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NAME:
Jeff Santo
TITLE / ROLE:
Director, Co-writer, Co-Producer
"This Old Cub"
COMPANY:
This Old Cub LLC
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
"Liar's Poker," "This Old Cub"
LIVES:
Los Angeles
NUMBER OF YEARS IN FILM:
12
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(Continued from Page One)
There are a number of celebrity Cub fans in the film, including narrator Joe Mantegna. I bet it wasn't too hard to recruit these people.
Joe Montenga told me it would be an honor to narrate the film. Other people like Dennis Franz, Bill Murray, Dennis Farina and Gary Sinese were all Cubs fans growing up and all wanted to be involved. We also got a lot of help from the Cubs with all the footage they provided for us.
What are you doing to market the film?
We are going to start off in Chicago and Arizona because that is where my dad has the largest following.
The goal here though is to make this for a non-baseball fan. In the marketing sense, we will take this to New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, where my father is from. There will also be separate television deals and we are working on a DVD run.
And you couldn't have asked for better timing from the Cubs, both with their success last season as well as their decision to retire your dad's number.
Even before that. We started to film in December 2002, when he was up for consideration for the 2003 Hall of Fame Class. In "This Old Cub," you get to see the phone conversation with the Hall as it happens.
Then, after the Hall of Fame inductions, the Cubs started doing well. We had the film already in the can when we found out the Cubs were going to retire the number. I told myself, "Well, here's the ending." The number being retired meant more to him than the Hall of Fame because of the intimacy he has with the team and with the city of Chicago. To get to fit in those details, it's really a love story.
Your first film, "Liar's Poker" came out in 1999. What were you doing before then?
I'm kind of a late bloomer. I grew up in Glenview and worked at the Board of Trade for a number of years. I just didn't feel right at the board, so I wrote my first play at 27. It wasn't the greatest play in the world, but it got me to the next level. I must have written six horrible scripts along the way, but I was learning with all of them.
Before too long I was ready to make a move to LA. I was fortunate that my first film won an award at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1999. It was a smaller film, I learned so much on that one.
If you had your druthers, would you prefer to live and work out of Chicago rather than L.A.?
If you're a filmmaker, it is all about being based in L.A. Los Angeles is the stadium, the Rome of filmmaking. You can say "If Chicago had this or that," but it just doesn't. You really have to get out of Chicago to learn the business. Only L.A. teaches you that.
It's hard to hypothetically think how I would approach my career in Chicago, because it just can't happen.
I also don't like the winters.
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Written by Brad Spirrison
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004: Jeff Santo
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