Orientation
Punch the Line is an epic coming-of-age teen dramedy about a high school competitive improv team.
Set in present-day South Orange County, California, the eight-episode fictional podcast borrows from 1980s teen movie classics to successfully blend the style and spirit of John Hughes with the wisdom and poetic depth of Cameron Crowe amid a high-stakes, emotionally engaging story about a team of young creatives overcoming their personal demons to win a marquee improv competition and save their drama department from the grips of a manipulative elitist.
Punch the Line plunges a whole new generation of audiences into a cacophony of emotional experiences unseen in decades—the free-spirited joy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the cathartic poignancy of The Breakfast Club, the angsty romance of Say Anything, the brass-knuckles competitiveness of The Karate Kid and Breaking Away, with an added dose of the comical zaniness from Whose Line Is It Anyway?
With emotionally-rich characters audiences will come to know and love, Punch the Line plays like a symphony of the greatest teen movies ever made while setting the stage for its own legacy.
We're All Pretty Bizarre...
Losers Walk the line. Winners punch the end.
Won Best Director (Paul Roland) @pasadenafilmfestival!!!
The Director
Paul Roland
Paul Roland directed his first feature film, EXEMPLUM, on a budget of just $10,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Despite a multitude of challenges (personal and professional), he led a team of fellow creatives to shoot the film over the course of seven weekends. Filming started on a hot night in September and wrapped just days before Thanksgiving. On average, the film had no more than about four crew members working on set at any given time
After the birth of his daughter in February 2021, Paul Roland edited the film at night while maintaining a full-time job as a journalist and achieved a final cut in the spring of 2022. One year later, he secured distribution with the company IndieRights after a successful run on the festival circuit, during which he won Best Director at the Pasadena International Film Festival (PIFF) despite being up against films with 10-times his budget along with full-working crews.
EXEMPLUM has since been available to watch on Tubi, Vimeo, and Google Play and has slowly been building a steady following, with positive reviews in prominent publications like The Epoch Times, Reelviews, Breitbart News, The Blaze, Hollywood in Toto, Newsmax, Ian Haworth, Film Threat, The Stream, The Banner, Studio Jake, Chronicles Magazine, Catholic Wprld Report, and Matt’s Movie Reviews. With a marketing budget of zero, the movie now has four “Fresh” ratings on Rotten Tomatoes; its first being from Top Critic James Berardinelli of Reelviews — the godfather of online film criticism.
STATEMENT FROM PAUL ROLAND:
I love this story. It may not be my most profound idea, my most complex idea, or my most timely idea, but it has garnered an unparalleled affection in me for being my most joyful idea, my most innocent idea, and probably my most American idea. I feel it in my bones when I say that this will be a cultural milestone, something for the ages, and I will invest every ounce of my creative and spiritual energy to make that happen.
Franchise Potential
Punch the Line stands as its own complete story in the same vein as The Breakfast Club or The Karate Kid. When the podcast concludes, audiences will have been served a fully satisfying emotional experience with no false teases. HOWEVER …
The story certainly offers avenues for sequels and even potential spinoffs.
Beyond direct sequels, the franchise would likely hit its stride as a feature film adaptation of the podcast or a streaming series.
Either way, Punch the Line does not have to end when the podcast concludes.
