For years now, we’ve have had to suffer through movies that purportedly take place in Chicago but were clearly filmed else-where — namely, Toronto. The dismal stats are no secret: At least 17 Chicago-set films were shot in Canada between 2000 and 2002 (“Chicago” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” included), according to Bob Hudgins, assistant managing director of the Illinois Film Office.
But it may come as a shock to learn just how many filmmakers have done the reverse, using Chicago to double for other cities, including New York and Washington, D.C.
Thanks to the wage-based incentive program that went into effect last January, Illinois is once again an affordable option for filmmakers, luring no fewer than five new projects that will use the local landscape to “cheat” for other locations.
“I’d guess about 10 to 15 percent of the calls I get [from producers] ask about that,” Hudgins says. “Just the other day I got a call about whether we could do Cincinnati here. It happens all the time. It’s very, very common.” So common, the film commission has a “rather thick file” labeled “Chicago for New York.”
Earlier in the year, Nicolas Cage and director Gore Verbinski were in town shooting “The Weather Man,” and while a majority of the story takes place locally, there are a few New York scenes. Verbinski used Chicago City Hall to double as a Manhattan office building and O’Hare International Airport as an approximation for New York’s LaGuardia.
“It’s almost always financial,” Hudgins says. “Every move is expensive. Every time you have to stop, pack up everything and move to another city, it costs money, so if you’re doing most of your principal photography in Chicago, it makes sense to try to stay in Chicago and cheat the other locations.”
Covering a lot of ground
For recent filming on “Ocean’s Twelve,” director Steven Soderbergh used the city for a variety of other domestic locations. “They were originally coming here for a couple of days with Matt Damon to shoot the Chicago scenes,” explains Hudgins, “and it’s part of our job to see what else we can get them to do here. They ended up using Chicago to double for all their other U.S. locations” — including a restaurant in Skokie (for Nebraska) and the Lake Forest Metra station (for a commuter stop in Connecticut).
“The Ice Harvest,” a Wichita-based story from director Harold Ramis, just wrapped filming in Waukegan.
Later this summer, the next installment in the “Batman” series will use Chicago to double as Gotham City — “which has always connoted as New York,” Hudgins says — and a remake of “The Amityville Horror” will use the northwestern suburbs and an area just across the Wisconsin border near Lake Geneva to double as the Long Island community.
“All we needed was a house on the water,” says “Amityville” producer Brad Fuller. “We scouted several states — the Carolinas, Texas, Louisiana. And here in Illinois, we scouted all over the place and found just the right house,” which he describes as a white clapboard Dutch colonial that will have the iconic window “eyes” digitally added in post-production.
Some filmmakers need a little convincing. Rich Moskal, who heads up the Chicago Film Office, remembers driving a “very unhappy” Martin Scorsese around the city in the mid-’80s, scouting for locations for “The Color of Money.”
“That first trip when he came was very high pressure. He’s a pretty intense guy and it was a very tough sell because Scorsese really wanted to shoot in New York,” Moskal says. “But [Touchstone Pictures] wanted him to go somewhere more affordable. We went all over the place scouring for pool halls that had a gritty texture.” Eventually, Scorsese was won over and used Chicago and its surrounding areas to double for Atlantic City and other small towns along the Eastern seaboard.
“It’s that movie magic thing,” Hudgins says. “It’s about faking the elements and inter-cutting the shots, and gosh, you can’t tell the difference.” Plus, he adds, “[shooting] at night or in the snow hides a lot of sins.”
And it’s a trend that is likely to continue, at least through 2005. Late last weekend, after many delays and a highly politicized fight over the state budget, legislators in Springfield finally approved a one-year extension of the current incentive program.
Elevated magic
Of course, there are filmmakers who fake locations for practical or aesthetic reasons that have little to do with economics. “Spider-Man 2,” that definitively New York-based blockbuster, filmed a fight scene on an elevated train in the Loop, although in reality, there is not a single elevated train snaking through Manhattan.
“They just liked the look of Chicago for that scene,” Hudgins says. “You’ve got to understand, a lot of scripts are based on very fictional views of a city.”
Getting permission to shoot on or near government buildings in Washington, D.C., is another potential headache, and in several cases, Chicago has stepped in as a substitute.
During the 2002 Christmas break, “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde” used the Illinois House chamber in Springfield to substitute for the U.S. House of Representatives. “They sent out letters to all the state film offices trying to find a building that was laid out closest to the House of Representatives, and apparently ours is it,” Hudgins says.
For filmmakers wanting to approximate the look of New York, Printers Row is a popular destination thanks to the neighborhood’s narrow streets and exposed fire escapes. Lincoln Park is often used to substitute for Central Park, and the backside of the Chicago Board of Trade building and locations around The Merchandise Mart can double for Wall Street. “You’re not doing landscapes,” Hudgins says, “you’re shooting close-ups of people having conversations. You lense it and it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, this works.’ “
The area near Jackson and LaSalle has been used to simulate New York’s financial district in everything from the Coen brothers’ satire “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994) to “U.S. Marshals” (1998), starring Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes.
“Actually, that movie is a hoot, the way the scenes match up together,” says Hudgins, who was the location manager for that film. “There’s a fight scene that’s on a rooftop, and it’s supposed to be Brooklyn, but we filmed near Broadway and Lawrence. In the movie, you see Wesley jump off the building here in Chicago and land in a spot that was actually filmed in New York. And then the next scene he’s running through a cemetery, which was filmed in Chicago. We used two cemeteries for that, Rosehill [at Bryn Mawr and Ravenswood] and Bohemian National [at Foster and Pulaski].”
An international flavor
Chicago has even doubled for Boston: “With Honors,” the 1994 love story about Harvard undergrads starring Brendan Fraser and Joe Pesci, and “The Babe,” the 1992 Babe Ruth biopic starring John Goodman.
But the Mack Daddy of them of all has to be “The Package,” the 1989 Cold War spy thriller starring Gene Hackman set in varied locations throughout the United States, plus the distinctly European cities divided by the Berlin Wall.
To approximate the look of a German platz, Hudgins says they found a spot “in the Pullman area where there’s an old center market that we used for East Berlin. A little fog machine, a little wetting down of the streets and you’re there. It’s actually pretty amazing what simple things like wetting down the pavement can do.”
Of course, Hudgins is just waiting for the day when a filmmaker calls to inquire about Chicago doubling for Toronto. “Oh, don’t you know it?” he says. “We’ll run ads in Variety if that happens.”
But he’s not holding his breath. “Who writes movies set in Toronto?”
Look familiar?
1. Which movie with a Big Apple title filmed in the Second City?
A. “Gangs of New York”
B. “Maid in Manhattan”
C. “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”
D. “Vampire in Brooklyn”
2. In 2002’s “Ali” (above), the steps on the south side of the Field Museum served as what Washington, D.C., building?
A. The Supreme Court
B. The U.S. Capitol
C. The Lincoln Memorial
D. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial
3. What appeared to be a German villa in 1989’s “The Package” was actually:
A. The Armour Mansion in Lake Forest
B. The Haeger Mansion in East Dundee
C. The Illinois Executive Mansion in Springfield
D. The Cuneo Mansion in Vernon Hills
4. Wicker Park is no stranger to the silver screen (stay tuned for this fall’s “Wicker Park” starring Josh Hartnett). Look for a building on Division Street in the upcoming “Ocean’s Twelve” that doubles as a:
A. Cafe in Rome
B. Nail salon in Brooklyn
C. Pub in Amsterdam
D. Art gallery in Paris
5. “The Ice Harvest’s” Harold Ramis used which Illinois town as a stand-in for Punxsutawney, Pa., in his 1993 film “Groundhog Day” (above)?
A. Sleepy Hollow
B. Beardstown
C. Woodstock
D. Freeport
Answers: C, B, A, B, C
