Lucas’ museum: Too little, too late?

Reading the news accounts Friday of how we may very well wind up with filmmaker George Lucas’ vision for a pop culture museum after all make me a tad skeptical.

 

Is it possible for this George Lucas vision to ever come close to reality in Chicago?

For while I don’t doubt that Lucas, a San Francisco-area resident, gave some thought to locating his pet project in our beloved Chicago, I wonder if there has just been too much negativity for him to want to bother with us any longer.

WE MAY HAVE had a shot at gaining this museum for our city’s collection of public attractions. But I wonder if Lucas is too turned off on Chicago to bother to put his Museum of Narrative Art here.

I also wonder if perhaps we’re now better off if this project winds up going somewhere else. Perhaps Los Angeles? Who’s to say!

Much has been made of the political fight that has arisen in Chicago, as it seems Lucas was determined to get a location in the Second City along the Lake Michigan lakefront. One near downtown so that you’d get clear views of the city’s iconic skyline.

It can’t be a real Chicago museum unless the soon-to-be-former Willis Tower looms over it!

OF COURSE, THE fight was coming from Friends of the Parks, the environmentalist group that would love to see the whole lakefront be one long sandy beach and thinks there already has been enough development in Chicago.

They’re the ones who filed the lawsuit that has tangled up the project in court so thoroughly that Lucas has become frustrated and started seeking out other cities as a potential location – namely the aforementioned City of the Angels.

But now, the news reports inspired largely by a Sneedscoop in the Chicago Sun-Times say Friends of the Parks may well drop their lawsuit. Although later reports by the Chicago Tribune followed in the journalistic tradition of knocking down someone else's exclusive -- they claimed Friends of the Parks had no intention of backing off its lawsuit. Which would, or would not, eliminate the primary obstacle and allow the City Council to behave in their usual manner and merely give rubber-stamp approval to anything that Rahm Emanuel tells them to.

It would allow for the museum to be built on part of the property now used by the McCormick Place convention center (a place most Chicagoans visit solely to see the Chicago Auto Show every February – where they dream of being able to buy the latest cars and date the models who present them, before they get back into their “beaters” and return to reality).

SUPPOSEDLY, THE CITY would find ways to create more public parkland along the lakefront, in exchange for this use of lakefront for the museum. Although the real reason may well be the reports saying the Friends of the Parks were advised by attorneys that their lawsuit in the long-run would be a loser.

A judge could very well find that their concerns about lakefront land use for private development were invalid, and that the museum should have been permitted to be built.

But by then, the facility could be up and running elsewhere. Friends of the Parks could wind up looking incredibly stupid. Thereby causing the desire to settle this whole affair out of court while there’s still a chance Lucas could be appeased into wanting to come to Chicago after all.

Who knows what the chances are of that happening.

FOR THE FACT is that a project like this is about egos being stroked. Having someone go to court to challenge this dream is just the kind of thing that would kill it off in Chicago.

Personally, if I were a part of the group trying to locate the museum, I’d be inclined to think the hassle isn’t worth it – particularly if locating in Chicago would mean having to cope with Midwestern winter weather.

They may find a more mild climate to be a place to put a museum meant to appeal to our pop culture fantasies. It certainly wouldn’t be something along the line of our Field Museum that tries to educate us about our natural history.

Which means that getting this project back after Lucas has started to let himself be seduced by Hollywood and L.A. glamour could wind up with such a high price for our fair city that it may turn out to not be worth it.

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Could Lucas museum be Chicago lakefront’s ultimate defilement?

There is a certain generation of Chicagoans who believe the McCormick Place convention center is a monstrosity that permanently defiled the beauty of the city’s portion of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

It’s big. It’s bulky. It got built in so many pieces throughout the years that there isn’t an architectural consistency to the entire complex.

IT CERTAINLY CLASHES with the Burnham plan of the early 20^th Century that was supposed to encourage urban development in Chicago that would not interfere with the natural beauty of being a city right on the Great Lakes.

But it got done, and we have to live with it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m of a generation that thinks in terms of McCormick Place having always just “been there.” It doesn’t make me ill because it just seems hard to envision the site open to anything else.

Which apparently is what those who prepared the preliminary design for that George Lucas museum that may someday be built in Chicago are thinking about.

When I saw the sketches of what that structure will supposedly look like (with the downtown skyline in the distance and the futuristic-like Soldier Field within sight), I couldn’t help but think the structure looks ridiculous.

TOTALLY OUT OF place. As in no way that thing should ever be built on that site, or any site along the lakefront. As in perhaps I’m sympathetic to the lawsuit filed Thursday by the Friends of the Parks organization in U.S. District Court to stop development of the project.

But perhaps future generations will just sort of accept that it’s there, and not give it any thought before they check out the assorted artifacts that will wind up on display in such a museum.

My own thoughts about the sketches I saw was that the structure looked like a giant pile of sand along the lakeshore, with some sort of ring casually placed on top. Giant, as in seven stories high – with that ring being an observation deck where people can check out Chicago from up high, like they already do by traveling up to the 103^rd floor of the Sears Tower (forget that Willis nonsense, I’d sooner call it the “Arnold” building).

Almost as though a giant baby was using our public beach as his personal sandbox and built sand “castles” that were nothing more than the content of a bucket turned upside down.

YOU HUMOR THE youngster for making a nice pile, but it’s not anything permanently lasting. So why should we think this design that would defile the lakefront’s appearance is worth any praise?

Now I know that Lucas has knocked down the public impression that this is a museum devoted to his “Star Wars” films – saying it will be much more about pop culture throughout our society.

Yet it almost looks like somebody’s reject of a Star Wars set – and I’m not alone in thinking that. Both 42^nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly and 2^nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti made similar comments.

With the would-be mayoral dreamer Fioretti saying it looked to him like the Jabba the Hut character’s palace. Does this mean we’ll have a Carrie Fisher lookalike walking around in that skimpy gold-bikini-like outfit worn in “Return of the Jedi?”

I’M NOT BOTHERED by the idea of some sort of Lucas-inspired museum being in Chicago. I just would like to see a bit more inspiration put into its design. Or else this would literally be nothing more than the gap-filler in a stretch of tackiness started by the current incarnation of Soldier Field stretching down to McCormick Place.

Although perhaps we should feel lucky that one of the most absurd ideas for a lakefront development never got done – that dream of then-Mayor Richard J. Daley in the 1960s for a multi-purpose sports stadium to be built on a man-made island IN Lake Michigan proper.

It may have looked inspired on a drawing board.

But just think of how much frustration Chicago White Sox and Cubs fans, along with Bears fanatics, would have felt trying to navigate to such a structure on game days. Then getting caught in a ridiculous traffic jam after watching our city’s typically pathetic ball clubs lose yet again!

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“Star Wars” and da Bearz?

Perhaps it’s all too appropriate that city officials are contemplating offering up a site for a proposed museum paying tribute to the films and special effects of George Lucas on land that now serves as parking lots for Soldier Field.

Soldier Field's true character -- prior to becoming a 'Death Star' clone

 

There are those who believe the remodeled stadium used primarily by the Chicago Bears looks like some sort of giant spaceship landed within the old structure.

HAVING A MUSEUM nearby honoring the man who gave us “Star Wars” and all those sequels just a few hundred yards away is just too perfect a joke. It couldn’t have been planned better.

It makes me wonder if Luke Skywalker and his X-wing fighter can somehow find the vulnerable spot, fire his shot, and reduce the renovation (which has the character of the Death Star) to rubble – thereby allowing the Chicago Bears to build a new stadium that would actually respect the character and integrity of the stadium that was built as a war memorial (along with Navy Pier) to those who served in our national military.

Of course, there’s also the fact that the parking lots on Bears’ game days now serve as a pit of humanity digging out their barbecue grills to serve up all sorts of concoctions – prior to entering the stadium to see the Bears pretend they’re still the mighty Monsters of the Midway of old.

And not all of those people are the most pristine in appearance.

WANDERING THROUGH THE parking lot on a game day, you will see so many varied characters (some of whom are downright scary, particularly if its prior to a game against the Green Bay Packers) that you’ll feel like you’re in that cantina from the original Star Wars film.

Who's more all-powerful; ...

Only instead of hearing some funky, intergalactic-style jazz band, you’ll hear several semi-drunken serenades of people trying to work their way through, “Bear Down, Chicago Bears.”

All of this is something to be considered as George Lucas figures out where he wants his museum to be built. He’s a San Francisco type and had dreams of a museum built on the waterfront with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

But that city has snubbed his efforts thus far.

CHICAGO GETS TO be in the running because his wife, Mellody Hobson, is a native. And there’s always the chance of a museum on the waterfront. There’s also the likelihood that parking spaces lost by the museum structure’s presence could be replaced with an underground structure.

Da coach, or the Master of 'the force'

It would be a zero-sum game, as those underground spots could be used by Bears fans. Although I can already envision the anger they will feel when they learn tailgating is prohibited.

It will be such a strong sentiment that they can’t cook a weenie or a polish sausage or two that it will feel like an all-powerful force that can overcome anything the fans put their minds to.

It’s also not like there aren’t other comparisons that could be made between Bears’ culture and the whole world of Star Wars.

DARTH VADER REPRESENTED by the Green Bay Packers? Carrie Fisher’s “Princess Leia” character could have taken on the Honey Bears of old all by herself. Harrison Ford’s “Han Solo” more powerful a force than Walter Payton?

And the ultimate – Yoda equals Ditka!

You could also compare the Bears football team to the Ewoks – those cutesy, cuddly creatures from the third film (the one that the Star Wars geeks call number 6) who inspired the sale of many toy dolls and action figures.

Although there are times when I suspect that a pack of Ewoks could take to the gridiron and whomp all over da Bears. They did manage to help beat Imperial storm troopers, after all!

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GOP upset they didn’t get a chance to vote “No” on something Obama-related

There is a stink going on these days with regards to the way an Illinois House of Representatives committee gave its recommendation to a bill providing some state funds to the eventual development of the presidential library and museum that honors Barack Obama.

Someday to be on display?

The committee gave its approval to the idea, which sends the bill to the full Illinois House for consideration. No big deal, right?

OF COURSE, IT’S a huge deal!!! But only for the ideologues who are upset that the political maneuvering deprived them of a chance to rant and rage about how Obama is unworthy of ANYTHING showing him respect.

For sparing us that, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, deserves our respect and admiration.

We certainly shouldn’t be getting all worked up over it. The conservative ideologues will get their chance to complain and make their views known later this spring – because the Illinois Senate also will have to review the measure as well.

There will be ample chance for ideologues to spew their venom against Obama.

ALTHOUGH I’LL BE the first to admit that the means by which Madigan got a recommendation for the Obama library bill was an intriguing one – and a bit sneaky, as well.

What happened was that on Wednesday, the Illinois House executive committee (the one whose members are picked by leadership because they can be trusted to do what the party leaders want done) held a hearing in Chicago to discuss bills related to expanded gambling opportunities.

Considering that the focus of this particular hearing was to study the idea of a Chicago-based casino, perhaps it made a lot of sense to hold the hearing outside the Statehouse in Springfield.

Upset because they were silenced for a day?

When the hearing ended Wednesday, instead of adjourning, it was “recessed to the call of the chair.”

WHICH IN THIS particular case was Thursday. Committee members reconvened the very next day, heard talk about an Obama library, then instead of a vote, they decided to take an “attendance” role call – meaning everyone recorded as being present was an “aye” vote.

The only problem is that the Republican members of the committee, particularly those who came to Chicago from outside the metropolitan area, left the city immediately after Wednesday’s proceedings.

They claim they didn’t know the committee would meet again Thursday, so they went home. But because it was a “recessed” hearing, they were still considered “present.” Personally, I heard Wednesday afternoon they'd be returning to action the next day.

So there are now some Republican legislators who are on the record as having supported the idea of state funding for an Obama library. Which for some of them will not be a popular vote back home.

THEY’RE GOING TO get trashed by their constituents for letting such a thing happen. And if the best explanation they can offer is that they weren’t there, they’re going to get trashed for being dumb enough to let something like this happen to them!

That’s what the anger is really about. I suspect the only difference if the GOP members had been present is that the debate would have been rancorous, and it would not have been unanimous in favor of it.



Statehouse debate will be heard loud and clear ...

It would have been a partisan vote that still would have recommended the bill because, after all, it is a Democrat-run state Legislature.

If there were Republican leadership of any significance, then it would have been rigged to make for a vote against Obama, which merely shows that Illinoisans are as politically-motivated as officials anywhere else in the country.

HOW ELSE TO explain the fact that the “$100 million” figure suggested as the appropriate state level is the same amount of money spent to develop an Abraham Lincoln museum and library in Springfield?

Equal time? Political parity? Regional balance?

... after being silenced at Bilandic Building.

The reality is that the Obama library and museum is going to be a contentious issue – no matter what happens. There’s also the reality that most of the money for the project will come from private fundraising overseen by Obama himself.

The reason state officials are willing to put some government money into the project is that they want to ensure it gets located in Chicago – instead of the counter-proposals from New York and Honolulu officials.

BECAUSE WITH CHICAGO being a place of significance, and Obama library and museum has the potential to be a significant draw – unlike the libraries of presidents such as Gerald R. Ford that are so isolated they just don’t draw.

It could be a tourist attraction of significance – one that Madigan is trying to ensure comes here. What’s wrong with that?

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