Chris Charles says he warned his star up front: “But I don’t think it really registered till his first day of shooting in downtown Chicago.”
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In 2006 the six friends worked on a low-budget thriller called The Devil’s Dominoes, directed by Scott Prestin, owner of the now-defunct Wicker Park bar Ginbucks. “We realized from that experience that we were more prepared than we thought to make a feature,” Charles says. They were all fans of gangster films and figured they could make one without incurring a lot of extra production costs by taking advantage of Chicago locations.
“For months all we had was a title,” says Caunter. His grandmother in Ohio had suggested “Chicago Overcoat,” Prohibition-era slang for a coffin. The Family Secrets mob trials were in the headlines at the time and wound up providing inspiration for the screenplay.
Once Vincent signed on, the other leads followed. Joe Mantegna was cast as the detective but dropped out weeks before shooting to take a role on CBS’s Criminal Minds. “That was tough,” Charles says. “I’d worked very hard to cast Joe.” Goldring, who played the last clown killed in the opening bank heist sequence of The Dark Knight, stepped in. “They’re so young, but they really got the writing for old-timers down,” Goldring says.
“They turned me loose,” says Goldring. “That can be a dangerous thing for any actor, but they also had the good sense to rein me in. I’m a passion merchant. Doing Chicago Overcoat allowed me to let my passions out. The [character] is . . . ornery. He likes to tip back a few. Even though I don’t do that anymore, I can play one on TV.”
Sat 10/10, 7:30 PM (red carpet at 7), Sun 10/11, 12:45 PM, Mon 10/19, 8:45 PM, AMC River East, 322 E. Illinois, 312-683-0121, chicagofilmfestival.com, $9-$12.
