Star turn: Observant Park Ridge residents may notice some familiar faces in the movie “Mercury Rising,” starring Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. The film features a classroom scene with five autistic children from H.A.V.E. Dreams (Helping Autistic Voices Emerge), a Park Ridge not-for-profit organization that provides services to autistic children and their families in Maine Township.
The children are David Moy, 8, Nana Ochiai, 8, Alexandra Wilkins, 8, and Liam Lucchesi, 6, all of Park Ridge, and Marty Fergus, 9, of Morton Grove.
Before filming, child actor Mike Hughes and director Harold Becker spent a day at Carpenter School in Park Ridge observing and interacting with the autistic children enrolled in H.A.V.E. Dreams.
The kids later filmed the scene in the University of Chicago classroom. H.A.V.E. Dreams director Kris Johnsen of Park Ridge is one of four adults from the school also appearing in the movie.
“The kids with autism handled an unusual situation beautifully,” said Johnsen, a special education teacher who helped found the organization in 1996. “There was nothing they could draw from in their realm of experience. They went down to a strange place with strange people and all of this equipment, and they were fabulous.”
