Next week we'll be in Chicago for Renegade Chicago, which will be held at the Pulaski Fieldhouse in Wicker Park. I was there years ago, working on a Russian movie that was filming in Chicago, something about a Russian hockey player whose brother was murdered in Chicago and now he's here to kill everyone. It was certainly one of the most disturbingly racist movies I've ever seen, as the Russian filmmakers thought black people were either a., in a gang and crazy or b., homeless and crazy.
We were shooting late one night, and I stepped outside into the fall air to get away from the director of photography, who did his best work while falling down vodka-drunk and screaming and groping the female P.A.'s. Just as I stepped outside into the park the sky exploded in a burst of brilliant green-white light, and a massive fireball, green flames licking away from the white incandescent front, burned slowly across the sky and disappeared behind the buildings. It was true surprise. A woman in front of me saw it too and immediately burst into tears, thinking a jetliner had exploded. "Oh, God! They're all dead! They're all dead!"
"It was a meteor," I said. She stopped crying and looked up into the sky. Inside the fieldhouse I could hear the D.P. screaming in Russian. The woman and I looked up into the sky for a long time, but there was nothing there.
65 miles away, my future wife was driving down a darkened rural road and saw the same flaming ball plummet across the sky.
Anyway, we'll be at the Pulaski Fieldhouse next week.