Hey, I know that town!
I always feel a little burst of excitement whenever a movie or TV show name-drops one of the Chicago suburbs; it's like finding out that, yes, famous people do know there's more to life than L.A. and NYC.
Wheaton is the latest regional town to earn this distinction, although in a rather dubious manner: The gunman who took Trauma 2 hostage on last Thursday's "ER" told Dr. Archie Gates (Scott Grimes) he was from the DuPage County bastion of sobriety.
A Wheaton gunman
forced Neela and
Archie to operate
on his girlfriend
Thursday on "ER."
nbc.com
Sometimes writers can go overboard with this stuff, as any loyal watcher of TBS's "My Boys" can attest. The series, which improbably stars Jordana Spiro as a Cubs beat writer who was able to attend Opening Day as a fan, doesn't pass up any opportunity to endear itself to us here in the Chicago area. I don't think I've said the phrase "Hoffman Estates" as many times in my life as Jim Gaffigan's character said it in the second season of the show. (His character moved there, and I live there.)
"My Boys" won't stop telling you it's
set in Chicago.
TBS
One of the strangest moments in my recent history came last November, when my girlfriend and I ended up sitting next to Jamie Kaler (first from left in the photo) at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in L.A. I told him I loved his show, and admitted that I, indeed, lived in Hoffman Estates. The look on his face was priceless.
Has your town ever been name-dropped in this fashion? I fondly remember going to see "Wayne's World" on opening weekend and hearing the cheers when the Empire Man showed up in the first scene, superimposed over a map that had Aurora and Wheeling labeled on it...
Overnight Delivery stars Reese Witherspoon. It has to be the only movie ever shot at the U of MN. It sucks but it's awesome to see the U on FX on Saturday morning.
I got pissed at Fargo once I realized that they were traveling north on I-35W towards Minneapolis when they were supposed to be coming in from the north.
It also pissed me off when it was obviously BC and not MN in Juno. Seriously, it was supposed to be winter in StCloud and there were pine trees and wet slushy snow everywhere. There is no wet slushy snow in mid-winter in central MN. Hell there is still ice on the lakes in the north, there is no way there is melty snow in January.
Hey, did you hear that they got rid of that tower of cars in Berwyn that's in the "Bohemian Rhapsody" scene of Wayne's World? Sad!
I find it annoying when movies get their Chicago stuff wrong. Like in When Harry Met Sally, Sally picks up Harry at the University of Chicago, but then they are shown driving south on LSD towards the Hancock building. That just does not make sense. But I'm sure mistakes like that are in every movie, I just don't know any other cities well enough to notice them.
Stranger than Fiction wins my prize for most beautiful movie shot in Chicago. They used so many unusual and cool-looking locations in that movie.
Every NIU student and alum should watch "Love 101." It's a horrible movie starring the dude who played Randall in "Clerks," but it shows all the classic locales, including the MLK Commons, Grant Towers (complete w/ the pull-out beds) and Molly's.
One of the best examples is "Breaking Away," in which the wonderful town of Bloomington, Indiana (along with the Indiana University campus) is the brightest star in the film.
Oh, and my old house was actually in Harold Ramis' "The Ice Harvest." We were paid $50 for it, and my future wife watched, from our bedroom window, John Cusack and Oliver Platt being filmed jumping on each other in one of that film's better scenes.