American Airlines does not get any product shots in the film “Jim Shoe,” but writer/director Peter Sutton said he should “give props” to their generous frequent-flier-mile discounts.
They agreed to make the flight from Los Angeles to Chicago —which usually costs 12,500 miles one-way — for only 10,000 miles, which allowed Sutton and producer David Hoelscher to bring their actors in from California with the 100,000 frequent-flier miles they had to work with.
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Savings like that kept “Jim Shoe” around the pair’s $200,000 budget, which made its scheduled premiere on Feb. 10 at the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge possible.
Sutton — a 1978 graduate of Niles North High School —said they had to fly everyone in coach, at affordable hotels, but the pressure and unpredictability of making a low-budget film was exhilarating.
“Everything was run-and-gun,” he said. “It was like a big steam-roller on my back.”
But with his film now “in the can,” Sutton said all that pressure has turned into elation.
“It’s like bringing out your firstborn,” he said.
Sutton said he and Hoelscher met while working in a trading pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and found a common love of movies. Sutton was the first to make the jump —in 1996, he moved to California and has been working in casting ever since —but the two remained close.
“I gotta poop or get off the pot, and I went out there,” is how Sutton described his decision-making process.
While casting for both films and television shows, he worked on his own script at night. When he believed it was ready, he contacted Hoelscher again.
“He saw this as his bucket list,” said Sutton, 55, of his filmmaking partner, a Park Ridge resident. “He wanted to be a producer of a movie, and I wanted to be a writer-director.”
So the pair made “Jim Shoe,” which Sutton called a “dramedy” about the titular character — played by Mike Erwin — an attorney at a prestigious Chicago law firm that is searching its top lawyers for who will be its next partner. Jim Shoe’s “eccentric, Machiavellian” boss sets up bizarre pro-bono work for the candidates to perform. Out of a hat, Jim draws a card that sends him down a construction-plagued Interstate 290 to Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood, to mentor a juvenile delinquent there played by Denzell Armon.
Sutton and his cast and crew filmed most of “Jim Shoe” in the fall of 2014, and came back last summer for a few re-shoots. The final product, he said, is about two hours long.
Working the magic of movies on a gym-shoe-string budget, Sutton and Hoelscher turn Buffalo Grove, Northbrook, Skokie, Evanston and Winnetka into Chicago’s West Side, and varying suburbs. The character Jim Shoe is a New Trier Township High School graduate, but Sutton said homes in Buffalo Grove pose for Winnetka — and real-life Winnetka poses for other spots in the film.
“Everything had to hinge upon locations,” Sutton said. “We would just show up on the set, and ‘Let’s see what we have here.’ We exploited what I remember as a kid growing up.”
Of course, things have changed around the northern suburbs in the past 20 years. Sutton said that when he comes home, he drives and around and plays a game of seeing what stores have turned into Starbucks since his last trip.
But with 100,000 frequent flier miles now invested into his firstborn, Sutton said he may not be coming home as often as he once did. Especially not if he and Hoelscher’s next move — seal a distribution deal — succeeds.
Regardless of the outcome of “Jim Shoe,” though, Sutton said he was proud to have made a film that touches on race relations, the work of lawyers and the nature of privilege at a moment like 2016, in a community as divided as the Windy City.
“If you’re from Chicago, you’ll really appreciate what’s going on,” he said
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