As the film industry incorporates more exotic locales, and relationships between people in different parts of the country or world, the need for movie friendly airports in which to shoot has never been greater. With the architectural style and grace of Chicago's O'Hare Airport, especially the Helmut Jahn designed Terminal One, O'Hare has become one of the most sought after airports to film in, in the world.

"We shoot a lot of different airport scenes here," the Chicago Department of Aviation program director, Judith Hamill stated. "Not only do we shoot the Chicago scenes here, but directors have shot O'Hare to double for LaGuardia, San Francisco, Cleveland and even Paris."

Generally speaking, O'Hare doubles for other airports for financial reasons.

In 1989, director Chris Columbus and writer/producer John Hughes were on the north shore in Winnetka filming a movie called Home Alone, a feature that would later go on to gross nearly $300 million. When the Home Alone script called for the McCallister family to fly out of O'Hare enroute to Paris, Columbus and Hughes took a little artistic leeway; the family was shot on-location at O'Hare, running to their flight gate, and quickly thereafter, shot 'arriving' in Paris in O'Hare's International Terminal. One can only imagine how much extra it would have cost the Home Alone production to fly the actors and crew to Paris to film just one or two inconsequential scenes.

However, sometimes O'Hare doubles for other airports for more aesthetic reasons.

"It is a beautiful airport to shoot in," information coordinator Dan Curtin informed me. "Filmmakers often like to capitalize on that beauty."

One such film was the 20th Century Fox release, Pushing Tin. Pushing Tin focused on the harried and somewhat psychologically disturbing lives of air traffic controllers based in Long Island; from there, the controllers handled all the planes flying to LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports. The interior scenes and the great majority of exterior scenes were all shot in Toronto. However, as you can imagine, in a movie about air traffic controllers, there would be a need to shoot some planes taking-off and landing. Instead of sending an assistant director to New York to shoot the B-roll footage, producer Art Linson contacted the Chicago Film Office (CFO) and asked to send a second unit out to shoot at O'Hare.

"[A situation like that] isn't that unusual," Rich Moskal, the director of the CFO told me. "We try to be as film friendly as is possible. We want to make it as easy and systematic to shoot in Chicago. The [Department of Aviation] has made it even easier to cut through much of the bureaucracy, by appointing [Hamill] to do just that."

Curious if either the CFO or the Chicago Department of Aviation felt the least bit slighted that the elegance of O'Hare was often used to portray that of other airports, I asked Hamill and Moskal and received basically the same response.

"Any [production] that makes us look good on screen… and any [production] that brings jobs to the area is a good in my mind," Hamill stated.

And, while it might not instantly spring to mind in the majority of people, two of the most important goals of the CFO are to bring money into the city's economy and to create jobs for Chicago based crew members and technicians. For this reason, the Pushing Tin incident particularly irked Hamill.

"[The Pushing Tin shoot] did bother me," Hamill said, "because, of the five man crew they used, they hired one local guy. The rest were from New York and Los Angeles. They were here for two or three days and that netted only one local job.

SHOOTING IN CHICAGO

"First, filmmakers would contact the Chicago Film Office," Hamill told me. "If the material they wanted to shoot was approved, they then would contact me, and we would work to contact the [airlines] to find out if they could supply the production with what they needed."

Script approval is necessary to film in any of the Chicagoland airports. "Disparaging content isn't allowed," Hamill said.

After the film content has been approved by the CFO and the carriers, Hamill works as a liason between the production and the airport, attempting to figure out what the production wants to shoot and when and where it would be easiest to do so. Security at the airport, as well it should be, is extremely tight, which often dictates shooting procedures. "You have to respect that the airport is not a soundstage," Moskal said. "You are working in a high security facility."

"Gate areas are generally okay to shoot in," Curtin told me, "but anything involving a computer screen isn't allowed to be filmed for security reasons."

Take for instance, the example of the Warner Brothers production Message in a Bottle. The production contacted the CFO about shooting several scenes involving Robin Wright-Penn and Kevin Costner's characters meeting after Costner's flight in from North Carolina. The script material was approved-there were no terrorists or references to the Back Street Boys-and sent onward to Hamill at the Department of Aviation. She contacted American Airlines about the possibility of the Message in a Bottle production using one of the gates in Terminal 3, the American Airlines Terminal, and, after devising a way to shoot that wouldn't adversely affect the travelers, Message in a Bottle received a green light to begin filming there.

After doing a walk through with several members of the production team, Hamill assisted the team with their technical needs, figured out where the crew would park and what type of insurance would be necessary to begin filming in O'Hare. "You have to be insured to film here [at O'Hare]," Hamill said. It's just that simple.

Once the walk through had been completed and the insurance up to date, Hamill began to discern what the crew's wish list was. "I need to find out if they need a generator truck, a number of electricians, or a specific type of camera so we can go about [procuring] those."

On the days principle photography at O'Hare was to take place, the crew and all the equipment, cameras, lights, etc, passes through an FAA security checkpoint, before entering the airport facilities. Once inside, members of the airport security stay with the cameras at all times as a measure of precaution.

"[Message in a Bottle] shot at the very end of Terminal 3," Hamill remembered. "There were 300 extras standing around blending with those people who had just arrived from destinations throughout America."

Filming took place for a couple of days and, as quickly as they arrived, the film crew had left to shoot at another location in Chicago.

For the most part, shoots at O'Hare proceed very smoothly. "Since it isn't as easy to control a 747 as it is an auto on LaSalle Street, [stringent] precautions are taken," Moskal said. These precautions come with mapping out everything ahead of time as exactly as possible. If the production has a guide to follow, things tend to proceed that much more smoothly. Hamill could only remember one incident during her time at the Department of Aviation that she could qualify as a disaster.

"The U.S. Marshals shoot was plagued by things," she said. "There were a lot of bad feelings on the set because some of the crew had been fired. The incident [occurred] during the filming of the prisoner transfer onto the airplane. That night we had had a major thunderstorm, with six inches of rain. At five o'clock in the morning, a cold front had come through that dropped temperatures 20 degrees." The scene called for a 727 to taxi around the runway. In between takes, "the man in the plane gunned the engine creating a jet blast," Hamill recalled. The crew on the ground had been moving equipment around, and the propulsion from the jet blast had forcefully pushed one of the cameras into a truck, "pinning [crew members] to the truck."

HISTORY

Of the three major airports in Chicago, Meigs, Midway and O'Hare, O'Hare has, hands down, been the preferred place to shoot during the last 25 years. "Midway has always been constrained by its size," Hamill said. "Where are you going to put 200 extras in a '50's airport with low ceilings?"

A large part of understanding the difference between Midway and O'Hare comes with understanding their history.

The land O'Hare is now on, was purchased by the City of Chicago in 1946. The city bought the Orchard Place Military Air Facility with plans of transforming the base into a new municipal airport. Upon its completion, Orchard Place was renamed to honor naval aviator Lt. Cmdr. Edward H. "Butch" O'Hare, a Medal of Honor recipient from Chicago who died in World War II. Despite adapting the new name though, the airport kept the three letter abbreviation from Orchard Place, ORD, a fact that confuses even the most seasoned of Chicago air travelers.

In 1955, O'Hare officially opened its doors and runways to commercial air traffic, though it wasn't until some years later that the airport was dedicated by President John F. Kennedy. During the next seven years, numerous improvements were made to the airport, as a result of which, in 1962, all scheduled Midway Airport operations transferred to O'Hare, increasing the air traffic numbers at O'Hare 10 fold.

Outside of the CTA beginning rail service to O'Hare in 1984, the airport remained virtually the same from 1962 to 87, until the opening of the United Airlines Terminal 1 opened, that cost upwards of $500 million. American Airlines followed suit in 1990, completely renovating their terminal, Terminal 3.

The last major addition of the current airport was the $618 million international terminal, Terminal 5.

Covering a vast 7,000 acres in the northwest corner of Chicago, O'Hare serves more than 72 million passengers in a year, 35 million of which were in Chicago for a) cows, or b) Sammy Sosa.

The history of Midway Airport is slightly different than that of O'Hare. While O'Hare stands poised to usher in the new millennium as the preeminent airport in America, and one of the premier airports in the world, Midway's heighday came during the earlier part of this century--Midway saw its all-time record year in 1959, when more than 10 million passengers passed through its gates.

Originally used as an airpark, with Colonel Philip Kemp operating a small hangar that offered passenger rides and flying lessons, Midway moved from these humble beginnings in 1923, to the world's busiest airport in 1932, a distinction it held until O'Hare took that title from Midway in 1961.

In 1925, the City of Chicago began to lease the land on which the airpark was located and in 1927, Chicago Municipal Airport was opened for business. In 1930, mayor Anton J. Cermak approved the use of funds to build Chicago Municipal longer runways and a passenger terminal and administration building.

As a result of this increased size, Chicago Municipal served more than 100,000 passengers in 1932, when it earned the title of the world's busiest airport.

In 1949, the Chicago City Council voted to change the airport's name to Midway Airport in honor of the World War II Battle of Midway.

It was the arrival of the jet age that hastened the decline of Midway in the early 60's. The availability of O'Hare Airport with its longer runways allowed for the use of larger and faster jet planes, something Midway couldn't offer. And by July of 1962, the airlines that had served Midway had all moved to the more modern O'Hare.

After spending a large amount of money updating Midway's facilities, smaller airlines began to return in the seventies, with Midway Airlines and Southwest Airlines heading the revitalization of the airport.

Now some 11 million passengers fly through Midway yearly.

AND FINALLY

With the lure of the cheap Canadian market drawing a sizeable amount of work out of Chicago and most other major American cities, The CFO and the Illinois Film Office (IFO) admit that they have their work cut out for themselves, attracting feature film productions to Chicago.

"The attraction of Canada is definitely an issue with us," Moskal said. "It drains jobs from Chicago and takes the money elsewhere."

The CFO and IFO have begun to take steps though to ensure that Toronto and Vancouver don't take all the work from the midwest.

"We can't compete economically with Canada," Moskal stated, "but Chicago is a very attractive city" with beautiful architecture that production teams will not be able to find north of the border.

"We're doing our best to accommodate feature film productions," Moskal said. And this is especially true this year, with and estimated "42 or so" features shot in Chicago in 1999, bringing roughly $100 million dollars to the Chicago economy this year. Hopefully this trend will continue on in the future.