Sunday, November 10, 2002

MASSILLON — It’s Halloween, and inside the Five Oaks mansion Gary Kiser and Steve Pallotta are working on their scary movie.

They pretend to be a pair of knuckleheads — mimicking characters played by the likes of Abbott and Costello or Martin and Lewis — who stumble into a huge mansion after their car breaks down. They’re looking for help. They see lights upstairs. Lightning flashes. Strange shadows appear. The pair walk down a hallway and open a closet door.

It’s the forbidden closet, and it opens the door to four eerie tales written by Pallotta and Kiser.

The pair are turning the stories into a movie — called “The Forbidden Closet” — that they plan to premiere early next year. Pallotta said their movie runs along the same lines as the 1983 feature film “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”

Pallotta, Kiser and friends have worked on the movie for the past year. The special shooting session at Five Oaks was for a segment that will open the movie and tie the four stories together.

They hope “The Forbidden Closet” will entertain people. It would be nice to see the film picked up for distribution, even if it only goes directly to video.

“My gut tells me that this thing is at least going to get distribution on the tape market,” Kiser said.

Making movies has been a dream of Pallotta and Kiser’s since the pair met back in the 1970s while attending junior high school in Cuyahoga Falls.

“We’re going backwards 20 years chasing the dream we chased when we were young guys,” Kiser said.

The pair actually made a movie, “Steve’s New Camera,” back in 1982. The 15-minute short placed third in the Sony Visions of America video contest in 1983.

Pallotta and Kiser don’t let placing high in the contest go to their heads. They realize that only 300 films were entered in the contest — compared with thousands today — and that their movie did feature a Sony camera as a lead character.

Not long after making the short film, Kiser decided to chase a different dream. He joined the Army and retired as a platoon sergeant. While in the Army, Kiser met his wife, Sandra, who grew up in Jackson Township. The couple and their four children returned to Northeast Ohio, moving to Perry Township.

During his stretch in the Army, Kiser lost track of Pallotta. Once back home he tracked him down.

Pallotta recalls that he had been playing an electronic keyboard when the Kisers showed up at his house two years ago. Pallotta played a short piece of demo music in the keyboard. Kiser reacted to the music by acting out a little skit. That was the beginning of “The Forbidden Closet,” Pallotta said.

The partners began working earnestly on the movie in January. They fit shooting around their regular jobs; Pallotta has a computer software business called Advanced Technologies, and Kiser works at Roadway’s terminal in Copley Township.

The production has cost “thousands of dollars,” which would be less than tens of thousands of dollars and a far cry from a Hollywood film budget. Most of the money has been spent on equipment. Pallotta and Kiser have been able to swing cash-free deals for props and locations.

Technology — digital cameras, computers and new software — have made it easier for the pair to film and edit their movie. They e-mail segments to each other, and do editing in their living rooms.

Most of the writing has been done by Pallotta. He and Kiser serve as producers and directors, while Kiser’s nephew, Andrew Knode, works the camera and another high school friend, Jim Newcomb, is sound technician.

Pallotta and Kiser hooked up with a Cleveland area talent agent named Ray Szuch, who owns North Coast Central Casting. Szuch tracked down actors interested in work and sent them to Pallotta and Kiser.

The best part for the producers: They haven’t paid any actor a dime. Right now, all the actors can expect is a demo tape they can add to their résumé and a night of fun at the premiere party.

The pair are confident the actors enjoy what they are doing and like the script. “I think they see the quality of the work,” Pallotta said.

The movie makers stumbled upon one of their actors. For the segment called “Lake Evermore,” they had planned to borrow a BMW for scenes that show a couple driving to the lake. But the BMW owner backed out, so Pallotta went to one of his customers — Bruce Ramsey of the Akron area — who owns a Mercedes. Next thing Ramsey knew, he’s in the movie playing the role of a storekeeper. He also has signed on as a grip for the film.

“He’s a natural,” Kiser said of Ramsey’s acting ability.

Pallotta and Kiser said they would like to see if they can pull one “big name” actor into their film. The “Lake Evermore” segment has a 1 minute and 40 second segment that needs a voice-over. The partners agree that Kate Mulgrew — wife of Tim Hagan, wholosta bid Tuesday to be Ohio’s governor — would be perfect for the part. They have called Mulgrew’s publicist, hoping for some help. None has come, yet. But they still have hope, because they haven’t been told “No.”

“We’re looking for a handout,” Pallotta acknowledged. “We’re looking for a freebie.”

A freebie is what brought Pallotta and Kiser to Five Oaks.

They wanted a vintage haunted house (supposedly J. Walter McClymonds, who built the mansion, is still there), and Five Oaks looks every bit the part.

Kiser visited the house, then chased down members of the Massillon Heritage Foundation for permission to shoot.

Ed Hare, the foundation’s president, said members saw the film as a chance to showcase Five Oaks. They also liked the offer from Pallotta and Kiser to make a documentary film about the house.

Before agreeing to open the house, Hare watched a 2-minute clip from “The Forbidden Closet.” He was impressed. “It was professional.” Now he looks forward to seeing the premiere.

Pallotta and Kiser plan to show the finished movie at the Highland Theater in Akron in January or February. After high school, the pair worked as projectionists at the theater, one of the few old movie houses still open in the area.

The premiere party also will feature a short made by Kiser called “Doggie In the Window.” It was shot in front of buildings on Erie Street S in front of Diamond Court SE. It’s a science-fiction story about a mirror for sale at an antique shop, and a passer-by who realizes the mirror shows her the future.

Pallotta and Kiser don’t know what to expect after “The Forbidden Closet” premieres. They will try to find a market for it. They have high hopes of selling the movie to a distributor, but realize it’s a long shot.

At least they’ve had fun this past year pursuing a dream. And who knows, maybe the film will help someone — maybe one of the actors — find fame.

“If one person succeeds from this whole ‘Forbidden Closet’ project, I’ll be happy,” Pallotta said.

Thursday, February 27, 2003

CHECKING THE CUT. The cast and crew of “The Forbidden Closet” review footage from a shot. Lined up (from left) are sound technician Jim Newcomb, actor-producer Gary Kiser, cameraman Andrew Knode and actor-producer Steve Pallotta. Work on “The Forbidden Closet” ended in January and a sneak preview aired in Akron on Sunday. Repository / Kevin Whitlock

AKRON — Sunday night, Gary Kiser watched his lifelong dream become reality on the big screen at the Highland Theatre.

Monday morning, he took out the trash.

Life returned to normal.

Things weren’t so normal during 2002. Kiser, who lives in Perry Township, and his friend, Steve Pallotta, spent the year making a feature-length film. They wrote it. They filmed it. They acted in different segments.

Now the movie — “The Forbidden Closet” — is finished and they are trying to find a distributor.

Kiser and Pallotta said they are trying to work a deal with a Los Angeles-based movie distributor. They hope for distribution on video, and dream of a theatrical release. Before the distributor agrees to help, he wants to see some public reaction to the film.

So Sunday night, Kiser and Pallotta, who lives in Copley Township, rented the Highland Theatre and filled it with family, friends and co-workers for a sneak preview of the movie. Those who watched were asked to submit their comments to the Web site for their production company, Fool’s Gold Entertainment.

“The Forbidden Closet” is similar to “Twilight Zone, the Movie” or the “Creep Show” series. Kiser and Pallotta strung together four short stories, and each ends with a bizarre twist. The pair wrote the stories, used a digital camera for filming and a computer for editing.

Locations around Akron and Canton were used as film sets. Kiser and Pallotta filmed the opening segment at Five Oaks mansion in Massillon. Comet Lake in Green doubled as the setting for “Lake Evermore.” And one distinctly Akron scene in “Lake Evermore” featured four Goodyear blimps floating above a tree line.

Because of their equipment and limited budget — they bartered for locations and didn’t pay actors — the film doesn’t have a Hollywood feel. They did well, however, by having local musician Lisa Azar Yerian write and perform the score.

The film proved entertaining, and the partisan crowd definitely enjoyed what they watched. Kiser and Pallotta mixed humor and a few scares into the bizarre tales. They also used computer-editing techniques to create a variety of special effects.

But it’s unlikely “The Forbidden Closet” will be a runaway, independent film hit like last year’s “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

Kiser and Pallotta became friends in junior high school while growing up in Cuyahoga Falls. They made one short film together in the early 1980s that ended up winning a third place in the Sony Visions of America video contest in 1983. But Kiser joined the Army, and lost track of Pallotta for several years. The pair reunited about two years ago and started thinking about movies again.

At first, they considered creating shorts that could be used as a TV series. But as they worked, “it snowballed into something we did not plan on originally,” Kiser said.

With one movie out of the way, Kiser and Pallotta already are thinking about a new project. Work already has started on the “The Forbidden Attic.” It includes a short called, “The Boogie Man,” which was shown as a featurette before “The Forbidden Closet.”

Pallotta said he also would like to produce a romantic comedy. He believes that with a good script, the film could be put together in a few months. Work on “The Forbidden Attic” could take another year, he said.

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