Folks at the Chicago Film Office tell us action sequences filmed here last September in “The Negotiator” were so logistically challenging that they rank right up there with that Loop car chase scene in the original “The Blues Brothers.”
“The Negotiator,” out this Wednesday and starring Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey, required several nights of helicopters, special lighting, street closings and managing river traffic. A lot of that prep work was for the scenes, involving “SWAT” teams rappelling on the granite-and-silver-glass face of the 77 West Wacker building. Crowd control, we’re told, was not particularly difficult–unlike the zoo around the set of Mel Gibson’s “Payback,” which filmed at the same time.
Striking out: The ads for the movie “BASEketball” that have been cruising around Chicago on the sides of 250 CTA buses since early July haven’t raised a ruckus here, a CTA spokeswoman tells us. But in Boston, the ads were pulled off buses after complaints from drivers and the public. A Massachusetts transportation exec reportedly says it is because the ad depicts “a subliminal sexual activity.”
Reel stuff: Buzz from L.A. has Julianne Moore, Oscar-nominated for her role in “Boogie Nights,” joining Andie MacDowell in a movie based on the Jane Hamilton book “A Map of the World.” . . . Another “Boogie Nights” star, Mark Wahlberg, and actor-filmmaker-rapper Ice Cube could soon agree to star with George Clooney in the Persian Gulf War drama “Three Kings” for Warner Bros. . . . Picture this: Marlon Brando playing Winston Churchill in a big-screen epic–or at least that’s the gossip in the New York Post.
Eat beat: Chef John Hogan, who has stirred things up at Park Avenue Cafe and Kiki’s Bistro here, opens his own eatery on Chicago’s Wells Street, near Superior Street, this fall. He’s calling it Savarin–as in the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who once wrote: “Animals feed themselves; men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating.”
Book report: Carol Markin, a native Chicagoan turned L.A. dating expert, was back in town this week, signing her books “Bad Dates: Celebrities and Other Talented Types Reveal Their Worst Nights Out” and “More Bad Dates” at the Old Orchard Barnes & Noble. Local architect Kelly Levin, whose story is recounted in “More,” showed up with, yep, a blind date.
Passages: Sunday birthdays: Sandra Bullock, 31; Blake Edwards, 76; Susan George, 48; Dorothy Hamill, 42; Mick Jagger, 55; Stanley Kubrick, 70; Irene Mojica, 40; Jeremy Piven, 33; Jason Robards, 76; Kevin Spacey, 39.
Passages too: Roseanne showed up 45 pounds lighter, minus a few tattoos and with hubby Ben in tow, at an L.A. party to promote her out-in-September talk show, reports Variety. “It’s going to be fun, because I’m much too old and much too rich to do anything that is not fun,” joked Rosie, “with the exception of my marriages.”
