By William Morris

Owatonna People’s Press

OWATONNA — The city council has approved a movie shoot in downtown Owatonna next weekend, but there’s a catch.

At a special council meeting Monday morning, council members voted to approve the events permit by local filmmaker Hamid Torabpour, who plans to shoot several scenes for his upcoming movie “Zombies” in and around Central Park on Saturday and Sunday. The permit comes with a condition, though, that Torabpour provide several documents and answer several questions for city staff by 5 p.m. Tuesday. If they are not satisfied, the scenes will have to be shot elsewhere.

Torabpour applied for a special events permit on Sept. 25, and initially planned to bring 500 cast and crew and block off five downtown streets for nearly all of the weekend, and the council debated the permit application at its Oct. 6 meeting. After the city raised concerns with the plan, the start time was moved to after 5:30 on Saturday, and the number on set was pared down to between 50 and 100 at a time. But in the course of the Oct. 6 meeting, Torabpour was not able to answer several logistical questions to the council’s satisfaction, leading to the special session Monday morning.

At Monday’s meeting, many of those questions were still unanswered.

City Attorney Mark Walbran raised concerns about insurance: the city requires the principle organizer of an event to add the city as covered by general liability policies, and Walbran also had concerns about insurance liability for vehicles used in the shooting. As of Monday, Torabpour did not have documentation showing the city added to the Winterstate Entertainment insurance policy, and could not even confirm how many vehicles belonging to which owners might be used in the scenes, let alone who is covered on their insurance.

Police Capt. Jeffrey Mundale addressed the safety of the prop weapons, including prop firearms, to be used on the set. Torabpour sketched out the arrangements to keep the equipment secure, and also requested permission to fire about 20 blank rounds during the shooting. As of Monday, he was not sure when exactly those scenes might be shot. Mundale also addressed the need for security, with Torabpour saying the set will be secured either by a private company or by the Steele County special deputies. Council President Les Abraham gave him contact information Monday to get in touch with the deputies.