Illinois has a new movie star. Her home is in
a southern suburb of Chicago, where she’s resided since
before the Civil War. Now almost 150 years old, she’s only
getting better with age.
It’s the Joliet Correctional Center,
which has served as the set for three show-biz projects since it
was officially decommissioned as a prison last August. Derailed, a thriller
starring Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen, was filmed there in
November. In December, Fox shot the pilot for a television drama
called Prison Break at Joliet, and will begin filming a dozen episodes there
next month. And the feature film You
Are Going to Prison — described
as a “buddy comedy,” starring Will Arnett (Arrested Development)
and Dax Shepard — just wrapped.
Brenda Sexton, managing director of the
Illinois Film Office, says the picturesque prison is attractive to
production companies for several reasons.
For starters, it’s empty, so production
companies can have the full run of the complex. And unlike most
vacant penitentiaries, Joliet is in good condition, with functional
air conditioning and plumbing. “A lot of empty prisons are
abandoned because they’re decrepit,” Sexton says.
Costs are minimal due to Gov. Rod
Blagojevich’s policy of charging only expenses for
state-owned sites, combined with the unions’ willingness to
count Joliet within the Chicago zone, which means workers get
regular scale instead of time and a half.
But the biggest selling point, Sexton says, is the “visual power” of this scenic
slammer.
“It’s so ominous,” she says.
“It looks like they’re going to clank the door behind
you and you’re never going to see the light of day
again.”
Production companies get expert help from Deb
French, executive assistant to the warden at nearby Statesville
Correctional Center. A 27-year employee of the Illinois Department
of Corrections, French has learned that some crews want
authenticity and some just want access.
“With Derailed and Prison Break, they really wanted our input. We practically
dressed their sets,” she says.
For Prison Break, she helped round up genuine prison-approved radios
and televisions — clear instead of opaque. For Derailed, she shipped
one of Joliet’s special stainless-steel modular toilets to
London so that a realistic prison cell could be recreated in the
studio for re-takes. But for You Are
Going to Prison, all she had to do was
get out of the way.
“The other day, they were doing a dance
scene in the cafeteria, with the inmates singing and dancing. And
they were good!” French says.
Sometimes, she has had to treat silly
questions seriously, like when one crewmember asked her if tattoos
are allowed in prisons.
“I have to be very careful not to give
them a smart-ass answer,” French chuckles, trying
to imagine how the DOC could possibly remove every convict’s skin
art. “I feel like saying, ‘I know you people work in
Hollywood, but let’s come down to earth for a second.’
”
Still, she has a newfound respect for the
movie industry, and an even deeper appreciation of her own
profession.
“Everybody thinks oh, that’s so
glamorous. But it’s actually very long hours, very
tedious,” she says. “That was the real eye-opener about
this whole thing. I say man, no thanks. I’ll stick with the
prison business.”
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 1, 2005.
