My Kind of Tinseltown: A Chicago Movie Autobiography
The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.
By Bryan Wawzenek
I was born across the street from Chicago in Oak Park, Illinois, and grew up in neighboring Forest Park, a small suburb that’s home to Lemonheads (the candy, not the band) and infamous for containing so many cemeteries that the village’s deceased population outpaces the number of living residents by a ratio of 3 to 1.
Tinseltown certainly was a world away from Forest Park, although Hollywood was frequently coming to the area when I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s. I remember my friends and I frantically pedaling our bikes a few blocks over to catch a glimpse of the A League of Their Own crew setting up in our neighborhood (they ended up not using the footage). I recall how my dad, who commuted downtown via the El, used to tell tales of ER exterior shoots (and that Julianna Margulies was shorter in person). I remember it being a big deal that Gene Hackman was in lowly Forest Park to film The Package.
Big-time film shoots are cool, but as a young movie fan it was arguably more exciting to see your streets, local landmarks, and the big city next door depicted on screen. As Chicago movies go, there are some I love, there are some that are compelling because they capture a certain slice of the area, and there are some for which I feel intense ownership. Above all, my affinity for these movies comes from the act of seeing some part of my reality reflected back to me on a giant screen. It’s the result of watching as somewhere I’ve been, someplace I’ve touched, something I know to be true is given its cinematic glory. It’s like having some of your memories sculpted in marble.
These are the Chicago movies that form the mixtape of my memory. And like Rob Gordon in High Fidelity, I’m listing them not by quality or release date or box office but autobiographically, according to my own experiences. Now let’s hop on the El together and explore my cinematic Chicagoland.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
A year after I saw my first movie, I witnessed my first film shoot. My parents happened to take their four-year-old to the top of the Sears Tower on the same September day that John Hughes and company were filming the Ferris Bueller’s Day Off sequence in what was then the tallest building in the world. Half of the Skydeck was roped off while visitors had access to the rest. I remember watching the big cameras from a distance and bunches of people all racing around to get a relatively serene shot. The color that sticks out the most in my memories is the bright red of Alan Ruck’s Red Wings jersey. Whenever I revisit Bueller, I smile at the quick scene, knowing that somewhere down the hall stands a little boy who was as bewildered by the movie-making bustle as he was impressed by how peaceful the city looks from 1,353 feet.
The Untouchables
For much of my childhood my dad worked in the Loop and we were a short El ride away to what seemed to me to be a whole world of possibility and excitement in downtown Chicago. My mom and I would often visit him, hit the museums, and almost always end up at the Cultural Center. It was free and beautiful (still is) and, before a revitalized Navy Pier was a glimmer in Mayor Richard M. Daley’s eye, housed an early version of the Chicago Children’s Museum—in a glorified hallway! The Cultural Center’s stately exterior and elegant, old-world interior also made it an ideal filming location for multiple scenes in Brian De Palma’s blockbuster retelling of The Untouchables. I didn’t see the movie until I was well beyond those early mother-son visits but was wowed at what a great backdrop one of my favorite buildings made for the gangster drama. Years later, I would chase my younger brothers down one of the ornate stairways, with visions of Frank Nitti and Eliot Ness dancing in my head.
The Fugitive
Three movies in and we’ve got two crime flicks and one high school delinquent—what role models! While many moviegoers agree The Fugitive is a gem, it might as well be Citizen Kane to Chicago area Gen Xers and Millennials. Elements of that film are almost like a secret handshake among people raised in the area at a certain time. I encourage you to wag your finger and bluster, “You switched the samples!” to a 40-something Chicagoan and listen for a laugh of recognition. In addition to being a propulsive action movie with iconic scenes and lines and a cadre of perfectly cast actors, The Fugitive also represents the Chicago I remember growing up. These are the news reporters of my youth: John Drummond, Pam Zekman, and a mustachioed Lester Holt long before he became NBC’s big dog. This is how the city looked—grimy and impressive, classic and modern, busy but with enough space for solitude. This is how the city sounded—river bridge bells and live CTA stop announcements, before they became automated. I can smell the river. I can feel the rumble of an El overhead. It’s an exciting, sometimes lurid movie and, because of the lived-in details, always a supreme helping of comfort food.
Wayne’s World
This one comes down to one shot, and a little bit of background. There was this shopping plaza a couple of miles from my house, the uncreatively named Harlem-Cermak Shopping Center. Someone in the late ’70s or early ’80s decided this plaza’s “thing” would be that it would be filled with a bunch of public art displays that were all made from garbage. As the saying goes, “One man’s trash… will bring people to shop at Service Merchandise.” There were small pieces with salvaged metal, a giant hunk of seagull-attracting trash in the shape of Arkansas, and so many hubcaps. But the pièce de résistance, in the middle of the blacktop, was something called the Spindle: eight junky cars that were shish-kabobed by a 50-foot pole. As kids, we all thought it was hilariously dumb, until the sculpture appeared for a few fleeting moments in the middle of the “Bohemian Rhapsody” sequence of Wayne’s World. I remember watching the movie at a movie theater in a shopping center on the other side of Harlem Ave. (I’m always just a street away from the action). The surprised and delighted reaction from the crowd drowned out the next few minutes of the movie. Confetti and balloons rained down. Al Michaels shouted, “Do you believe in miracles?!” Sailors kissed nurses they had never met before. Well, that’s how it felt to a 10-year-old whose comedy heroes were Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar. The Spindle, alas, has since been removed, along with the rest of the garbage, and that movie theater became a Best Buy. But the shot, the scene, and the rhapsody will live forever.
The Chicago Cultural Center was prominently featured in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables starring Kevin Costner.
Rookie of the Year
You might expect me to talk about Wrigley Field here. That’s fair for a movie that’s largely set in the greatest ballpark ever built and features an opening sequence that is cinematic heaven for a Cubs fan with memories of the Friendly Confines before video screens. But Wrigley has been frequently and ably documented on screen. The moment that resonates with me from this silly (but surprisingly well-acted) movie is a scene that is so unmemorable as to be insignificant to anyone who didn’t grow up outside a three-mile radius of my childhood home. After young Henry Rowengartner breaks his arm and spends most of a miserable summer in a cast, he visits his doctor in a building at 128 N. Oak Park Avenue. I remember the gasp of recognition that rippled through the movie theater in 1993, because this was both a painfully mundane Oak Park location and a place that was instantly recognizable to many kids in the area. That’s because on the right of the screen was the home of the Magic Tree Bookstore. After getting his cast removed, Henry could have browsed for books, stopped at C. Foster Toys around the corner to gawk at their Playmobil collection, and picked up a pizza with his mom at Geppetto’s, a few storefronts down. This blip of a scene grounded the fantasy of Rookie in a world I knew as well as every crease in my Ryne Sandberg baseball glove. So, maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched that the Cubs would go all the way, someday.
Hoop Dreams
With all respect due to Cinema Sugar’s excellent list, Hoop Dreams is the best Chicago movie. Rest assured. I’ve decided. You’re welcome. The city has its most famous movie mascots—Murray, Farina, Candy (we adopted him), the Cusacks—but director Steve James is the one who really understands Chicago and the uneasy push-and-pull between the people that populate the city and suburbs (see his docuseries America to Me and City So Real). It speaks to his awareness that he emphasizes young Arthur Agee’s 90-minute commute (each way) to attend St. Joseph’s High School, as a means to pursue his basketball career, his passion, and the hope of a better life. James shows Arthur’s journey from the West Side to my hometown El stop before catching a Pace bus to get to further-flung Westchester. I remember this scene and how it resonated with me as a 13-year-old who knew almost none of Arthur’s struggles firsthand. But I knew that El line. I knew those buses. I knew what a pain that commute must have been every day, morning and evening. It was one way for me to understand how much harder he had to work for opportunities that so many others just stepped into.
A League of Their Own
There’s no crying in baseball and there wasn’t a WPA-style mural at the back of the stage of Fitzgerald’s Nightclub, until A League of Their Own came to town. That’s because the League film shoot took over the Berwyn music venue (home to the best in country, rock, blues, jazz and the venerable American Music Festival) and remade it into the film’s Suds Bucket dance hall. Although it was only about a mile from my home, I hadn’t been to Fitzgerald’s when I first saw this delight of a movie (I was only 11, but that’s no excuse). I soon became enamored with the place as a teenager. Even though I was underage, the owners would let me in with my dad to see Neko Case or the Waco Brothers. It’s an example of great film scouting because, minus a few ’40s trappings, the way the Suds Bucket looks in the movie is the way Fitzgerald’s looks in real life. It’s a wonderful, magical little roadhouse seemingly misplaced in the middle of an urban grid. While other locations on this list are long gone, Fitzgerald’s is thankfully still there.
High Fidelity
I went away to college and didn’t get homesick often, except when I was sitting in a Milwaukee multiplex watching High Fidelity. Rooted in artsy Wicker Park, many of Rob Gordon’s haunts (including his record shop, Championship Vinyl) were steps away from my grandma’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood. When I was a kid, we used to visit my grandparents almost every Sunday and when the weather was decent, some of us would go for walks around the area. My dad would tell stories about growing up as we passed funky storefronts and rehabbed apartment buildings. As someone who loves music and movies, record stores and list-making, the 13th Floor Elevators and Springsteen cameos, High Fidelity was never not going to be in my wheelhouse. It felt like a movie made for me. But it also felt like a trip to “the old neighborhood,” as my dad would call it. It still does.
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Since we’re already standing at the confluence of music and movies, let’s discuss Sam Jones’ 2002 Wilco documentary, a stark and insightful look at the creative process, rock band dynamics, and the collapse of the music industry as we once knew it. To risk sounding like VH1, this is also a movie that rocks, with some of the most exciting footage shot at Wilco’s 2001 concert on the Fourth of July at the Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park. The performance marked one of the final times key member Jay Bennett would play with the group. Home from college, I was there for this show, thrilled at the opportunity to see the Chicago band play a batch of songs from a forthcoming album (with a release date in serious doubt). The summer show marked six years to the day after I had first seen Wilco at a previous edition of WXRT’s Free Fourth of July Concert. As a kid, tween, and teen, these open-air concerts had been some of the most impactful shows on a burgeoning rock nerd. I had seen The Smithereens and Los Lobos at the height of their powers. I had watched The Replacements break up before my eyes. And, as depicted in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, I got to witness the end of one version of Wilco and the beginning of another. “You’ve got to learn how to die,” frontman Jeff Tweedy sang that day, “if you wanna be alive.”
The Blues Brothers
Is it a coincidence that the two most successful movies that came out of Saturday Night Live are set in Chicago? Is it happenstance that Blues Brothers 2000, mostly filmed in Vancouver because it was cheaper, is lacking the character (in addition to lacking a character) that made the original a source of Windy City pride? With repeat airings on WGN and near-constant cultural references for Chicagoans of a certain age, The Blues Brothers has become more than a movie. It’s in the air. It’s in the water. I wouldn’t know where to begin to assess it, because it just exists as something of a miracle in my mind. It is Chicago at the blue-tinted turn of the ’80s, with Stax soul migrating from Memphis to take root on Maxwell Street. It’s also a lot of fun and boasts film history’s most comically extensive car crash scene—filmed on Route 12 in Lake County, near where my wife and I bought our first house. In those days, my commute often took me past the spot where John Landis filmed dozens of Illinois State Troopers playing demolition derby in pursuit of Jake and Elwood. I remain disappointed that it has yet to be designated a UNESCO world heritage site.
The Dark Knight
Because of the gothic-noir set design of Tim Burton’s Batman (underscored by Batman: The Animated Series), I don’t know that I would have ever considered Chicago to be the real-world template for Gotham City. But director Christopher Nolan reveres Richard Donner’s Superman movies (rightly so), where New York stands in for Metropolis. If you start there, it only makes sense that Chicago would become Gotham in Batman Begins, with the city’s strong architectural lines and underground streets featuring more prominently in The Dark Knight. Working as an entertainment writer/editor in the ’00s, I got the chance to see the movie at an advance screening at the Navy Pier IMAX and learn if the hype (about Heath Ledger’s Joker, let alone the sheer IMAX-iness of this crime epic) was real. One of the coolest things about being a cultural critic is not just that you’re among the first to experience something new; it’s that when that something is overwhelmingly wonderful, it feels like you have a secret and you can’t wait for everyone else to share in it. I’ve never felt that more than when I drove out of the Navy Pier parking garage, buzzing with excitement. I purposely routed over to lower Columbus Drive, bathed in ominous yellow light, to feel as if—for only a moment—the film’s battles between good and evil were taking place just outside my peripheral vision.
Home Alone
I’ll close my Chicago movie autobiography by returning to John Hughes, who wrote, but didn’t direct, the best live-action approximation of a Road Runner cartoon ever made. To a kid from Forest Park, the north shore suburbs where the McCallisters live and the Wet Bandits wreak havoc might as well have been Fantasyland. The houses didn’t look like that where I grew up. The lawns weren’t that wide. The stores weren’t that quaint. But it was all the other “kid stuff” in the movie that made Kevin’s world relatable: the Starting Lineup figures, the Micro Machines, the Michael Jordan poster that everyone had, the tinny bleeps of Tiger LCD games (just before Chuck Berry kicks in on the soundtrack). It wasn’t until I was an adult, with my own kids, that I made the pilgrimage to Winnetka to see the McCallisters’ home on Lincoln Avenue, all decked out for the holidays. What started as a lark has become a Christmas season tradition: an annual viewing followed by a trip to the north shore for holiday ice cream at Homer’s and a visit to Kevin’s funhouse. The half-circle drive is gone and the Little Nero’s delivery dude must be knocking down coachmen statues somewhere else, but almost everything else feels right. As we take pictures with our fellow movie tourists, nod to Mitch Murphy’s house across the street, and call out our favorite lines, something magical happens. It feels like home, and I’m hardly alone.
Bryan Wawzenek is a writer, editor, and a former entertainment journalist who currently works in higher education communications. The only thing he likes better than watching movies or listening to music is writing about them.