U2 was singing “Angel of Harlem” when I walked up to John Hughes’ production office on the Paramount lot. In the late eighties, a time before iPods, it must have been coming from a radio somewhere. I was in L.A. on vacation, visiting some of the people I’d met and worked with as the assistant location manager on the film “She’s Having a Baby” the previous summer. It was one of the grander and more teeth-gnashing experiences I’d had in my burgeoning career in film production, and I was thrilled about it. John was great, through and through; unassuming, funny, kind and focused.

One of the my first assignments was to go along with the location manager to the charming Skokie neighborhood we’d selected as our primary “film set” and get permission from each of the homeowners to shoot there. Scenes we intended to shoot were Jake (Kevin Bacon) tearing out of his driveway when Christy (Elizabeth McGovern) goes into labor, and the ‘lawn mower ballet’ that Jake sees in a dream sequence. Read the rest of this entry »