Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. The Break-Up This screenshot comes from The Break-Up , a 2006 romantic comedy co-starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston. Here, we see Vaughn's character working as a tour guide on the Chicago River. The Break-Up 's screenwriter, along with Vaughn (a Chicago native), wanted to be sure Chicago was a star in the film as well: "It was without question something the two made clear right from the get-go: they really wanted this film to not only look like Chicago but really, really embrace Chicago" (Chicago Tribune , 2006). How do you think they did? 🤔 Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive

Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Candyman Today's #OneShotWed comes from the horror film Candyman (1992), filmed primarily in the former Cabrini-Green public housing project on the Near North Side of Chicago. In this scene, Candyman (Tony Todd) appears to Helen (Virginia Madsen) in a parking garage and hypnotizes her. According to the film's co-director, Bernard Rose, and Madsen herself, Madsen was actually hypnotized in scenes in which she came into contact with Candyman. Apparently, a keyword was used to make the actress snap in/out of her onscreen trance. Creepy! Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive

Visit one of Hollywood's best song-and-dance man with a tour to his homes Inside Gene Kelly's House Visit one of Hollywood's best song-and-dance man with a tour to his homes All Talks About Celebrate one of classic Hollywood's greatest song-and-dance men with a tour to his Beverly Hills home(s). In the process, you'll: Discover Chicago connections See rare excerpts from vintage movie fan magazines Learn how the activities taking place inside Kelly's house helped reshape the movie musical. This hour-long talk will also consider Kelly's connections to Pittsburgh's Jewish community. Request Talk

Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Chi-Raq Directed by Spike Lee, Chi-Raq is set in Chicago and explores gang violence on the city's South Side. When released, the movie was reviewed relatively well. But some Chicagoans begged to differ. Some city residents did not like the film's name, a portmanteau of Chicago and Iraq . Others did not approve of Chicago deaths being used for entertainment purposes. To be fair, both concerns appear to have been expressed before the film was released. In any event, like several of Spike Lee's movies, Chi-Raq is controversial and thought-provoking. Have you seen it? Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive

Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. While You Were Sleeping This screenshot of a Christmasy Chicago "L" station is from the 1995 romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping . The movie follows a lonely Chicago transit worker named Lucy (Sandra Bullock) who pretends to be the fiancée of a comatose man (Peter Gallagher), only to find herself entangled in a web of misunderstandings with him and his family. (It's a cute movie, and it helped catapult Bullock into movie stardom!) Today's #OneShotWed is an establishing shot. It shows us where Lucy works as a token collector and jumps onto the tracks to save the life of Gallagher's character. The scene was filmed at Chicago's Randolph/Wabash “L” station, but it is no longer there. Shortly after Randolph/Wabash closed in 2017, its replacement, Washington/Wabash, opened. You'll recognize the new station when you see its canopies intending to echo the waves of nearby Lake Michigan . Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive

Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Space Jam In Space Jam (1996), Chicago Bulls basketball legend Michael Jordan teams up with the Looney Tunes characters to win a basketball game against aliens. The film combines live-action and animation, and it culminates in a victory with Jordan’s iconic slam dunk. To achieve the live-action/animated special effects in 1995-96, artists took their original drawings and paintings (from paper) and scanned them into a computer. After that, the animators “touched them up, and then separated elements to give [audiences] various depths of field.” Read more about the painstaking process in Part 2 of Space Jam’s oral history . Matt Johnson, one of Space Jam ’s digital artists, recalls one particularly difficult shot that includes the Chicago skyline : “There’s a shot where we start with Michael Jordan in a press conference and it goes up through a CG roof and then you see the Chicago panoramic skyline, past a miniature, and you go up and then it carries onto this big sequence as you travel past the moon, and then you’re into the toon CG world.” Johnson continues. For the shot, “I turned [the camera] on its side and I think I got a couple of people including myself just to stand against a white wall and kind of wave or make movements and things like that, and I just stuck us in the window. So if you look very carefully there are little people waving in the windows of the Chicago skyline, and that’s me and a couple of other people from the office.” Watch the full sequence below, where you’ll find the above medium shot of Michael Jordan at the press conference. Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive

Revisit the abortion plot in Dirty Dancing, without which the entire movie falls apart Dirty Dancing on Abortion Revisit the abortion plot in Dirty Dancing, without which the entire movie falls apart All Talks About Dirty Dancing , the 1987 coming-of-age movie starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, has resurfaced in the news in 2022 for three reasons: Grey is promoting her memoir Out of the Corner . This summer marks the film’s 35th anniversary . The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade , the 1973 Court decision that affirmed the constitutional right to abortion. In light of these recent events—along with Millennium Park's summer film series (Aug. 2) and a live concert in Rosemont, IL (Nov. 11)—join Chicago Movie Tours in an exploration of Dirty Dancing as it relates to the issue of abortion. We’ll pay special attention to the movie’s representation of abortion, without which the whole story would collapse. Also, in the livestream, we’ll consider Dirty Dancing ’s premiere, its screenwriter’s intents, and its progressive messages for audiences in 1987—and today. Choose your date below to join the conversation! Registration closes 70 min. before the event is scheduled to begin. Request Talk

Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Rent-a-Cop Rent-a-Cop is a 1987 action-comedy starring Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli. Reynolds plays a Chicago police detective turned security guard. He crosses paths with Minnelli’s character, who is being pursued by both the police and criminals due to her involvement with a jewel heist. Together, the duo try to stay one step ahead of both the law and the bad guys. This medium-long shot of Reynolds’ character lighting a cigarette is filmed outside the Hyatt Regency Chicago . (Thanks for helping identify the hotel, Tours with Mike !) Rent-a-Cop filmed 3 weeks in Chicago and the rest of the time in Cinecittà Studios in Rome . By the mid-1980s, Burt Reynolds’ once-thriving career was practically at a standstill. One of Hollywood’s biggest stars, he was now receiving offers for mediocre movies like this one and Stroker Ace , both of which fared poorly at the box office. In fact, later in life, Reynolds recalls these two movies as “the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave” (Variety 2011). Yikes. As of this writing, if you dare, you can watch Rent-a-Cop free on Tubi . Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive

Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) In National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation , Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) plans the perfect family Christmas, only to have it unravel through a series of comical disasters—from a faulty Christmas light display to unexpected visits from eccentric relatives. In this long shot, Clark stands with his wife, Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), after several failed attempts to light his suburban Chicago house for Christmas. Note the decorative reindeer in the bottom right and copious light strands crisscrossing the entire house. Ultimately, Ellen figures out the electrical problem, and the house will be, shall we say, well lit within the neighborhood. Take a closer look at the Griswold house for a moment. The two-story yellow house is actually a facade, formerly located inside the Warner Bros. Ranch in Burbank, CA. Yes, although National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is set in Chicago, it was filmed primarily in Los Angeles. You may have also seen this house in American Beauty (1999), Hocus Pocus (1993), or the medical drama ER (1994-2009), also Chicago-based. Sadly, in 2023, the Warner Bros. Ranch—along with all the movie and TV “homes” within it—was demolished to make room for office buildings. Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive

Explore four Chicago movies filmed in snowy settings, discover wintry filming locations, and learn how filmmakers create movie magic with snow Snow on Set: Chicago Movies in Winter Explore four Chicago movies filmed in snowy settings, discover wintry filming locations, and learn how filmmakers create movie magic with snow All Talks About Bundle up for a journey through Chicago’s chilliest movie moments! Join film historian Kelli Marshall for a look at Chicago movie locations captured in snow and wintry weather. Featuring four Chicago-based films—Groundhog Day , The Breakfast Club , Child’s Play , and Judas and the Black Messiah —this hour-long program explores how winter weather can become part of the cinematic landscape. Using original HD video filmed on location, Kelli takes you to some of Chicago’s “coolest” movie locations while sharing behind-the-scenes stories about the films and the city itself. Along the way, you'll learn about Chicago’s snowfall and discover how filmmakers create convincing movie snow, including insights from an Oscar-winning special effects artist with Chicago roots. So grab a cup of cocoa and join us as we hit the streets of Chicago—no winter coat required! Request Talk

This talk is not currently available for booking. Loop Landmarks on Film This talk is not currently available for booking. All Talks About This talk is not currently available for booking. Consider instead From Ferris to the Frontlines: Chicago's Art Institute and Grant Park in the Movies , which also covers Grant Park and other major Chicago landmarks. Ride the train (via HD video) into Chicago’s Union Station where you disembark and then move through the building’s concourses and Great Hall, all while learning about their relationship to Hollywood. Then, walk through Chicago’s Grant Park while considering Aaron Sorkin's movie The Trial of the Chicago 7 and public art. Request Talk

Every Wednesday, join us in guessing the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. Visit our archive to play the ones you missed! One-Shot Wednesday On Wednesdays, guess the Chicago-based movie or television show from one screenshot. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation In this scene from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) accidentally gets locked in his attic while his family leaves the house to shop. While freezing inside (and hilariously donning whatever clothes he can find for warmth), Clark finds a box of old 8mm movies. He picks one and plays it against an attic wall. The reel Clark pulls out is labeled Xmas ’59 —an allusion to John Hughes' short story “Christmas ’59” that is the basis for this movie. Welcome to One-Shot Wednesday! Think you’re a Chicago screen buff? On Wednesdays, we post one still from a movie or TV show filmed or set in the Windy City. Your mission? Guess the title! You've already seen this week’s image above. If you're feeling nostalgic, explore the full archive of past challenges to keep the fun rolling. Psst: you're on screenshot: 84 Access Archive