Minding the Gap, the Oscar-nominated documentary from a couple of years ago, comes closest. I
reviewed it at the time. It's filmed in various locations in Rockford, IL, between 15-25 miles from where I'm sitting. I think both of the following shots are on State Street (US 20), the main East-West downtown street; about 3-4 miles east is a grocery store I go to frequently, and a Half-Price books I visit sometimes. About 1 mile north is my favorite restaurant in the city, a brewpub in a 160-year-old building. Actually now I'm quite positive of the second shot - the red-rimmed storefront in the center of the frame is (or was, in the summer of 2019, the last time I drove along there) an internet cafe.
If there are any features shot in Rockford, I don't know them;
Groundhog Day supposedly shot the quarry sequence somewhere in the area, but I couldn't tell you where. HG Lewis'
The Wizard of Gore was apparently partly shot there, but I haven't seen it (yet). Other than those, everything listed on the
IMDb advanced search appears to a a super-low-budget indie that I'd probably watch only if I knew people involved in it.
Beloit, where I live, and Janesville, about the same distance from me as Rockford, have nothing AFAIK. The place where I lived the longest - Chicago's north shore, in Rogers Park or Evanston - of course had plenty of films made in the area. I drove by the McCallister home (
Home Alone) in Winnetka with some frequency one summer on a job - this was a couple of years before the movie - and there's a breakfast place in a scene in
Ordinary People that was a short distance from where I worked, a place I ate at a dozen times or more (would have been a lot more if it weren't so popular that you had to wait hours for breakfast on a weekend morning). Oh and the only film I recall ever coming close to the sets for was
The Fugitive.
STILL the Gaffer!
