by Robert E. Kessler

Sometimes making a motion picture involves more than big-name actors and a script based on a famous story.

Sometimes, according to federal prosecutors and agents, it involves fraud.

The promise of high returns on investments and the glamour associated with Hollywood have led recently to several fraud schemes around the country, two of them on Long Island (aka: LI), according to federal law enforcement officials.

Such schemes rely on independent filmmakers' need to raise the millions of dollars necessary to produce a motion picture, according to court records. Independent filmmaking is a high-risk business, one that doesn't have access to the bank financing that major Hollywood studios do.

One recent case involved what was supposed to be the directorial debut of actor Alec Baldwin, in a major movie based on the classic short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Parts of it were filmed on Long Island.

Baldwin had planned to direct and star in the movie along with Anthony Hopkins and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Instead, he bowed out after a dispute over financing. Two would-be financiers were convicted of fraud for forging bank papers, then failing to come up with a promised $6 million. One recently was sentenced to a year and a day in prison; the other was sentenced to a day in prison and three years of supervised release.

Their scam involved forgery of a bank letter of credit stating that one of them had $6 million ready to be invested in the movie, Eastern District Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Lesko said in court papers. That letter enabled Baldwin to convince Hopkins that he would get the $6 million fee he insisted on.

When the money was not forthcoming, the film was taken over by another company, and Baldwin insisted that his director's credit be removed, according to court records. Spokesmen for Baldwin and Hopkins said the actors were not available for comment.

(A recut version of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" was released briefly last summer in several small markets, including Columbus, Ohio, under the title "Shortcut to Happiness.")

Another case involved "Out of the Black," which starred, among others, Sally Struthers, best known as the daughter in TV's "All in the Family," and Michael J. Pollard, known for his role as a slow-witted gangster in "Bonnie and Clyde."

In the case of "Out of the Black," six people are awaiting sentencing, due to begin next month, after being convicted of, or pleading guilty to, fraud in connection with raising $3 million, ostensibly to produce the movie, according to papers filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Kelly in U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

The six defrauded hundreds of investors, some of them on Long Island, by stating in high-pressure telephone solicitations that only 10 percent to 15 percent of the money raised would go to fund raisers' commissions, Kelly said in the papers. In fact, according to Kelly, commissions of up to 50 percent were skimmed off the top of the investments. At most, investors got back pennies for their total investment of $3.1 million, according to court papers.

Stephen Zissou of Bayside, attorney for Lisa Niksic, 49, one of the six who pleaded guilty, said his client "got involved thinking she was also part of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, but she played only a minor role." Niksic, formerly of San Diego, now lives in Italy.

None of the actors in either movie was accused of any wrongdoing.

"In deciding whether to invest in the production of a film, one should obviously be skeptical of a promised return on investment tied to the commercial success of the film, since that's so inherently speculative," said FBI New York spokesman James Margolin.

Despite the confidence schemes, both movies were eventually completed and distributed, but with limited financial and critical success. The trade paper Variety described 2001's "Out of the Black," as "a hopelessly earnest afterschool special of a movie that seems engineered for [audiences] who lament that 'they don't make 'em like they used to' - that is, if they used to make 'em this hackneyed and clunky and embarrassingly poorly acted."

As for "Shortcut to Happiness," a reviewer for the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif., wrote, "If the Devil wants to buy your soul, for the love of God, don't exchange it for a movie like 'Shortcut to Happiness.'"

BIZ FACTS

Some of the filming for the movie that became "Shortcut to Happiness" took place at a former Northrop Grumman plant in Bethpage in 2001.