The State Theatre, 130 W. College Ave., State College. Photo by Andrea Robinson | For StateCollege.com
This story originally appeared in The Centre County Gazette.
Jackson Pavlik is a Centre County native turned New York-based movie producer, director and actor. His new movie, “Close That Box,” is set to debut at the State Theatre in State College on Saturday, Nov. 30.
Adequately describing the movie in any meaningful way proves to be a challenge.
The film features over 150 local actors and takes place somewhere on a pirate ship or in Washington or maybe out in the Old West in a world that is “overcome with spoon-handed sea captains, bumbling secret agents, ecoterrorist bandits, brainwashed fascist Italian zombies, chili pepper sheriffs, genderbending knights, human-animal hybrids of all species and other bizarre characters,” the movie’s website noted.
The movie, on the surface, is about five movie-buff friends who somehow get sucked into the worst possible plotlines and are surrounded by things like, well, fascist Italian zombies. It follows their struggles to get back home. It will be shown at the State Theater on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 6:30 p.m.
Pavilk, who graduated from Penn State’s theater program, has appeared in musicals and plays affiliated with Penn State Centre Stage, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, FUSE Productions and 54 Below.
For the past 15 years, he has been the creative director and producer of the amateur film company Jackson & Company.
“So we intentionally wrote the movie so we could get as many people we know from here into it as possible,” Pavlik said, sharing about the process of making “Close That Box.”
“And we had some people call or send in videos from halfway across the country.”
Once cast, the crew got to work bringing to life the unique movie.
“We have five college-aged friends who want to make one more movie like they did when they were kids, hoping to recapture the nostalgia of their childhood, and they go down to their uncle’s basement and they open a box — like Pandora’s — and it unleashes a horror and sucks them into weird places filled with all the characters they liked, or didn’t like, from their past.”
For Pavlik, the location of the film premier has a special significance.
“We recorded the movie and we kind of knew we wanted it at the State Theatre because that’s where a lot of us made our stage debuts.”
The movie includes many of Pavlik’s friends and classmates from the area and was filmed in locations all around the central Pennsylvania area.
The cast includes many comedic “stars of tomorrow,” according to Pavlik, such as Shane Troxell, Hannah Armstrong, Logan Uhrich, Mal McKenzie, Korey Grecek, PJ Witkowski, Julia Salvato and many others.
There are also cameo appearances by Eisner Award nominated cartoonist Jay Hosler, operatic tenor Richard Troxell and character actor Lee Wilkof.
Tickets for the film’s premiere are available at closethatboxthemovie.com.
This post was originally published on here
