The Set of 400: #201 – My Favorite Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Today! Because the guy did a Peter Pan right off of this dam right here –

The Fugitive (1993)

Directed by Andrew Davis (x2)

Starring Harrison Ford (x2), Tommy Lee Jones (x4), Joe Pantoliano (x3), Sela Ward, Julianne Moore (x2), Jeroen Krabbe, Andreas Katsulas, Ron Dean, Jane Lynch (x3), Neil Flynn (x3), Daniel Roebuck, L. Scott Caldwell, Tom Wood (x2), Richard Riehle

There is obviously no way they could’ve known while filming this movie that some fifteen years later, currently thirteen-year-old Joe – playing out the string in eighth grade in North Scranton – would pack up his meager half-double (also in North Scranton) and drive 700 miles to deposit said belongings in a one-bedroom apartment in Lincoln Park, Chicago, where he would quickly adopt all films set in the big town as virtual home movies, even ones made back when he was a thirteen-year-old, playing out the string in North Scranton. This is all about me, folks, and never more so now that we’ve officially reached the halfway point – post #200 counting down! [see bottom of page for actual halfway point] Plus, tomorrow is apparently Thanksgiving, if my future calendar reading is correct, so clearly we’ve all got a lot to be thankful for! Me getting this far, you for living to see half of my favorite movies from the years 1927 to 2013 get posts! Congratulations to us all!

But really, congratulations to me

But I was a fan of The Fugitive long before I got that 312 area code house phone (Yeah I had a house phone for a little while! We didn’t know what we were about in 2008! Still rocking 570 on my cell to this day! Don’t call me!). Hell, I remember watching re-runs of the old David Janssen show when I was a kid, so I had some built in foreknowledge of what to expect. Sure, it took Janssen’s Kimball four years to catch up with the one-armed man, compared to Ford’s two hours, but still, basically the same thing. Except, of course, for all the death-defying ’90s style action, from temporary genre master Andrew Davis, who so effectively disguised Steven Seagal’s acting as good in Under Siege the year before. Train crashes! Parade chases! Jumping off that dam! It was an instantly iconic action film, in an era pretty loaded with them. And who better to head something like that up than running/jumping all-star Harrison Ford?!

This was also the first all-out action movie I remember being nominated for Best Picture, which felt very odd to fourteen-year-old Joe (I had a birthday in the meantime!). Going back from ’93, you have to stretch to – I’d say – Raiders of the Lost Ark in ’81 to find another pure actioner. There are some war movies in the intervening, but that’s not really the same. People bemoan the lack of comedies nominated for Best Picture, and that’s entirely fair, but action gets totally lost, not unlike horror, animation, foreign, and films featuring dance battles. Boo! Tommy Lee Jones rightfully won an Oscar for his funny, determined pursuing marshal Sam Gerard, but did the movie pick up anything for Best Chicago River Burn? It doesn’t make sense why they can’t dye it blue the rest of the year! It’s gross!

The dye only lasts for like a day, though, so they’d be dumping blue in constantly

Ford (#230 Blade Runner), Moore (#217 Magnolia), and Wood (#337 Under Siege) join director Davis (also Under Siege) in the respective Two-Timers clubs today, along with Joey Pants (#268 The Matrix, #347 Memento), Jane Lynch (#322 Role Models, #372 Walk Hard), and Neil Flynn (#387 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Magnolia) advancing to the Threes. But it’s the ’93 Best Supporting Actor who gets the Spotlight and advances to the Fours today, the great Tommy Lee Jones (#376 Men in Black, #357 JFK, Under Siege)!

He’s not really bald, he was filming the Ty Cobb movie at the time!

Coming tomorrow! How do you know I won’t murder you in the night?

[This is the literal halfway point of the Set of 400! Huzzah!]