to widen the financing net. To find investors for “Good Sport,” he turned to the business social media site LinkedIn and found about 1,000 people with ties to the film industry. He emailed them and eventually landed three people who, combined, contributed about half the film’s budget. The rest came from family, friends and other networking efforts.

It was a chance encounter that led to finding the film’s main actors. Zuckerman was in a bar in the Twin Cities one evening several years ago when he spotted actress Sari Lennick, whom he recognized from the Coen Brothers movie “A Serious Man,” one of Zuckerman’s favorite films. He approached her and struck up a conversation, which eventually evolved into a friendship. He often emails her his movie scripts, and when she read “Good Sport” she wanted a role. Lennick then contacted some actor friends and urged them to join the cast.

Working with professional actors was both a thrill and a challenge for the Dapper Loon team.

“We had pretty accomplished actors in the movie,” said Zuckerman, “so that was, for me, trying [difficult] to navigate. Before that, I was working with either my high school friends or college students, or up-and-coming actors. This time I was working with people who have been in Best Picture nominees [films]. I was nervous coming in, but that nervousness went away really fast because the cast was amazing. They really trusted what we were doing.”

Zuckerman said he has learned something new from each film he’s produced and that he uses that knowledge to make their next project even better. And, for the time being, those projects will continue to be independent productions.

Locally-based Mann Theaters was the first to show “Good Sport” in the Twin Cities. It opened at Mann Edina and as of press time was showing at Mann Grandview in St. Paul and Mann Grand 15 in Plymouth. For more information, visit goodsportmovie.com.