Action Heroes

26 people who make films happen in Chicago—plus three newcomers making their mark

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JANE  ALDERMAN
Casting director

When Hollywood movies come to Chicago, producers turn to local casting directors like Alderman to find actors for various parts. She’s been in the business long enough that faces and names spring to mind when she reads a script. “If anyone ever hit me on the head, I’m afraid 6,000 names would fall out,” says Alderman, who handled casting for NBC’s ER and David Lynch’s The Straight Story. Before she launched her casting business in 1980, Alderman was an actress, and back then producers contacted numerous agents to line up actors for film shoots. They’d end up with 500 people who weren’t right for the part. “I know it’s not done this way in New York or Los Angeles,” Alderman recalls thinking. “I’m going to start it.” After 28 years, her advice to actors remains the same: Spend $700 on a professional photo. A cheap snapshot won’t do.

NANCY WATROUS
Director, Chicago Film Archives, 58

When Watrous heard that the Chicago Public Library was eliminating its film collection in 2001, she leaped into action. A producer of educational and corporate films, Watrous formed the nonprofit Chicago Film Archives to preserve the library’s films, and persuaded volunteers to help her transport the CPL’s massive inventory. “Everybody lined up their cars outside the library, popped their trunks, and started hauling films out,” she recalls. Now, the flotsam and jetsam of Chicago’s cinematic history—industrial and experimental films, home movies—pour into the archives’ 18th Street facility,  overflowing with more than 7,000 films. In the process of restoring and duplicating damaged prints, Watrous has discovered obscure auteurs like Margaret Conneely, a Chicagoan who made dozens of odd little dramas in the fifties and sixties. “The less known the filmmaker, the more excited we get about it,” Watrous says.

MARK HOGAN
Business manager, secretary and treasurer, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local 476, 54

When a movie company decides to film in Chicago, Mark Hogan is one of the first people called. The longtime muscle behind the city’s union of film and stage craftspeople, Hogan provides the skilled carpenters, sound technicians, prop masters, and other behind-the-scenes workers. The Hogan family has been in films for three generations in Chicago—his grandparents did silent films—and Hogan himself worked early on as an electrician on The Blues Brothers in 1979. “I was 25, I made $11 an hour,” he says, “and it’s still the best job I ever worked on.”

JOHN McNAUGHTON
Director/screenwriter, 59

The South Side native who won cult followings with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Wild Things has downshifted, directing episodes of HBO’s John From Cincinnati. Meanwhile, he’s awaiting green lights on five potential projects, including The King of Counterfeit, which Bill Murray asked McNaughton to direct—with Murray starring and producing. Books about Punch and Judy pile up in McNaughton’s Bucktown loft: research on a sentimental Christmas film he’s writing about puppet shows, orphans, and a big toy company. It’s 180 degrees from a movie about a serial killer, but McNaughton hopes Murray (a veteran of three McNaughton films) will agree to play the disabled patriarch of the puppeteers—and already has his pitch to Murray perfected: “You want to win an Academy Award? Sit in that wheelchair!”

TOM ROSENBERG
Producer, CEO of Lakeshore Entertainment Group, 61

Tom Rosenberg has a name that you see in movie credits and quickly forget. Until you realize how many times you’ve seen it. The Missouri native, who made his fortune in real estate, jumped into film with 1991’s The Commitments, and has since produced 46 features—including Million Dollar Baby, for which he took home an Oscar for best picture of 2005. Rosenberg also made news in 2008, when he testified in Tony Rezko’s federal corruption trial that he had been shaken down to make a campaign contribution to Governor Blagojevich. As of presstime, his Beverly Hills–based production company, Lakeshore Entertainment, had six movies on board for the next year or so, including The Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler.

MICHAEL KUTZA
Founder/Artistic director, Chicago International Film Festival, 69

Kutza was 22 when he decided Chicago needed more than a couple of foreign films a year. “I know it sounds grandiose, but I wanted to change this stupid city,” he says. “I love Chicago, so I believe I have absolutely changed it.” He formed the Chicago International Film Festival, the oldest competitive film fest in America, celebrating its 45th year in 2009. While it’s never had the cachet of Sundance or Toronto, those tend to be markets for selling films. “That’s not what we are,” he says. “We’re an audience festival.” Kutza has faced criticism for what a recent article called his “iron-fisted control” of the festival. He  acknowledges he has clashed with board members but insists that all nonprofit arts groups have conflict. “I think probably I’ve been too outspoken,” he says. “I would be afraid to meet me after reading all those stories.”

Photography: (Rosenberg) Peter Kramer/Getty Images; (Kutza) Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune

This article appears in the February 2009 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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