SCHAUMBURG, IL - It started with an awkward-seeming proposition 33 years ago in Chicago Heights, Illinois. A tentative friendship had begun in an English class at Bloom High School between sophomores Sam Lapin and Tony Gasbarro, until Lapin leaned across the aisle and asked Gasbarro, "You want to make a movie with me this weekend?"
Uncertain if the engaging, quirky-humored Lapin didn't have an ulterior motive, Gasbarro shrugged off the nagging suspicion Lapin might be a serial killer and accepted the offer, and waited to see what was in store.
That weekend the boys together finished what Lapin had started, a short, stop-action animated film, "Battle on Planet 9," shot, and later edited by Lapin, on the venerable Super8 film format. It was the first of many films involving the two.
"It was all Sam's equipment," recalls Gasbarro today. "The camera, the lights, the markers, the paper, the Legos!" The popular building toy — of which Lapin was then and is still today a devotee — made up many of the miniature sets and even some characters of "Planet 9" and later films the pair were part of.
"The Legos were mine," says Lapin, "but the camera was an old Bell & Howell from the sixties or early seventies handed down from my brothers. It was great because it had a shutter release capability for taking one frame at a time" which made stop-motion animation possible. Adds Lapin, "I had a movieola-type viewer for editing I think I got at a flea market. It worked great until Tony broke it."
Gasbarro changes the subject and adds that even Lapin's family cats were frequently employed as stars, extras and props. "Cookie, Bunny and Little Bit," recalls Lapin. "They were great cats...but temperamental film stars."
For their first collaboration, Gasbarro and Lapin felt their partnership needed a name, and after deliberating for several long seconds, they came up with Cheap Productions, Inc., and an equally hastily designed logo of a grimacing sun with one of its corona flopped over. Or was it a flower with a wilted petal? Gasbarro says he does not remember.
"Tony designed and drew it," says Lapin. "He was the artist." Lapin's comment draws a self-effacing guffaw from Gasbarro, who then shakes his head. "Well," Lapin adds, "he was absolutely useless with the Legos. I certainly wasn't going to let him build the sets or the space ships!"
Lapin and Gasbarro soon got their other friends, the bulk of Bloom High School's theatre department, involved in the filmmaking effort, which continued as a film consisting of random, mostly original, silent, sight-gag sketches, inspired largely by the British "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and "Benny Hill" television comedy programs in local syndication at the time.
The film was made up of "just plotless, improvised scenes," says Gasbarro. "It was just stuff, hence the title. 'Stuff.'"
Consisting mainly of gags created with in-camera edits and general teenage boy silliness, the film was a hit with their audience - which was mainly the group of filmmakers themselves. Encouraged by the film's success and the fun they had making it, the group endeavored to make another, and a genre was born: the Stuff Film.
While Lapin and Gasbarro continued to work on more plot-oriented film ideas, which were usually conceived by Lapin before collaboration shaped them into stories, the Stuff films seemed - in their minds - to take on a life of their own, and they saw a need to separate them from the Cheap Productions label. A few more moments of deep thought bore the conception of Stuff Enterprises, a subsidiary of Cheap Productions, Inc.
"Stuff 2" quickly followed the first Stuff film, and then both companies, recently separated and each run by... well, everyone ...then collaborated for their first mixed live-action/animation - not to mention title-melding - film, "Stuff 3: The Stuff From Outter [sic] Space," in which some kind of stuff from - you guessed it - outer space lands on earth and commences to eating everyone and everything in rapid, blob-like fashion, growing with each thing it consumes until it climbs a tall building and fends off several flying machines which appear to merely be flying at it for the sole purpose of drama and of being swatted out of the sky or eaten. The blob is finally defeated by a super laser which reduces the blob to the size of a gum ball, at which point it rolls off the edge of the building and falls into the hands of a young man, played by Lucio Martinez, who mistakes it for - what else - a gum ball and pops it into his mouth. Sequel, anyone?
"Stuff 3" was soon followed by "Stuff 4: Close Encounters of the Lowest Budget Kind," in which a space alien arrives to earth in a vehicle incredibly similar to the one that delivered the stuff from outter [sic] space and then turns all the young men and one lone woman - in what appears to be some sort of communal flop house - into fresh produce.
A laughing Gasbarro recalls, "Alice [Petrongelli, who portrayed the woman] neutralizes the alien with a food processor and then tearfully collects all of us who had been turned into vegetables. Even though her boyfriend [now husband, Rich Wolff] was cast as the stalk of celery, she lovingly kisses me, portrayed by an eggplant, before placing us all into the crisper in the refrigerator! And then she places only half of Kevin [Uliassi], who was turned into two grapefruit, into the drawer!" Gasbarro's laughter trails off, and then he sighs, his face withdrawing back to an expressionless gaze, and he says, "I guess you had to be there."
The fifth - and what turned out to be the final - Stuff film was titled, "Stuff 5: Slash Gorgon in the 23rd Century," an obvious take off of the earlier, major motion picture, "Flash Gordon in the 25th Century." "To give the impression," Gasbarro chuckles, "that ours was first."
But the sun soon set on Cheap Productions, Inc., and Stuff Enterprises as the older members of the company completed their senior year at Bloom and matriculated, and then Lapin, Gasbarro and Martinez followed the next year.
The Cheap Productions/Stuff Enterprises film library still exists in a box stored in Gasbarro's leased storage space in Schaumburg, and he and Lapin have continued to dream of once again making films together.
After Lapin finished his graduate studies, his path led him into education. Gasbarro followed the path into broadcasting and video production, in his own right continuing as a filmmaker, albeit for advertisers and corporate entities.
But a run of hard luck in the economic crash of the first decade of this century and the eventual lay-off from his job as a videographer led Gasbarro into an unlikely secondary career as a taxi driver.
"It certainly wasn't what I ever wanted to do with my life, but I had to pay bills," says Gasbarro. "I always liked to drive. I saw it as a thing to do until I got back on my feet."
Three years later Gasbarro is still behind the wheel of his taxi, which he now owns. Says Gasbarro, "It is incredibly liberating to be your own boss, and this allows me to be very flexible" as he still chases freelance video production work.
Though he doesn't own the taxi dispatch company, he does own the company that operates the taxi. And its name? "I thought a lot about the hopes and dreams I had to put on a shelf as my career led me more and more into TV and video production, and of how Sam and I have often mentioned collaborating again," Gasbarro muses. "So I thought, what better way to keep that dream alive than to pay homage to what we created as goofy, stupid teenagers?"
He named his company Stuff Enterprises, LLC, with Lapin's blessing.
"Even though it was originally the other way around," says Gasbarro, "I thought 'Enterprises' lent itself better to the prospect of launching other companies under its umbrella, so anything else would be subsidiary."
Is Cheap Productions one of those companies under that umbrella? Well, no. At least not yet. But Gasbarro has some ideas.
"Right now I operate the taxi as Stuff Enterprises," Gasbarro says, "but I hope to eventually operate it as another name under Stuff. And I still get the occasional video gig, and hope to get more. So I eventually hope to possibly name the video company Cheap Productions as a Stuff Enterprises enterprise," he chuckles at his own nerdy humor, and then he adds, "with Sam's permission, of course!"
But Gasbarro's nascent business sense surfaces at the idea. "That wouldn't be such a great name for a serious video production company, though, would it?"
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