14-Jul-11 – By June 2010, location scouts were in touch with three buildings along the Chicago River that a year later would be famous worldwide for starring roles in Transformers 3.

Trump International Hotel & Tower would be where the hero of the movie, Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LaBeouf, finds one of the villains, billionaire Dylan Gould (played by Patrick Dempsey). 35 East Wacker Drive is where they would fight. In between these two buildings, Hotel 71 would be a stage mother pushing into the spotlight its penthouse, back alley, and rooftop views.

“I know they looked at a number of other places and kept coming back to us,” said Trump General Manager T. Colm O’Callaghan in an interview on June 30. “They loved the drama of the space. They loved the location. [Film director] Michael Bay himself said that Chicago as a city is made for the big screen because of the drama of the skyline.”

The 16th floor at Trump, where Witwicky discovers Gould not only served as a set but as inspiration to filmmakers, who O’Callaghan describes as “fabulous people to work with.”

“The people associated with the movie were so genuine, so accommodating. Really, really good-natured,” he recalls. “They were very friendly. They really embraced the city as much as the city embraced them.”

(Above) Wrecked cars line Wabash Avenue, next to 35 East Wacker Drive and across the Chicago River from Trump Tower, as a movie camera on a crane films a scene in the distance.

But it was a higher floor, the roof of Trump Tower, where one of the film’s bigger stunts took place. On July 17, 2010, five wingsuit flyers – BASE jumpers wearing special suits that create lift – leaped from the roof, landed safely on a barge on the Chicago River, and then did the stunt two more times.

“They talked about the jumping off the building thing and that was interesting.”

For Trump, the biggest concern was avoiding liability. “There was certain coverage that the Trump Organization wanted to make sure was [in place],” said O’Callaghan. “The Transformers people, these are professionals, they do this in every city they visit. They understand what we were asking for was no different from what any other organization would want. It was remarkable how quickly and how efficiently they were able to work. And anything we asked, we got our question answered within the same day.”

Filmmakers were lucky to have a fan even higher in the Trump Organization. “We called [Donald] Trump, he said absolutely, make it happen. Do whatever it takes. Mr. Trump recognized the potential and said…make this work.”

O’Callaghan says they wanted to give the film as much support as possible. “We understood how important this was also to the city of Chicago because how often do we really get to be front and center of a major Hollywood production like this?”

Did he watch any of the filming? No. “We were just so busy.”

(Above) As crewmembers prepare for a scene, Shia LaBeouf (center) stands with another actor on a large set made to look like the northeast turret of 35 East Wacker Drive has fallen to Wabash Avenue.

35 East Wacker Drive

Although a location scout had visited the former Jewelers’ Building around May 2010, the building’s general manager, Maurice Auriemma, knew it was getting serious when Michael Bay himself showed up for a tour.

“They showed us a computer generation of a scene in front of the building and told us conceptually what it entailed, basically what you saw at the theaters, and we said we were open to it.”

Most of the filming would be in a debris field in front of the office building, on the roof in and around the large turrets that rise from the corners of the building’s first setback, and on a stretch of Wabash Avenue in which a fake turret laid toppled. Getting camera gear to the roof would require a helicopter (left), and a special platform and railing had to be built to support the gear once it was up there.

His biggest concerns were safety and that the film not interfere with his tenants. And that filmmakers leave the property in the same condition in which they found it. “Once we got through those hurdles, for us it was just as exciting as it was for them.”

According to Auriemma, filmmakers paid 35 East Wacker Drive a “licensing fee” that covered a building electrician, security officer, and other expenses.

“They came up with a schedule and we came up with a fee structure based on prep days, film days, the helicopter lift,” he explains. “In some cases, they also approached a few of our tenants for access to their space and they did separate license agreements with those tenants directly.”

Auriemma says the film, since it opened, “has garnished some interest in the property,” in the building itself and in its rooftop views.

“We’re currently looking at some small pilots. Nothing significant. I had several calls in the last several weeks since the film was released.”

Did he watch any of the filming? “I came down and saw a little of it. I was here when they did some of the scenes outside. I took my family out into the debris field and took some photos out there. So it was a pretty neat experience.”

(Above) The hotel and statue of Irv Kupcinet are real. The debris is fake – mostly Styrofoam painted to look like concrete.

Hotel 71

“They wanted to let us know they were coming through our neighborhood,” deadpanned Hotel 71 General Manager Steve Shern about the first time he heard from the producers of Transformers 3. “They were very up-front and honest about it, saying that they were going to make a whole lot of noise and they were going to shut down the street.”

Shern’s staff showed off the hotel to location scouts – including the penthouse on the 39th floor that had appeared as Bruce Wayne’s bedroom in the 2008 Batman film, The Dark Knight.

The hotel may be difficult to recognize in the film. Most of the filming was outside, in front of the hotel, near the hotel’s garage, and in an alley behind the building. “Our location obviously worked very well for them.”

Faced with being cut off from all traffic except hotel guests on foot, but knowing his hotel would have the best view of filming on Wacker Drive, Shern made the best of it. “I said, ok, look, it sounds like you’re closing down the street, sounds like it’s going to be a little difficult to get to the hotel, I’m fine with that. But are you comfortable with me [offering to prospective customers] a Transformers package?”

Filmmakers were ok with it and the hotel, says Shern, sold out. “It really brought in a lot of drive-in business [from] all over the city.”

The deal not only worked out, but says Shern, “what materialized after that was far greater than my imagination ever could come up with because it was like having an ‘all access pass’ to a Paramount location. It was like if you were on a Hollywood set.”

Shern says his guests were “very respectful” to the film crew. “Our guests knew they had a job to do, but they felt a lot more V.I.P. than the thousands of people that were lining the bridge to try to get a [peek] at what was going on, on the street.”

Like his colleagues at Trump Tower and 35 East Wacker Drive, Shern declined to quantify how much the film paid his hotel, but “it spiked our June and July numbers.”

Now that the film is out, the hotel is doing another Transformers package that includes both a stay at Hotel 71 and tickets to see the hotel in the movie.

“A lot of people that know the hotel or know me particularly want to know how we ‘got’ our hotel in the movie,” he says, “And I say it’s just our location and our views.” He predicts the film will be good for business. “I talked to Michael Bay and I talked to some of the producers. They gave me a great story about the amount of spiked tourism at the Hoover Dam after the first [Transformers] movie, and when they did studies on it, it was all related to the film. So we’ll hopefully see, not just for our hotel but the city of Chicago, the same type of uplift.” Did he watch any of the filming? “With all the action and explosions it was hard not to. I did and it was amazing.” (Left) A helicopter films another brief series of explosions in front of Hotel 71 on Wacker Drive late in the afternoon on Monday, July 19, 2010.