Joe Mantegna, Chris O’Donnell, Jim Belushi, Virginia Madsen, Fred Willard and many other Chicago natives working in the Hollywood entertainment industry will catch up with old friends and chow down Chicago food favorites at the Oct. 4 Windy City West party.
Brenda Sexton’s Chicago-LA Link Event is again hosting the party for some 450 invited guests at Le Grande Orange restaurant in Santa Monica.
The restaurant has a direct Chicago bond as its partners, RJ and Jerrod Melman, continue the tradition of being he party’s venue established earlier by their father, Rich Melman, founder of Chicago’s top-rated Lettuce Entertainment restaurants.
“This is really a great reunion and the party has a great impact on the Chicago film industry,” says Sexton, the Illinois Film Office director from 2004 to 2007, whose vigorous promotion and sales efforts in Hollywood generated multi-millions in major movies filming in Illinois during her tenure.
At one of the earlier parties, Vince Vaughn declared that he would make as many films as possible in Chicago, Sexton recalls, “and starting with ?The Breakup,’ he’s certainly kept his promise.”
Vaughn worked here this spring filming a Ron Howard comedy called “Cheating Hearts.”
