By the end of last year, Chicago and the rest of the state were being likened to Bonnie and Clyde: They’d been all shot up, at least in the eyes of the movie business.
Filming in Illinois had pumped more than $115 million into the economy in 1993, the year of “The Fugitive.” Yet two years later that figure had plummeted to $22 million. The theories: Canadian cities were undercutting the Chicago area with the cheaper labor and exchange rates, and Hollywood simply had grown sick of seeing the city on film.
“When a town is extremely successful and shot up a lot, other people don’t want to come here,” says Ron Ver Kuilen, director of the Illinois Film Office. “Directors want to paint their own canvas. How many times can you shoot the corner of Milwaukee, North and Damen?”
Well, if it’s 1996, try five times–just in April. The same question could have been asked of the Michigan Avenue bridge, yet there was Keanu Reeves hanging from it in this year’s “Chain Reaction.”
The local film industry has bounced back in a way reminiscent of Michael Jordan and Ryne Sandberg: It’s not quite where it was, but it’s better than might have been expected.
The conventional wisdom that the Chicago area had been perilously overexposed now reads like yesterday’s news. Hollywood has returned to find that the city and state offer a lot more than just the cliched shots, which, by the way, still hold considerable appeal.
Ver Kuilen says the state has already drawn about $51 million of business this year, which equals 1994’s total, and that figure doesn’t even include the money being generated by projects currently before the cameras.
The Julia Roberts comedy “My Best Friend’s Wedding” has been filming around town since June and will continue through mid-September. The gangster film “Hoods,” starring Laurence Fishburne, has been using Chicago as a stand-in for 1930s Harlem since June and also will continue through next month. And the latest John Hughes-produced movie, “Reach the Rock,” has been shooting on Chicago’s Northwest Side and in West Chicago and Westmont since July.
Plus, filming begins Monday in the DeKalb/Rochelle area for “A Thousand Acres,” starring Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfieffer and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Bruce Willis and Richard Gere will come to Chicago for a couple of weeks in September to shoot scenes for their remake of “The Day of the Jackal.”
A couple of independent films also will film here this fall, and television projects will include visits by “E.R.” and “Chicago Hope” and a new CBS series set in Chicago, “Early Edition.”
“After last year I didn’t know what to expect really,” Ver Kuilen says. “It’s a significant rebound and much better than an average year’s business.”
Moviemaking brings an element of spice to the area. You might see trailers or stars around town and get to watch the hurry-up-and-wait game of an outdoor shot being committed to film.
When the movies come out, you can enjoy recognizing familiar scenery on screen–emitting those knowing chuckles when Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan supposedly drive to the East Coast from the University of Chicago via North Lake Shore Drive in “When Harry Met Sally,” or when Keanu Reeves scrambles from the Field Museum of Natural History into the Museum of Science and Industry in “Chain Reaction.”
City on the make
But local filming has a bigger impact on those in the business. Movies that shoot in Illinois usually stock up on area crew and cast members. If sets must be built, local expenditures take a pronounced leap. Steady business is needed to sustain a strong talent pool, which filmmakers say is a major reason they work here.
“You have great crews here,” says “Hoods” director Bill Duke. “People are accustomed to filming. Chicago also has a wonderful pool of black actors.”
Patty Whitcher, executive producer of “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” says 95 of that movie’s 120 crew members are Chicago based.
Chicago crews recently were getting priced out of the market by Canada and smaller American cities that aggressively were pursuing Hollywood business. Local unions such as the IA (International Association of Technicians and Studio Electricians, which represents carpenters, electricians, set decorators and other film trades) and the Teamsters responded in May 1995 by lowering pay schedules for lower-budgeted films.
“I think everybody pitched in, but certainly the unions were very aggressive in wanting to get this business back and made it known that they were willing to negotiate and to fit into the budgets,” says Chicago Film Office director Richard Moskal.
Meanwhile, the Illinois and Chicago Film Offices also hustled to attract business. The Chicago Film Office facilitates filming in the city, arranging for streets to be closed off, permits to be issued, red tape to be cut.
The Illinois Film Office does much of the advance scouting and pitchwork. It stocks photo files of 10,000 indoor and outdoor locations in the state that can be forwarded to producers. Staffers also escort studio envoys around the state in search of locations.
The office’s big project this summer was to find a farm house that fit the setting for “A Thousand Acres.” “It had to be this big beautiful farm with big trees and corn fields with other homes within eyeshot of this house,” Ver Kuilen says.
Weeks of calls to farm bureaus and driving trips around the state finally paid off last month. A Paramount location manager and the movie’s production designer found their farm just west of DeKalb, and the studio committed to filming in Illinois. Ver Kuilen says the proximity to Chicago’s crews also was a big selling point of Illinois over Iowa, where Jane Smiley’s novel was set.
It feels like a city
But aside from the nuts and bolts involved in planning a project, Chicago and the state’s biggest selling points are themselves. Director Harold Ramis, who shot “Groundhog Day” in Woodstock and parts of “Stuart Saves His Family” and “National Lampoon’s Vacation” in the state, is moving back to the city this month after 22 years away, and he looks forward to working here.
“My roots are there, and it’s the city I feel most connected with,” Ramis says on the phone from New York. “Not to sound too grandiose, I’d like to do a movie that defines Chicago much in the way that Woody Allen’s films define New York.”
Whitcher says “My Best Friend’s Wedding” was scripted to take place in Chicago because “it’s the most romantic city that we could think of that it could be filmed in.”
The movie, directed by P.J. Hogan (“Muriel’s Wedding”), is showing the city’s “opulent” side. Footage has been shot in the Drake Hotel, the Chicago Hilton’s penthouse, Charlie Trotter’s kitchen, the downtown Marshall Field’s, Comiskey Park, O’Hare’s United Airlines terminal, on elevated trains, in the Loop and on a Chicago River boat.
“This town is the best architectural city in America,” says “Wedding’s” Oscar-winning production designer Richard Sylbert (“Chinatown,” “Dick Tracy”). “Visually it’s terrific and the food is wonderful and the people are like New Yorkers but they’re nice.”
“Hoods” had completely different reasons to set up in Chicago. “A lot of Harlem that existed in the 1930s is no longer standing; it’s more of a war zone,” Duke says. “In other cities there are one or two blocks that are similar, but there are actual whole sections in Chicago where ’30s and ’40s architecture exists and has been well maintained.”
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The “Hoods” crew disguised the old South Loop post office as a Waldorf Astoria facsimile and “relocated” Printers Row streets to New York City circa 1934.
Chunks of Lawrence Avenue between Sheridan Road and the lake have undergone a similar transformation.
On a sunny day, Lawrence is parked up with ’20s and ’30s cars, and a crowd is gathered by the barricade at Sheridan to watch star Fishburne, playing numbers runner Bumpy Johnson, pull up in a cream-colored 1924 Stutz Bearcat and enter a 1920s-era apartment building for a meeting.
To the left of that building stands the Preston Bradley Center/Peoples Church, which doubled as the Harlem Faith Church in scenes filmed two weeks earlier. To the left of that is an ugly modern red-brick building that will remain out of camera range. Back at Sheridan, the defunct Vietnamese restaurant Pasteur has become a French eatery.
“The city has a character, and that’s something as a filmmaker that you can appreciate,” Duke says. “You get a backdrop that has a real culture to it. It’s not just a flat monotone. It has texture.”
The crowd at Sheridan appreciates the attention. “It’s exciting that they’re making more movies here in Chicago,” says Theresa Vance, a bus driver for the nearby Lawrence Hall school. “Just being able to see it and be a part of it is exciting.”
Fishburne can sense the enthusiasm. “I’m used to working in New York, L.A., places where people are used to seeing film crews,” the actor says. “So it’s very different and it’s kind of overwhelming to have people come out and watch you. It’s distracting to me, to be quite honest.”
Action-packed future
Perhaps Chicagoans will become more blase about filming if it continues at such a steady clip. The already-completed projects this year include “Dogwater,” the David Schwimmer-directed movie that recently wrapped in the Blackstone Hotel; “Love Jones,” starring Nia Long and Larenz Tate; 3 1/2 weeks of Nora Ephron’s “Michael,” starring John Travolta; a few days of the John Grisham adaptation “The Chamber,” starring Gene Hackman and Chris O’Donnell; and the biggie, Andrew Davis’ “Chain Reaction,” which shot here from January through late April and opened earlier this month.
Ver Kuilen estimates that the “Chain Reaction” Illinois expenses will amount to about $30 million, which at this point is more than the movie has earned at the box office. He guesses that the state’s total film receipts this year will fall between $70 million and $80 million.
Still, Ver Kuilen says he’s already scouting for films that would shoot next spring, including a “Fugitive” sequel called “U.S. Marshal” that would star Tommy Lee Jones.
“Success breeds success,” he says.
FAVORITE CHICAGO SPOTS FOR FILMMAKERS
The 10 most-used film locations in the Chicago area, according to Illinois Film Office director Ron Ver Kuilen.
1. The intersection of Milwaukee, North and Damen Avenues.
2. The “L”
3. Wacker Drive, Upper and Lower
4. Wrigley Field or a rooftop overlooking it
5. Michigan Avenue, especially the bridge
6. The Field Museum/Planetarium/Aquarium/Meigs Field/Soldier Field area
7. The Board of Trade/LaSalle Street canyon
8. The Equitable Building and Plaza
9. The Stateville and Joliet Correctional Centers
10. The Green Mill jazz club