Everyone’s talking about The Express. You know, that movie being filmed at Ryan Field starring Dennis Quaid? Even if you don’t know the story of Ernie Davis, the first African-American to win the Heisman, you’ve at least read about it; The Daily has covered the film four times in two weeks – if you include Josiah Jenkins’ column last Wednesday.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s exciting news. But it’s not the first time NU has made it to the big screen. We all know that there have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of characters across movies and TV shows that “went” here. Andrea Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, Josie Geller in Never Been Kissed, even the boyfriend in Mean Girls – all Wildcats.
The campus, though, hasn’t had as much luck. In fact, there are only a few times it has been used in film. The most famous example for Northwestern comes from Major League. If you can remember the last time you watched it (we know it was a long time ago), there’s that one library scene filmed in our own Deering Library. Soul Survivors and The Weather Man even have some on-campus shots, if you’re observant enough to notice them.
Outside of those, though, you may be hard-pressed to remember a single Northwestern scene in a movie recently. And yet location managers always seem to try to push it. Medill alum Ryan Haggerty penned a piece last year for Northwestern’s Alumni Magazine talking about movies filmed at Northwestern. He quotes James McAllister, a Chicago-based location manager, as saying, “A lot of times in a film you’re looking for a wood-paneled room or a stately room, and Northwestern seems to have a lot of those. There’s a lot of classical architecture, and both campuses are beautiful.”
The classic look was exactly what the people at Universal Studios were looking for, and why they went beyond using Ryan Field and incorporating other campus locations in the movie. Sargent Hall was converted into a Cleveland hospital for a day. Annie May Swift Hall and the fraternity quads served as classic outdoor scenes for a 1950s Syracuse University.
How Universal Studios finally decided on Ryan Field is a different story. The selection process started with trips to Connecticut and Illinois by David Thornsberry, the location manager for the film (Thornsberry did the same job for Bruce Almighty and Almost Famous). Both states, he notes, offer great incentive programs for films, like rebates and tax incentives. From there, Thornsberry just had to find the right stadium.
“When I came to each state I had to go around and find stadiums that were not redone yet and did not have Astroturf or things like that,” he says. “We had to find stadiums that had a classic look to them. The look of Ryan Field was so classic and great for our film.”
As to why there aren’t more films shot here if it’s so great, Mary Jane Twohey, Northwestern’s broadcast relations director, had a few reasons.
“We never move things around academically. We don’t allow filming at certain times of the year, like reading week,” she says. “We’ve had to turn down more because we’re just not able to do it.”
There are also times when the school turns down a request out of image issues, as in the case of Cheaper by the Dozen, where the film higher-ups offered to set it at Northwestern. Alan Cubbage, the vice president for university relations, had some concerns about the film.
“It was certainly an entertaining movie,” he says, “(But) we chose not to. It didn’t portray the university in a way that we felt was appropriate.”
Some of the scenes he cited prove that thought. In one, the athletic director tells Steve Martin to quit worrying about his kids and focus on the game.
Likewise, American Pie 2’s opening scene of Jim sleeping with a girl in his dorm and his dad walking in was supposed to be at Northwestern, but the idea was nixed by Cubbage and Twohey (“That one was an easier decision,” Cubbage says).
Still, we can only hope that there are more films to come. Because who really doesn’t want to see The Rock in the next installment of Spider-Man?
Medill junior Emmet Sullivan is a PLAY assistant editor. He can be reached at [email protected].
