Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town

He is wearing a pair of headphones, the music loud but barely recognizable, and asks slowly, “What came first, the music or the misery?” Then he launches into a diatribe — his “desert-island, top-five most memorable split-ups” with girlfriends, the ones that hurt the most, the list that the current heartbreaker has failed to make. 

If you’re a cineaste and vinyl lover, you’ll recognize these lines from the 2000 film High Fidelity based on Nick Hornby’s bestselling book.

And in High Fidelity tradition, here’s a list: five reasons why I am bringing this up in a story about Chicago.

1) Because having seen the movie and been on a film location tour of Chicago where the book was transposed from its original London setting, I realize that the movie worked precisely because it was transported to Chicago — a big city with unique and pretty neighborhoods; it probably wouldn’t have worked as well in another American city.

2) Because the character Rob Gordon’s record store, Championship Vinyl purportedly located in Wicker Park, is one of the most chased movie locations in the city — but it doesn’t exist. It was an empty store at North Milwaukee Avenue and Honore St. when they filmed the movie.

3) Because Gordon has the guts to stand behind the counter of his store and say he would sell five copies of the “Three EP” compilation album of the then obscure Beta Band, and proceeds to play one of my favorite songs ever (Dry The Rain).

4) Because it shows the jazz bar Green Mill where Gordon reminisces about his ex and then the Biograph Theater where bank robber John Dillinger was shot dead, or as Gordon puts it, “John Dillinger was killed behind that theater in a hale of FBI gunfire. And do you know who tipped them off? His f*cking girlfriend. All he wanted to do was go to the movies.”

5) Because I and other journalists from around the world had signed up for the “Chicago Film Tour,” which we picked from a dozen choices — including the blues history of the city, theater, shopping, architecture, Segway tours and parks — that were offered to media covering International Pow Wow (IPW 2014). 

International Pow Wow is the US travel industry’s biggest international marketplace and generator of travel to US destinations. The trade show connects suppliers and buyers with more than 1,000 travel organizations from every region of the US representing all categories, and thousands of domestic and international buyers. All the players conduct negotiations face to face, something that would otherwise necessitate expensive travel around the world to reach these markets. Business negotiations at IPW result in more than $4.7 billion in future travel to the US and host cities always see a rise in tourist arrivals in the year following the event.  

The Philippine group, two from media and four from the travel industry, flew on Delta with Philippine GM Gina Campos.  

Hosted in a different US city each year (2013 was in Las Vegas, 2015 will be in Orlando), it was Chicago’s turn this year to welcome about 6,000 delegates from 70 countries — and what a welcome it gave them! Starting on the first day of Sunday brunch for media at the McCormick Center, where one can view metropolitan Chicago 360 degrees, to the farewell party three days later for all participants at the Museum of Science & Industry headlined by Oscar-winning actress and singer Jennifer Hudson. 

On Sunday afternoon, film critic Patrick McDonald of hollywoodchicago.com leads us on a film tour through Chicago, which is essentially a tour of the city itself.

“Chicago is made up of neighborhoods,” he says as the bus makes its way out of the shadow of the John Hancock Center, one of Chicago’s most recognizable landmarks since it was completed in 1970 and designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill (the firm that also designed our Tower One in Makati).

I look at the list in my hand. There are about 80 movies and 18 locations. How are we going to pack all these in an hour and a half? Well, we don’t — the tour lasts about two and a half hours. 

Several movies jump out from the page, movies where Chicago plays a central role, almost like another character in the film, not an incidental location. Topping the list is The Untouchables, of course, which is set in prohibition-era Chicago. The movie poster, in fact, is of South La Salle Street. One of the most memorable scenes is the shootout on the steps of Union Station where a pram with an oblivious baby rolls down in slow-motion and Andy Garcia just manages to stop it with his foot while simultaneously flinging a loaded gun to Kevin Costner (Eliot Ness).

Union Station has been used in plenty of films, including My Best Friend’s Wedding, Man of Steel and The Sting. The Chicago Theater was used as Al Capone’s (Robert DeNiro) Lexington Hotel (but the confrontation scene on the staircase was filmed at Roosevelt University). The theater, yes, the one with the “Chicago” sign in neon lights, is used as the establishing shot for movies set in Chicago — and the biggest irony of all is that the musical Chicago was filmed in its entirety in Toronto.

The Blues Brothers is another movie that takes viewers around Chicago, from the Joliet Correctional Center south of the city to Wrigley Field, which is incidentally celebrating its 100th year this year, to the City Hall County Building.

Guess how many cars were wrecked in the filming of this slapstick caper? “A total of 103 cars,” says Patrick as he shows us a clip of yet again another car chase with John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd.

Two of Chicago’s most recognizable towers, both for their location (on the north bank of the Chicago River, across the Loop) and their design (they look like corncobs), were used in the 1980 movie The Hunter for a very daring stunt. The Corncobs (Marina City towers) are 65-story high with the bottom 19 floors forming a spiral parking ramp, which from the street appear as if cars could fall off if the driver miscalculated the edge by an inch.  The design is practically begging to be used in a car stunt.

Patrick says that the people of Chicago knew something was up and so even in the final scene you can see people on the bridge watching as badass Steve McQueen pursues a suspect who loses control of his cars and drives off the parking space and falls off into the Chicago River. You can say the stunt made a splash with the locals.

People who love ‘80s movies will recognize the Windy City in many of John Hughes’ films, including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  (remember that scene when he was looking out onto the city? That was shot in Sears Tower; Bruce Wayne did the same in The Dark Knight, except he was on the rooftop). And then Bueller and his friends spend time in front of George Seurat’s massive piece “A Sunday on the Grande Jatte”  at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then on to the parade on Dearborn Street were he lip-synchs Twist and Shout.

Still from Hughes in the ‘80s, set or with parts filmed in Chicago were The Breakfast Club, Uncle Buck, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and Home Alone. In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, the toy store scene was actually shot in Chicago’s Uptown Theater.

“The Uptown was built in 1925, before TV,” says Patrick. “When people went to the theater to feel majestic.”

What about films that “destroy” Chicago? Such fun to demolish landmarks that everybody recognizes. Transformers did it. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight reimagined it as a decaying Gotham City (Gotham always needs saving, doesn’t it? I mean, was there ever a time it was just…normal?)

The latest big film takes the city past life as we know it: Divergent, another post-apocalyptic, reluctant-heroine movie where Lake Michigan has dried up, Sears Tower is “the Hub,” and Pier Park is the venue for the “capture the flag” scene. And one of the oldest movies filmed in Chicago? The silent film The Wizard of Oz in 1910, only 10 years after Frank Baum released his novel.

We are driving back to Chicago on Wednesday afternoon and I am panicking that I would be late for the farewell party. A friend and I have gone outside the city to look for a blues bar that was highly rated. We do find the bar — and two depressed-looking barflies— but there is no band performing that afternoon (Buddy Guy’s Legend in the South Loop has lunchtime blues on some days of the week).

We are on the freeway and the sun is set to begin its long descent. The approach to Chicago affords motorists a fantastic view of the skyline — you can pinpoint the landmarks, identify the silhouettes of the Sears Tower, John Hancock Center, Trump Tower, etc. 

People have often compared this skyline to New York’s and Chicagoans are sick of it. No, they are not  called the “Second City” in reference to New York (it’s because Chicago built itself up again — and invented its own unique architecture — after the Great Chicago Fire of  1871, which razed nine square kilometers of the city to the ground.

It is indeed a beautiful skyline and a lovely city that breathes art into its streets. I was stunned at the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago because where the top cities in the world separate the masters from the contemporary and modern (The Louvre and D’orsay in Paris; Prado and Reina Sofia in Madrid), Chicago has the good sense to put them in one museum. In a matter of hours, you can go from El Greco to Constable, Turner, Van Gogh, Seurat, Gauguin, and then the post-World War 2 painters: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. You can look at armory from medieval Europe, a Rodin sculpture, a Thorne chair, and some modern artwork that was repurposed from cars.

But the most famous painting housed at the Art Institute is appropriately by the American Grant Wood. His “American Gothic,” a farmer holding an upturned pitchfork and his spinster daughter (modeled by Wood’s dentist and sister) standing in front of an American Gothic house, won for him third prize and $300. To be sure, it was a satire of rural life (he saw the house while in Iowa) and Iowans were reportedly furious at their depiction. Having had European training in painting, Wood defended his work by saying, “I had to go to France to appreciate Iowa.”

The truth is, however people viewed this painting then and now, it is an enduring symbol of Americana — revered and reimagined many times in pop culture and media (Time and MAD magazines).

“Chicago is the most American of America,” says Mayor Rahm Emanuel during the lunch at McCormick Convention Center, which gathered the thousands of participants of IPW 2014. 

“The Midwest represents more Americans culturally than, say, New York or LA,” explained another Chicago local. “Most things that are transported across America come through Chicago. All the highways come through here. All of the trains connect through here. Most long-distance flights make connections at O’Hare.”

So with all these things going on for Chicago, you wonder why it ranks only as the eighth most visited city in the US with foreign travelers? (It fares better when combined with domestic visitors.)

“It’s the Midwest attitude,” said an industry insider. “Midwesterns are always welcoming to visitors but we don’t like promoting ourselves or boasting about what we have. But now things have changed, Chicago is starting to promote itself, it’s coming out of its shell and marketing itself.”

IPW was a great start. Everyone I talked to has fallen in love with the city and I doubt people would call Chicago the Second City for the wrong reason again.

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Delta flies twice a day to the US via Narita and Nagoya. Log on to delta.com. For more information on Chicago, log on to choosechicago.com; for other US destinations, log on to discoveramerica.com; visit citypass.com.