David Dastmalchian. Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
David Dastmalchian lives in Los Angeles now, but when it came time to shoot his film “Animals,” he went back to the Chicago neighborhood he knew best.
The actor spent six years in a small studio apartment near Magnolia and Leland avenues in Uptown. Much of that time, by his own account, was spent getting his life back on track after a period of homelessness. That experience runs through the film, which follows a young couple on the fringes of society who sleep in a car near Lincoln Park Zoo, scrape together enough money to get by, and dream of an ordinary life.
Off the Red Line at Wilson
Dastmalchian has said the decision to film in Uptown was close to instinctive. He still had friends in the neighborhood and knew its streets, and when the crew stepped off the Red Line at Wilson, they knew they had found their setting. To him, the mix of old buildings, longtime businesses and newer development gives the area a working-class, diverse texture that suited the story’s mix of beauty and grit.
Local businesses helped make the shoot possible. Scenes were filmed at Ric Addy’s Shake, Rattle & Read on Broadway, which Dastmalchian called an obvious choice. FLATS Chicago gave the production a day inside buildings the company owns. Weiss Memorial Hospital, where key moments of the film take place, also hosted the crew, and some scenes were shot at Baker & Nosh on Wilson Avenue.
Coming back
Returning after years away, Dastmalchian found that most of the businesses he used to frequent were still open, and that new ones had opened beside them. To him it felt like the same neighborhood, only further along.
Dastmalchian, who wrote the film and stars in it, had already built a screen career with supporting roles in major studio films. “Animals” is a more personal project, and the neighborhood where he rebuilt his own life is a large part of what ends up on screen.
Dana Ferraro covers property taxes, small business finance and the economy.
