The actor Judd Hirsch leans against the display case at S & J Jewelers, on the ground floor of the Monadnock building at Dearborn and Jackson. There’s a tinge of Yiddish to his voice as he accuses an employee of stealing a watch. Vincent Piazza mutters a half-hearted defense of the suspect, hiding his own guilt. It’s a good take, except for some crowd noise in the background.
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Until February, the producer, Effie Brown, had planned to film the Chicago-set movie in Los Angeles, on sound stages and cobbled-together patches of rust-belt-style grit. Redgrave says that scouting locations in LA was less than inspiring: “When I saw three brick buildings in a row I’d wet myself.”
The expanded Illinois film tax credit, which former governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law days after his December arrest, helped Brown justify shooting the low-budget film in an unfamiliar city. A last-minute tour of Ukrainian Village and Avondale sealed the deal. “It was just the type of flavor I was looking to re-create,” Brown says. “I realized it was a ridiculous notion to think I could fake Chicago in LA.”
Berkowitz was raised in a moderately religious household and has some Orthodox family members. In college some of his cousins became ba’alei t’shuva, or Jews who return to Orthodox practice. In an incident that inspired a turning point in Polish Bar, Berkowitz’s b’al t’shuva cousin came to stay with him when he lived in Wicker Park. “It drove me crazy,” Berkowitz recalls. “I loved him, but every five minutes he had to pray. We couldn’t go out. It affects what you eat, how you dress, and where you can go.”
They brought the Polish Bar script to New York’s Independent Feature Project Market in 2004, where they were introduced to Brown and she signed on to produce. Then they moved to LA in 2006. They slowly assembled the cast, holding out for the precious window when all the actors would be available for a 22-day shoot.
The Industry
