Illinois Moments on the Silver Screen

Posted in ARTS to Film by Pat Brown on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Watching Wanted a few weeks ago, I was amused and surprised to see a bar I have passed every day on the train during my summer in Chicago featured prominently. I chuckled aloud in the theater, only to see heads turn my way, the faces expressing their disdain for someone so easily excited by familiar sights on the big screen. I realized that people from Chicago must see stuff they recognize all the time in films and that it was totally not cool of me to think anything of it.

I can’t help it, though: I’m from Champaign-Urbana, which somehow ranks below Peoria and Decatur on the “Illinois towns people recognize” rankings. On the rare occasion we get mentioned in a film, we throw parties, like the birthday party for the HAL 9000 that kicked off Ebertfest ten years ago. So here I present a list, albeit a short one, of films that make me go, “Hey! I’m from there!”

The Beginning of the End
This film, whose title gives no indication that it’s about Peter Graves rescuing Illinois from giant grasshoppers, was featured on an episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” about ten years ago. What it lacks in quality it makes up for in references to our beloved towns.

When you think about it, allusions to Champaign-Urbana were inevitable in a film like this. There are only so many urban areas for grasshoppers to destroy in Illinois, so C-U follows on a logical sequence of increasingly large destruction areas. After all, you couldn’t exactly start the film by having Peter Graves proclaim, “The grasshoppers have destroyed Chicago! I hope they don’t make it to Ludlow!”

The coolest bit of this film for me, as a Champaign native, is the opening shot, which is of a sign that says “Ludlow 1 Rantoul 5 Champaign 25.” Whoever shot the film apparently didn’t do enough research to realize that the terrain of central Illinois in no way resembles that of southern California, but at least they got our towns right.

Some Like It Hot
In Billy Wilder’s classic comedy, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play freelance musicians in 1920s Chicago who barely escape a police raid of the speakeasy in which they work. Freezing cold and penniless, they have only one place to turn: Urbana. There’s a gig at the University of Illinois that will give them a small amount of cash, but Jack Lemmon’s character doesn’t like the idea of coming to our two cities. His reluctance might have something to do with the absence of a highway system, the terrible weather, and the strange lack of heating in most autos manufactured in the 1920s, but it still hurts to hear the future Oscar winner yell incredulously, “Urbana?”

No matter, however, as the pair soon witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in a garage, preventing their trek to Urbana and setting the mob after them. The only sensible alternative to driving to Urbana with the mob on your tail? Why, gender swapping, of course. The two dress as women and join a touring “girl band” in Florida, forgetting all about the C-U.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Well, if Champaign-Urbana isn’t being trampled by giant insects or disparaged by poor Chicagoans, it is the birthplace of murderous artificial life forms like HAL 9000, the onboard computer that tries to do away with the crew of the first manned flight to Jupiter. While it’s certainly not pleasant to consider the prospect of our friends at the supercomputing center on campus inventing an evil robot, this depiction of Urbana might be the most accurate on the list.

C-U, after all, has been known neither for its speakeasies nor for the fact that its population was decimated by oversized grasshoppers, but it is notable for its work in computing. We’re now more than 16 years past HAL’s supposed birth day, which was Jan. 12, 1992, and there is no such thing as a “HAL computing lab” in Urbana, but it’s possible that someday Urbana will be known for creating the world’s first evil robot. It’s at least more likely than anybody buying Tony Curtis as a woman.

I am well aware that our part of Central Illinois has an independent film “industry” that regularly sets films in C-U, but I think you’ll agree that the words “Champaign” and “Urbana” are much more exciting when they’re coming out of the mouth of a psychopathic robot, an Oscar winner or the future host of “A&E Biography.” Our towns don’t usually get featured roles, but it is nice to know that at least a few screenwriters in Hollywood have heard of us. Just don’t get me started on Risky Business.