Fresh off the Academy Awards comes word of a local casting call for extras for the movie "Public Enemies" starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger, the Indianapolis-born, small-time crook who became U.S. public enemy No. 1 in the 1930s. Filming is scheduled this spring in Crown Point and other Lake County locales.

Dillinger, if you know his story, was accused of killing an East Chicago policeman in a 1934 holdup of the First National Bank. Captured and taken to the Crown Point jail, Dillinger escaped while brandishing a wooden pistol, made his getaway in the Lake County sheriff's car and headed for Chicago, where he was gunned down by the FBI, betrayed by his "lady in red" girlfriend.

All that eventually glitters on the Oscar night red carpet and the drama and glamour on the screen comes about "back stage" by the tedium of take after take of the same scene on a set strung with cable, camera equipment and props orchestrated by a slew of tech crew, makeup artists, costume designers and the grips heaving heavy rolls of film back and forth to the cameras.

Hammond got its first taste of Hollywood in 1994 when "Natural Born Killers" starring Woody Harrelson and directed by Oliver Stone was filmed in City Hall.

The interior and exterior of the vintage 1930s building took on all the trappings of an efficient small city within itself. Parking lots and surrounding streets were filled with trailers (yes, stars were actually on the doors for the actors), equipment trucks, food service vans and a semi or two that were hardware stores and workshops on wheels.

Heavy cables snaked throughout the building from the basement to the third floor. Hallways were laden with cameras, film rolls, lighting fixtures and prop tables, not to mention a mouth-watering food spread.

Filming centered in the city courtroom and the mayor's conference room. High-wattage floodlights on tall booms rigged outside the windows effected morning sunlight.

Screams echoed again and again out of the courtroom as Harrelson's character plunged a knife into another actor.

Within a week the film crew packed up and headed for Statesville Prison in Joliet. Before it reached the screen, the movie's Hammond scenes were left on the cutting room floor.

The opinions are solely those of the writer. Contact her at janetcopywrite@sbcglobal.net.