Starting your own production company can be a risky enterprise, but some might think starting with no money and no intention of working from Hollywood sounds like professional suicide.

When the husband and wife team of writer/producer Xandra Castleton and writer/director David Munro left their respective jobs and formed Grottofilms (named for their headquarters at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto), their plan involved keeping their base in San Francisco and focusing on finding and creating fresh material to develop for the screen.

“We started [Grottofilms] as a development company,” Castleton explains, “feeling like there is a dearth of really original stories. There are a lot of production companies that simply bypass the development process … they buy a book or something.”

Munro, an old basketball buddy of local writer and founding Grotto member Po Bronson, gave up a career in advertising to study filmmaking and found immediate recognition and critical acclaim with his student shorts. Castleton’s production experience in TV and documentary rounds out the team.

Having experienced “Hollywood hell” trying to develop several projects, the team wants to avoid the game at all costs.

“[Development in Hollywood] is expensive,” Munro says. “First you buy a property, then you hire a writer to do a draft and everyone pisses on it, then you hire four more writers. Then it’s been five years and you don’t recognize it anymore because everyone’s taken their swipe at it. As much as you can take control of that process, you stand a much better chance of getting your stuff out there in a way you can feel good about.”

“You’re at the mercy of so much unless you have a producer,” Castleton adds, “so I wanted to put my experience in documentary and television to film.”

Grottofilms’ first feature film project is Full Grown Men, based on an original screenplay co-written by the couple. The ongoing challenge of bringing the story to the screen has been detailed by the team in a series of bimonthly columns for the Chronicle. An excerpt from Castleton’s April 29 installment deftly sums up the journey thus far:

“It's pure inspired hubris, what we all do when we decide to work in a medium that combines almost all the arts, involving dozens or hundreds or thousands of people, no matter what the cost. And then there are a few of us who do the whole thing from scratch: a script, a business plan, a cell phone in hand and no rich relatives to start us off. Cold calls and e-mails for two years, three if you count the year of fund raising for Grottofilms. I wouldn't have done it if I knew how long it would take, but now that I'm here, I like the vantage point. I'll like it better behind the video monitor on set, and even better at our premiere.”

Full Grown Men stars Matt McGrath (The Anniversary Party, Boys Don’t Cry) as Alby, the puerile protagonist, and Judah Friedlander (American Splendor, Zoolander) as his childhood friend, Elias, and features Alan Cumming, Amy Sedaris, Joie Lee and Deborah Harry in smaller roles. So what inspired this story of a guy who never grew up?

“Um, I was in a band until I was 38,” Munro says, grinning sheepishly. “It’s loosely based on some guys who were my best friends growing up. It’s also based on that uniquely male thing of sort of the ‘cut-down-athon’ - the guy who has the sharpest wit is the one that rules. But usually the group has a guy that ends up taking most of the shit, too. So even though those two guys, the alpha guy and the fall guy, were closer than anyone else in the group, there was this history between them that was strained.

“So the story makes a fictive leap to them as adults and what if the one who was the king never got past that point; you’re not the king anymore and you just hang on to when you were,” he goes on. “But it really isn’t about them anymore; their dynamics were the starting point for these characters, but then the characters had to outgrow them and become more universal in a sense.”

Grottofilms has several other scripts in various stages of development, including a dark comedy called Freak Show, a story set in the world of pre-code Hollywood cinema called The Women, and an adaptation of a graphic novel called The Inferiors. The couple says they’re “pretty far along” in the script for their next project, an erotic thriller called Sublet.

Though Munro and Castleton say they’re grateful for the inroads and connections they’ve made while raising money for Full Grown Men, they never thought it would take so long.

“The economy’s shite, and people that probably could’ve funded the whole movie five years ago now put in [a fraction of the cost],” Munro explains. “So it’s been kind of drip, drip, drip. I never thought I would say ‘drip’ to equal $25,000,” he says with a laugh.

But Munro says despite the lack of financial outpouring, there’s never been lack of interest in the film.

“You’ve got a good script and doors will open,” Munro states confidently. “When people see stuff that’s original it’s shocking, because you read enough scripts or watch enough movies that are closer to the formula … you’re just used to ‘oh, the chase starts here’ and ‘oh look, it’s the second-act turning point.’ ”

“Oh gee, I wonder if they’re going to get together,” Castleton deadpans.

“The rhythms of the stories are engrained in you,” Munro continues, “so when something strikes you differently, your eyes open. And that’s the advantage we have.”

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