NO PALM TREES IN CHICAGO

Though the story is set in Chicago, the film was primarily shot on location in and around Los Angeles.

Location manager Tom Hillman notes, “Ken’s initial vision for the setting of this film was Anytown, USA. He wasn’t originally going for Chicago, but he liked the architecture and feel of the city and its suburbs.”

However, with a fairly short pre-production schedule, the filmmakers opted to shoot Los Angeles for Chicago. Hillman and the team searched for neighborhoods within the massive Los Angeles urban sprawl for settings that could pass for Chicago.

Co-producer Christine Sacani states, “It’s one thing if you are shooting L.A. for L.A., but when you’re shooting L.A. for Chicago there are a number of considerations...like avoiding palm trees.”

“There aren’t really any palm trees in Chicago,” says Hillman. “If you go down into the Adams district of Los Angeles, there are a lot of craftsman-style houses, but the people who settled there many decades ago were proud that they lived in L.A. so they flooded the place with palm trees, even though the palm tree isn’t indigenous to Los Angeles. But when you go to Pasadena and South Pasadena, the early developers planted more deciduous trees, which look much more Midwestern.”

One of the centerpiece locations for the story is St. Augustine’s Church. After scouting several locations, the filmmakers selected the First Congregational Church in Long Beach, California. Constructed in 1914, the structure still looks very much the same today as it did then.

“Oddly enough, that was the first church that played in my head when they said Chicago. We had sold ourselves on a different church in downtown Los Angeles but, through what can appropriately be deemed as divine intervention, it had problems and didn’t end up working out,” recalls Hillman. “I then took them to what had been my first choice, which ended up being much better for us. The church in Long Beach was a lot warmer, a lot smaller, and more containable. When Ken and the producers saw it in person, they said, ‘Oh my god, look at these windows. Look how beautiful this is!’”

With the climax of the film taking place in an exotic location, the filmmakers were also faced with another decision. “I think Jamaica was what Ken had in mind. At one point, it was going to be a winery, but it didn’t have the right tropical feel. The California coast is still the California coast,” Hillman states. “You have to bring in a lot of greens to sell it as a tropical beach, which can be done, but it takes a whole lot of set dressing.”

At first, the idea of filming these scenes in Jamaica seemed impractical, given the production schedule. Paraphrasing the old studio adage, Kwapis quips, “A tree is a tree, so let’s shoot it in Malibu.”

In the end, the filmmakers found no substitute for the real thing. The company trekked down to the Sandals Grande Ocho Rios Beach & Villa Resort in Jamaica for the final week of filming.

Kwapis concludes, “There’s no place on the West Coast that can substitute for Jamaica. The blue of the Caribbean is so specific—it’s turquoise, really— there’s nothing else quite like it. It was the perfect backdrop to shoot the film’s big finish.”