Independent filmmaker aiming to shoot debut film in Saxonburg
SAXONBURG — A quiet Butler County borough could soon find itself on the big screen.
Saxonburg native Katie Fissore returned home Tuesday, July 14, with plans to bring her independent feature film, “Almost Thirty,” to the place that helped shape her story.
The 2010 Knoch High School graduate introduced the project during the monthly meeting of the Saxonburg Area Business Association, outlining her vision to showcase Saxonburg and other Western Pennsylvania locations as key settings in the film.
“Almost Thirty” is a coming-of-age story centering around a woman in her late 20s — played by Fissore, who also wrote the script for the film — struggling to decide which direction her life is headed.
Fissore and the film’s director, Kelsey Cooke-Guerra, used Tuesday’s meeting to pitch Saxonburg’s small-business owners — the bulk of those who attend SABA meetings — on the idea of helping to finance the film’s production, contributing professional services or allowing the use of the borough as a filming location.
“We want to keep as much money within the town as possible,” Cooke said. “That is going to take a lot of partnering with all of you fine folks and finding all the pieces we need.”
Fissore said the film’s premise should endear itself to Saxonburg’s small-business owners.
“You're business owners. You've definitely sat at a table where you've told someone your idea and they're like, ‘I don't know. What if you don't make money?’” Fissore said. “This is for anybody that wants to make more out of their one life here.”
According to Fissore, the idea for “Almost Thirty” grew from a pitch she created before the pandemic while she was in the midst of a struggling acting career in New York City. Although she had graduated from the reputable New York Conservatory of Arts a decade earlier, the only solid jobs she could nab during that time were performing at parties as a clown.
“To get an acting agent, you have to show that you can act. You have to have some kind of reel,” Fissore said. “Mine was just not great. I just could not pitch myself. So I had an idea. ‘Well, what if I just make a fake movie trailer about my life that will pitch myself for me? So I don't have to do it. And then it can show all the ranges that I can act.’”
According to Fissore, she didn’t have high confidence that much would come of the pitch trailer, which was originally dubbed “Welcome to Happy Hour.”
“I just started crying because I'm like, ‘This is so stupid,’” Fissore said. “At this point, I've been in New York for eight years. I haven’t done anything. Who’s going to see this? So I cried and I was like, ‘God, if you want me to be an actor, you do something with this.’”
The next day, God answered her prayer, because she and her clown company were hired to perform at NBC Studios in front of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” host Fallon. This gave her a chance to showcase her work.
“(Fallon is) like, ‘What are you doing at this job? You're pretty talented,’” Fissore said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, Jimmy, what am I doing at this job?’ So I sent him my materials.”
That gave Fissore a foothold in the entertainment industry, a chance to appear on Fallon and the confidence to pursue her dream of filming the movie.
Several years later, and after numerous false starts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fissore was introduced to Cooke, co-founder of the Nashville-based independent film studio Thisishardtoread Productions. The studio made its first splash in 2023 when it released “Re-Opening,” a satirical comedy about lockdowns during the pandemic.
During the meeting, Cooke referenced the recent smash-hit indie film “Obsession” as a milestone for what indie films are capable of.
“(Obsession) has nothing to do with what we're doing, except that it has created a window for independent moviemaking,” Cooke said. “They made it for $750,000, and it's made, now, over $400 million at the box office globally. So, I think that there is a new era. Studios are not coming out with the movies that we actually want to watch and we're kind of getting frustrated as viewers.”
Filming on “Almost Thirty” is planned to start this October. A cast has not been determined. However, according to Fissore and Cooke, several actors are “attached” to the film and have signed a letter of intent.
Although shooting has yet to begin, Fissore and Cooke showed the original two-minute pre-COVID “pitch” trailer. The footage in the trailer was shot in New York and Saxonburg.
Although on the opposite side of the country from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Butler County is no stranger to serving as a filming location for movies and television. Most famously, Evans City’s cemetery was used to film the opening scenes of the original “Night of the Living Dead.”
Some scenes for 2014’s “Foxcatcher,” 2015’s “Concussion” and 2016’s “American Pastoral” were also filmed in Butler County.
