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Since 1980, more than 550 feature films and television productions have been made in Chicago, leaving behind $1 billion in the local economy.
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After a drought in local film production, Chicago is preparing to host at number of high-profile projects in 2004 including "The Weatherman" with Nicolas Cage and the sequel to "Ocean's Eleven".
ChicagoFilm.com recently sat down with Richard Moskal, the director of the Chicago Film Office about attracting Hollywood films and invigorating the local production industry.
What do you personally look for when you watch a film, particularly those shot in Chicago? Can you admire the craft or are you thinking about permits that were signed?
Sadly, it is hard for me to enjoy the entertainment value of a film without looking back on what the logistics were to pull a particular scene off, or how much time or energy went into what resulted in only a few seconds on the screen.
There was a movie called "Mercury Rising" that was shot here with Bruce Willis. Perhaps that was one of the more extraordinary challenging films to shoot in terms of logistics. For that film, we closed the route out to O'Hare Airport and the state contributed by closing out a portion of the Kennedy. And then, when you watch it on the screen and it does not seem quite as spectacular, there’s a little bit of frustration.
So whenever I'm watching a movie that was filmed in Chicago, I'm thinking about the location, and whether it was it worth all the time and money that was put into it. It is a mental regurgitation of the problems associated with it. You can't help it. You're pulled away from the story value.
Do you have similar feelings watching films that aren't shot in Chicago?
Oh yeah, the best reported example of that is when "Vanilla Sky" was shot in Times Square and New York City shut all of Times Square down. I couldn't help when I watched it to think, yeah, we've done that too.
But it that instance, it became almost a part of the marketing of the film, which is an interesting ploy. You know, maybe the next time we do something like "The Road to Perdition," when we shut down LaSalle Street near the Board of Trade, and filled it with 500 antique automobiles, we should make that be known.
I think examples like that contribute to the attraction of shooting in Chicago, that filmmakers can pull off things like that. The city is willing to work with filmmakers in that effort to providing the real estate and resources to pull those scenes off.
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003: Rich Moskal
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