The Jigsaw Saloon and Stage opened briefly for a Lucky Paws Animal
Rescue fundraiser this past weekend, but the storied
restaurant-nightclub remains closed for day-to-day business for the
third week. Monday, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health suspended the
club’s food service license, citing an overdue renewal.
Disappointed fans of the Parma institution reported seeing cleaning
crews in the restaurant last week, but nothing resembling the promised
“management training” yet. And the owners’ financial troubles seem no
closer to resolution (“The Jig Is Up,” March 18).
Akron’s Black Keys, the area’s current ambassadors to the rock world
at large, still haven’t been paid for two sold-out January shows at the
Agora Theatre, which is being managed by a partnership between founder
Hank LoConti and Jigsaw owner Phil Lara. With 3,800 tickets sold, the
band should have received a $50,000 payday. The Keys filed suit against
the Agora on March 3.
A big chunk of the tickets were sold through Ticketmaster, which can
hold funds for up to three weeks. Nearly two months after the show, a
Cleveland judge instructed the Agora to pay the band by March 20. As of
March 23rd, the venue had yet to deliver the funds. A pre-trial
conference was set for Tuesday afternoon, after the deadline for this
issue of Scene.
After the Agora staff was replaced with loyal Jigsaw minions, the
new Agora booking crew took last week off. The venue released a
schedule at the end of the week, but it didn’t include any new
shows.
The Jigsaw Group fiasco is fall-out from a 2008 accumulation spree.
After buying the Jigsaw in December 2007, Lara rapidly expanded over
the following months, until he had a stake in three other Cleveland
clubs — the Agora, the Hi-Fi Concert Club and Peabody’s. The
Hi-Fi and Peabody’s bailed quickly, citing financial commitments that
hadn’t been met.
The meltdown has left one club closed, hamstrung another, alienated
the region’s biggest band and left dozens of employees in the lurch.
But it could have been worse. Lara had explored buying other Cleveland
institutions; here are three businesses he didn’t buy.
• Lava Room Recording. In initial talks, the Agora deal would
have included Metrosync recording studios in the complex. At the same
time, Lara made an offer to purchase Lava Room Recording, a Cleveland
studio whose partners at the time included Hi-Fi owner Billy Morris.
(Morris has since left the business.) Owner Mike Brown says the deal
was lopsided and would have left the studio’s assets vulnerable. Brown
says Lara also tried to pay him for sessions using an $1,800 check
written from a closed account.
• Chimaira. The band’s bassist and business delegate Jim
LaMarca says he met with Lara, who proposed purchasing the Cleveland
metal heroes for $3 million, to be paid over five years. “I didn’t even
take [the offer] to the band,” says La Marca. “They would have looked
at me like, ‘Dude, are you crazy?'”
• The Beachland. Before getting a hook in the other concert
venues, Lara made a bid on the Beachland, proposing to rename it “The
Jigsaw Saloon and Stage at the Beachland Ballroom.” But owner Cindy
Barber says the deal felt fishy. “I just didn’t think the Jigsaw was a
more important entity than the Beachland,” says Barber. “I didn’t think
it would be safe turning our much-beloved venue over to him.” —
D.X. Ferris
FILM FLAM
Last Friday, Cleveland Film Commission director Ivan Schwarz spoke
on WCPN’s The Sound of Ideas, again, to pat himself on the back
for everything he’s done to make Cleveland the Hollywood of the Rust
Belt. Which would be totally awesome, if it were true. Unfortunately,
host Regina Brett doesn’t know as much about movie production as she
does about open discovery.
Much ado was made about Nehst Studios, which recently signed a lease
for part of the Cleveland convention center. Schwarz figures the
company is going to bring in $100 million if one of the competing
film-production tax-incentives bills finally passes. Brett didn’t ask
for specifics about Nehst Studios, as if tacking “studios” at the end
of a name puts you on the same level as Warner Bros. and Paramount.
So what movies has Nehst Studios produced to prompt speculation of
nine-figure revenues? Could it be Slumdog Millionaire? No.
The Reader? Try again. Howard the Duck? They wish.
Here’s some recent hits associated with Nehst Studios: Running
the Sahara. 41. Love and Orgasms. The Uniform Motion of Folly. Heard of any of them? Schwarz loves to remind people that
one of Nehst’s CEOs was a producer on Sling Blade, a cool
low-budget film that grossed about $24 million — in 1996.
And now Nehst Studios is going to bring $100 million to Ohio.
Mm-hmm. — James Renner
THE MAN BEHIND THE MASKS
Like some kind of concert promoter, filmmaker and make-up artist
Frank Ippolito has worked hard to recruit patrons for the screening of
his two shorts, Teller 1 and Teller 2, which show at the
Cleveland International Film Festival at midnight on Friday. The
Cleveland native flew in from Los Angeles last week in time to make the
festival’s opening night party and has relentlessly handed out flyers.
“If you’re trying to be a filmmaker and someone whose work is taken
seriously, you have to promote yourself,” he says one afternoon from
the festival’s hospitality room at Tower City. With his backpack and
hoodie, he doesn’t look much like a filmmaker, but he’s clearly not
just some skate punk.
Ippolito says he was first drawn to the world of make-up when he was
10 and saw a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Michael Jackson’s
“Thriller” video. He made a mask in his basement, and things snowballed
from there. He made up actors at Geauga Lake’s Halloween events for
five seasons before moving to L.A. in 2000 to be a mold maker at a toy
company. That company went under, but he landed a gig on the 2002
fantasy flick Reign of Fire, and that led to jobs on Scary
Movie 2, Pirates of the Caribbean and Buffy the
Vampire Slayer.
Ippolito met magician Teller through a friend, and the two entered a
short-film contest related to George Romero’s 2007 zombie movie
Diary of the Dead. “Penn and Teller have a huge fan base, so
when the fans saw it, they wanted another one,” says Ippolito. In each
film, Teller, who doesn’t speak during Penn & Teller’s
performances, talks in a droll voiceover while fending off a grisly
zombie and wandering aimlessly in the desert. The two films are
strange, sordid tales.
Ippolito says he’s working on a third short with Teller. But for the
time being, he’s happy to be back in his hometown, basking in the film
festival’s limelight.
“As a filmmaker, I’ve been treated really great here,” he says.
“It’s kind of flooring how hospitable they are. This is how I imagined
it would be at a festival. This is going to be the benchmark for how I
judge film festivals from now on.” — Jeff Niesel
SOMETIMES IN THE DARK
It’s a big deal for businesses to shut off the lights for an hour in
the evening — especially for restaurants, bars and coffee shops.
But a few Ohio cities are participating in Earth Hour, the World
Wildlife Fund’s call for greater global-warming awareness. The plan:
Turn off lights and unplug unneeded appliances between 8:30 and 9:30
p.m. Saturday, March 28.
“What’s this all about?” you might ask as the lights go down just
before the barista hands off your latte. And then the barista might
tell you: The WWF hopes to create political momentum for enacting
national climate legislation and a global climate treaty. Last year’s
Earth Hour was a big hit, with about 50 million people — 36
million of them in the U.S. — turning off the lights. Among the
dark landmarks were the Sydney Opera House, Bangkok’s Wat Arun Buddhist
temple, the Coliseum in Rome, Stockholm’s Royal Castle, London’s City
Hall, New York’s Empire State Building, Cola-Cola’s famous Times Square
billboard, Chicago’s Sears Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge and Google’s
homepage.
More than 2,140 cities and towns in 82 countries are participating.
Lakewood and a handful of Earth-friendly non-profits and businesses are
sponsoring a gathering at the Lakewood Women’s Club Pavilion from 8 to
9:30 p.m. with a bunch of stuff you can do in the dark: stargazing,
acoustic guitar-playing, firelight storytelling and more. For
information, visit earthhour.org.
— Michael Gill
THE KEY WORD IS ‘CITIZEN’
Ohio Citizen Action has a big and dirty state to patrol for
industrial excrement, right near the bottom in nationwide water- and
air-quality rankings. Last fall, its organizational tactics helped
convince metal and mining behemoth Eramet to spend $170 million to
clean up its Marietta manganese factory. But OCA’s Cleveland chapter,
one of just three in the state, can handle only one big issue at a
time. That’s why it’s training ordinary citizens to become better
activists and observers.
At its next Good Neighbor Campaign training session (9:30 a.m.-4:30
p.m. Saturday, March 28, at CSU’s Main Classroom 438), the organization
is bringing in pollution-prevention expert Robert Pojasek from Boston
to discuss how he’s convinced companies to cut emissions and costs. Liz Ilg, the Cleveland chapter’s program director, says Pojasek
will illustrate how to use a “campaign of conscience to convince plant
managers and CEOs that they need to listen to their neighbors.”
Dr. Anne Wise will discuss the public-health side of pollution
ramifications. Then participants can go home and deal with their
problems in a constructive way, says Ilg. “We don’t get to work on
every issue, and we know that there are so many people out there
dealing with different issues in their backyard, so we offer these
trainings to deliver to them what we’ve learned.”
The cost is $15, which will pay for breakfast, lunch and all
training materials. Two future field trips will build on what attendees
have learned, with more hands-on help in researching and organizing.
For information, call 216.861.5200 or go to ohiocitizen.org. — Dan
Harkins
more online at clevescene.com
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2009.
