Frank Vincent as aging hit man Lou Marazano in Chicago Overcoat. Photo courtesy of Beverly Ridge Pictures.

By Nora O'Donnell

The billboard beckons him, bright and bountiful.

Daniel Baldwin—star of reality television shows such as Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, and I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, and filming the low-budget crime thriller The Devil’s Dominoes—is on his way to his hotel in Rockford, Illinois, when he sees the sign looming over the expressway. He turns to his bespectacled young driver and rasps, “Bro, we gotta get some wings at Hooters.”

As the pair nears the restaurant, Baldwin signals to pull over. He exchanges his flannel shirt for a black leather jacket. He gestures toward the driver’s can of soda in the cup holder and grumbles, “Can I get a swig off your Mountain Dew, bro?” The driver nods. Baldwin grabs the can, pours the neon liquid into his hands, and runs it through his hair. Showtime.

“I haven’t had a Mountain Dew since,” says John Bosher (B.A. ’06), Baldwin’s driver that day. But three years later, he remembers the experience and others gained on the set of that film. It’s part of what gave him the confidence to make his own picture with his friends.

Bosher is sitting with several of those friends—Chris Charles (B.A. ’07), Kevin Moss, and Phil Plowden—in a tiny rectangular office on the sixteenth floor of Chicago’s Three First National Plaza building. The four, along with Brian Caunter (B.A. ’06) and William Maursky (B.A. ’05), are the team of young Columbia College Chicago film alumni behind Beverly Ridge Pictures, an independent production company on a mission to grow the film industry in Illinois. They’re off to a promising start: the partnership’s first feature-length film, Chicago Overcoat, sold out five screenings at its October debut at the 45th Chicago International Film Festival.

For Bosher and his band of Chicago bros—none yet over 30 when the film was made—it’s an impressive feat. Charles, an associate producer of Overcoat, says,

“When celebrities come on set and see a bunch of guys in their twenties, it’s disconcerting. They’re ready to call up their agent and say, ‘What the hell did you get me into here?’”

That’s how veteran actor Frank Vincent, the 70-year-old star of Chicago Overcoat, felt. Known for playing mobsters in The Sopranos and Goodfellas, Vincent found himself working with a group of unknowns about a third his age, and he doubted the project’s prospects—for about a week. What defied his preconceptions? “Hard work,” Plowden says.

Respect for hard work (and, to a lesser extent, a love of Ultimate Fighting Championships) eventually glued the Beverly Ridge sextet together. Bosher and Moss (Overcoat’s cinematographer) met briefly as teenagers in Columbia’s High School Summer Institute, a five-week arts-immersion program. When the two reconnected as Columbia College students in 2003, Bosher already had a side project producing music videos with his roommate, Brian Caunter (Overcoat’s director). Their videos for local rappers Joe Glass and Iroc fell into regular rotation on BET, and Moss joined the determined duo for some follow-up videos. “At Columbia,” Moss says, “there are a lot of film students, but there are only so many that you think might make it—the ones who really try hard enough.” They recruited Charles, Maursky, and Plowden and formed Beverly Ridge Pictures in 2005.

Their first project as a company, an ambitious 20-minute film based on Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Small Assassin,” became their calling card. Set in the 1950s, it’s a psychological tale of a woman’s struggle with postpartum depression that quickly escalates to full-blown paranoia when she starts to believe her child is trying to kill her. It’s a bit Twilight Zone wannabe meets movie of the week, but then the astonishment kicks in: this is a student film, and it has accurate period cars?

A former Columbia film professor, Peter Hawley, oversaw the group, but the project blossomed outside of the classroom. “I think we learned the real responsibilities involved in filmmaking, and the stress involved,” Charles says. “We made a lot of mistakes, but more importantly, we learned from them.”

Hungry for a chance to work on a real feature film, the pack picked up jobs on The Devil’s Dominoes, the aforementioned Daniel Baldwin flick. There, among other things, they gained experience handling eccentric celebrities. “It was a good training exercise on somebody else’s watch and somebody else’s dime,” Bosher says. By the time shooting wrapped on Dominoes in October 2006, all were committed to trying their hands at their own production. The team considered a horror movie—a common but successful genre for first-time independent filmmakers—but found the slasher market flooded. They wanted to film in Chicago—it would be cheaper and offer an opportunity to use the locations they’d fallen in love with as students—but they had little else.

Then it hit them like Joey “the Clown” Lombardo. The Family Secrets trials were filling the daily news with real-life Chicago Outfit stories. Why not do a mob movie?

Bosher, a crime-drama nut with a boyhood love of Bruce Willis movies, and Caunter, the conceptual brains behind and eventually the director of the venture, penned several drafts before handing the script over to two other Columbia grads, Josh Staman (B.A. ’07) and Andrew Dowd (B.A. ’06), for the final touches in May 2007. They envisioned Frank Vincent as the perfect person to play their aging, down-on-his-luck hit man.

“During the writing process, choosing Frank Vincent was key,” notes Caunter. “The process was a little more fluent because we knew who we wanted to play our lead.
We molded the character around Frank, and made the character so good he wouldn’t be able to refuse the role.” Vincent signed on.

As producer, Bosher spearheaded a 40-page business plan, and the team began pitching it to investors. But ultimately, they kept it close to home. The film’s executive producer and provider of Plaza office space is Moss’s mother, JoAnne, who heads a real estate title network and now co-owns Beverly Ridge. Neither Moss nor Bosher will say how much she personally invested in the film’s $2 million budget, but both confirm she became the main backer after Vincent attached himself to the project. “It wasn’t so much a gift as a trust in us,” the younger Moss says. “She believes in the company going on to make bigger, better movies.”

Several new projects are already under way. Charles is developing a border-patrol story with his former screenwriting teacher Daniel Kravitz, and Plowden is working on a comedy about a struggling actor. (“It’s got some legs,” Plowden says.) But for now, Beverly Ridge’s main focuses are hitting the festival circuit, finding Overcoat a distributor, and recouping that $2 million.

Fame and fortune are still elusive, the debt is looming, and several members of the close-knit group still work part-time jobs or live at home. But a shared passion for making movies and a deep sense of pride in what they have already accomplished keep them optimistic. “We’re all very fortunate to have families who have supported us
and trusted us,” Charles says. “To be able to have them come to the premiere was really rewarding.”

“We’re on the right track,” Plowden assures the families. Then Charles quips, “All those years and dollars didn’t go to waste.”

The crew of Chicago Overcoat: Kevin Moss (’06), Philip S. Plowden (’07), Chris Charles (B.A. ’07), Brian Caunter (B.A. ’06), John W. Bosher (B.A. ’06). Photo: Chad McGavock (B.F.A. ’09)

Chicago Overcoat premiers at the 45th Chicago International Film Festival. Video by Collin Shiffli (B.A. ’09)