Search Results for: Chicago Med

A few weeks ago I was surprised by a phone call — and not his usual terse Email — from Michael Kutza, the founder and artistic director of the Chicago International Film Festival and Cinema/Chicago.

Earlier, I had asked Michael, a marvelously gifted graphic designer, if he would do the honors of designing a new logo for the upcoming expanded Reel.

His call raised my hopes for a positive response.

“No, no, no,” he said, adding something about talking about the logo later in the future, meaning: not a chance.

VINCE VAUGHN will team up with director Ron Howard for the first time this spring on an untitled comedy about infidelity. Vaughn always can be counted on to boost Chicago as the location whenever he can.

The last and only time Howard shot in Chicago was “Backdraft,” in 1991. Overall his experience here was a good one, except for a location conflict that so incensed the director that he vowed never to shoot in Chicago again. Vaughn, who has had excellent experiences here, may have helped Howard change his mind.

Forty-three experts will bring the future of new media in all its forms into the present for the 1,500 attendees expected to attend the Sept. 15-16 Chicago New Media Summit at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

They will explore the opportunities at hand created by the convergence and emergence of new digital components and industries, said Summit founder/president John Patterson.

Barring extreme wealth or hermetics, everyone uses the grocery store. It is the great equalizer ? the marketplace where all socioeconomic groups can co-exist side by side ? in pursuit of daily bread.

Inspired by this reality, writer and director Steve Conrad turned it into his feature directorial debut, “The Promotion,” a comedy shot in Chicago.

JEFF GARLIN’S “I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With,” based on his one-man Second City show, set in Chicago and many of the exteriors and interiors shot here and some in L.A., gets an IFC First Take theatrical/broadcast release Sept. 5.

Garlin stars with Sarah Silverman, Dan Castellaneta, Gina Gershon, Tim Kazurinsky, and Steve Dahl, among many others. Pete Biagi was DP.

Garlin plays Larry David’s agent in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which returns to HBO for its fifth season in September.

The Chicago Comedy TV Pilot Competition, designed to embellish Chicago’s stellar reputation for comedy, will bow at the Music Box Theatre next July.

Presented by Wits’ End Productions and the Chicago Film Office, the competition will be judged by savvy jury of Hollywood TV show executives and offer a sizable cash prize.

Deadline is March 27, which gives filmmakers and producers ample time to turn their ideas for TV shows into pilots, said Marion Sours, founder/director of Wits’ End.

Literary manager-turned-filmmaker Sean Carr shoots the location photography for his debut feature “He’s Such a Girl” here this month.

The Chicago-set comedy shoots here April 8-14, then moves on to L.A., where Carr and his production company Kinesis Entertainment are based. Total shoot is 26 days.

“It’s a coming-of-age comedy about a straight guy who is considered a girl when it comes to relationships,” said Carr. “I fell in love with the script” ?

Broadcast and home video distributor Screen Media Pictures has signed to release two Chicago independent features, Bruce Terris’ “Dirty Work” and Marisol Torres’ “Chicago Boricua,” both first features for the directors.

Producer Jennifer Vincent announced the “Dirty Work” deal before its first public screening at the Midwest Filmmakers Summit Nov. 4.

Screen Media hasn’t announced a release date for “Dirty Work,” but “Chicago Boricua” will be out on DVD Dec. 27. Screen Media (“Things behind the Sun”) has an output deal with Universal Pictures.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Chicago improv that had its genesis in the legendary Compass Players, which in turn spawned The Second City.

Paying homage to that revolution in comedy, Chicago Improv Festival’s subtitle is “From the ?Compass’ to the World, Celebrating 50 years of Improvisational Theater.”

In 1955, University of Chicago alums Paul Sills and David Shepherd founded the pioneering comedy of the Compass Players in a converted storefront cabaret theatre near the U of C.

The first Second City revue show premiered in 1959.

Bridges Media Group VP/sales Jennifer Polk and new business director Danielle Ostrowski feel this is a prime time for the renaissance of a once valuable and vibrant Chicago film organization.

That would be Women in Film/Chicago, a mentoring/networking/career development group that flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, but fizzled out as women moved to the coasts or dropped out of the industry entirely as local opportunities diminished.

Polk and Ostrowski are well on their way to reestablishing WIF/C as a newly vital force.

For a comparatively tiny amount of money, HMS Media is producing an ambtious 13-part, half-hour series with the self-explanatory title, “The Chicago Dance Project.”

The series spotlighting more than 40 Chicago dance troupes, from the famous to the lesser known, airs Sundays over Ch. 11 until pledge month and resumes at an earlier Sunday time slot.

The 4th Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival, aka Sketchfest, at the Theatre Building is running on all three 150-seat stages simultaneously from now through Jan. 16.

One hundred-plus shows will be mounted by 83 local, national and Canadian sketch troupes chosen from more than 160 applicants.

Sketchfest’s special events include a comedy writing workshop, “How to be Funny Even if You’re Sketchy,” taught by John Vorhaus, veteran Hollywood comedy/sitcom writer (“Married?with Children”) Jan. 15. It will be followed by a panel of Chicago’s premier comedymeisters.

Comedy genius Willy Laszlo says he had the time of his life in Chicago. He had creative freedom. He had a good full-time day job. He worked hard. But he was always broke.

“So why not work hard and be broke in Los Angeles,” he rationalizes. And everyone who appreciates his vast talent agrees the move was long overdue.

Laszlo, the prolific writer/director of a remarkable 40 comedy shorts over an eight year period, quit his Comcast job, wrapped his last Chicago comedy, bid goodbye to his family, friends and supporters and headed for L.A. in mid-November.