Happy Father's Day!
Over the weekend I watched
The Fugitive with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. Afterwards we went downtown and had a beer.
I mean I watched the movie starring them.
Part of the movie's action takes place in downtown Chicago on St. Patrick's Day
, and a short establishing shot was very similar to this pic I posted the other day on page 1:
.
Right: Pic to fill space to right of pic under discussion
The river-dyeing boat was making the exact same curlicue, probably in front of the same bridge. Son of a gun--I'm going to fast-forward the tape and find that shot again. . . .
1. The main difference is that in the movie the river is already very green, so you don't totally get that it was the guys in the boat dyeing it and mixing it.
2. Also, in the pic the boat is stationary in the frame, whereas in the movie it is in motion.
3. In the pic the boat is just east of the State Street Bridge (we're looking west). In the movie the boat is just east of the Dearborn Avenue Bridge, the next bridge west in the pic.
4. The still camera is way up, plus over a block away from the boat, probably shooting out a window in the 360 N. Michigan Building (SW corner of Wacker & Michigan; the building lines up with the river like this because of the northward bend in the river starting in the bottom left of the pic). The movie camera is right down on the State Street Bridge, less than a block away from the boat, and toward the bridge's north end (in the pic this is the nearest bridge, and toward that bridgetender's "house" at right, between us and Marina City).
5. Both shots are toward the west, but the movie shot starts by looking SW toward Dearborn & Wacker, then pans right, following the boat, to look almost straight W.
6. The boats are making almost the exact same curlicue, but in the movie the boat swings out farther to the right (north). Since the camera is near the N end of the State Street Bridge, it still doesn't pan right enough to show any buildings on the north bank of the river (notably in pic, Marina City).
7. While panning right, the movie camera also tilts up a bit, so the end of the movie shot and the pic both show the warehouses and smokestacks in the distance, past Wolf Point (where the North and South Branches of the Chicago River join to form the Main Stem).
8.
The Fugitive was released in 1993. The pic isn't too new, either, because this Wolf Point vista (7) is now horribly blocked off by the blah, 38-story
Riverbend Condominiums (built 2000-2002). It doesn't look like the Smith & Wollensky restaurant has been plopped down onto the Marina City plaza yet (mid-'90s?), either.
Been doing it since 1962; don't know when they started doing it at Chengchow (Zhčngzhōu).
To read all about dyeing the river and see three St. Paddy's Days' worth of pics, plus stuff on other Irish traditions in Chicago, this woman with a Chicago architecture blog is the hostess with the mostes':
http://lynnbecker.com/repeat/stpat/stpat.htm
http://lynnbecker.com/repeat/stpat/08stpat.htm