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Lisbon store to be featured on two cable programs by Charlie Pomerleau -- Lewiston Sunjournal web site Frank Anicetti -- is no Kevin Costner, but the Moxie Man has been getting more than his share of time in front of the camera lately. Soon, he'll be showing up on cable TV. Anicetti's Kennebec Fruit Co. store on Main Street will be featured in programs on the History and Learning channels, talking about his favorite soft drink in one and Stephen King in another. "The people from the History Channel called a couple of times to get the history of Moxie and some of the trivia I've researched." Ancietti said. "I had to ship them a case of Moxie and some pictures and T-shirts, that sort of stuff." Atlas Media Corp. of New York City produced the two-hour special, "Ameican Drinks." which is scheduled to air Dec. 11. The show is billed as " a warm, nostalgic look at the fascinating stories behind Ameica's favorite drinks and their ingenious inventors and entrepreneurs," according to a letter to Ancietti from Yasha Husain, the company's director of research. Ancietti doesn't appear in the show, but his contributions to the Moxie segment were important, Hussain said. Besides being the source for all things Moxie (clothing, glasses, bumper stickers, pens, pencils and much more, most in bright orange) he's also a lode of information on soft-drink trivia. "They were interested in the amazing stuff I've dug up while researching Moxie," he said. For example, the doctor who invented Moxie also developed the telephone numbering system during a flu epidemic in his hometown of Lowell, Mass., Ancietti said. A week after that program, Ancietti will show up on The Learning Channel in a program called "Stephen King: Master of the Macabre," airing at 10 p.m. Dec. 19. "When Steve was a kid at Lisbon High School, he would come in here and wait for his ride home a lot of afetrnoons," Ancietti said. "We'd sit and talk about this and that. He was just another kid at the time, but he always had a lot of opinions." The local segments were filmed in early June, about two weeks before King was struck by a van in Lovell. "He brought a BBC film crew in here, showing them his old stomping grounds," Ancietti said. "It was nice to renew acquaintances, but he usually drops in here about once a year and we shoot the breeze about his books and movies and so on." The store Ancietti's grandfather opened in 1914 almost made it into the movie "Graveyard Shift" from one of King's books a few years back. "But there was some problem that popped up, so they shot it on a soundstage," Ancietti said. Nevertheless, the store's old-time feel has attracted small, independent filmmakers who like the look of the glass candy cabinets and ice-cream counter with its mirrored back wall. Parts of the short movie "Sometimes Home" were shot here, and a film crew from Portugal worked here a decade ago on a codumentary about the towns named Lisbon in America. Making movies is fun for Ancietti; he long ago stopped being nervous about being in front of the camera. "When that little red light comes on, it just turns me on and I start talking," he said. "It's gotten to the point where I don't even see the camera anymore, just the person I'm talking to." Excerpts from: Lewiston SunJournal Web Site - November 29, 1999 |