Over the course of the 10 1/2 week shoot, the production shot at 35 locations in the Chicago area. This made for a very hectic schedule with the crew often shooting in two or three different locations in a day. As set decorator Larry Lundy recalls, "This isn’t the film with the most locations I’ve worked on, but it’s definitely up there in my top 5!"
Included in the list of locations are such well known Chicago landmarks as The Music Box Theatre, Strega Nona, Smith & Wollensky, The Green Mill, Lounge Ax, Double Door, The Rainbow Club, and the Kinzie Street Bridge.
Much of the action takes place in Wicker Park, an area of Chicago that has special appeal for Steve Pink. "We’re shooting in Nelson Algren’s [novelist and short story writer, 1909-81] old stomping grounds which is great," he says. "It’s a wonderful part of town and one of the oldest parts of the city."
The cast and crew found the city and its residents cooperative even in the most inconvenient and public locales. "Logistically, the hardest thing about shooting in Chicago," explains DeVincentis, "is when we’re doing exteriors we keep running into our friends."
One Friday night, shooting on Lincoln in front of the Biograph theater, which is a lively club and restaurant area, an enthusiastic crowd of 150 gathered and watched in rapt silence, breaking into applause when "cut" was called.
Another day found the crew filming on working CTA Red Line trains and platforms in the midst of the general public. "The fact that Rob doesn’t have a car--he travels on the train--is very typical of Chicago," says Pink. So we see Rob waiting out on the Armitage Street Station platform and catching the red line to go to work in the morning.
Clubs and bars figure prominently in Rob’s world and with so many to choose from, there was never a thought of replicating one on a soundstage. "You don’t have to create a rock club," says DeVincentis, "They’re here. You barely have to dress the set. And it’s something that would be hard to duplicate."
Authenticity was a key factor to Pink and DeVincentis. "They wanted it not to look art-directed but to look real," explains set decorator Lundy. "Some practical things were done but not much in the way of aesthetics."
"Every one of these clubs we’ve been in has been a collage of stuff," adds production designer David Chapman. "The Lounge Ax is the best example--it’s years worth of paper (posters) put up on the walls. I’ve been picking that up, accenting it in places, but not much more than that."
Because so much of the story takes place at Championship Vinyl (the spot where the kings of musical knowledge hold court), its set was built on a sound stage. Not only did the production need continuous access for several weeks in a row, but the staging of several scenes required moving walls and fixtures. As to the design of the store, DeVincentis says, "That record store is an amalgam of many stores I used to frequent here in Chicago. It’s clearly not a chain."
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