Dhoom 3 in Chicago--September 30, 2012

Dhoom 3 films in Chicago, an exciting morning (JWB, 2012)

I was about 15 minutes from the end of the River Cruise I was leading this morning for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, just launching into my hymn of praise for the 1989 NBC Tower, when I, along with the 50 or so folks on the boat, found ourselves in the middle of a movie shoot.  I gave up trying to talk over the two helicopters that were swirling above us.  No one was going to pay attention to me anyway, even if they could hear me above the noise of the helicopters, one of which had a stuntman struggling for his life at the end of a rope.

The Bollywood shoot for Dhoom 3 has been going on in Chicago for over a month now and was halted briefly when the production company failed to get permission for filming during the week of the Air and Water Show.

At home I finally found the announcement for today’s shoot with the following understatement:   PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THERE WILL BE 2 LOW FLYING HELECOPTERS ON WACKER DR BETWEEN MICHIGAN AVE AND THE WACKER TURNAROUND BETWEEN 9AM – 1PM.

“Low flying” would be, in my estimation, an understatement.  We were in the rotor wash as the boat moved down the river, and it was an incredible sight to see how close the two copters came to the buildings in Illinois Center and to Wacker Drive.

According to the film site Onlocationvacations.com, ”The film is the latest in the popular Bollywood buddy cop series, starring Indian actor Aamir Khan as a thief who is a skilled acrobat able to elude the hero cop of the series and his sidekick, played by Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra.”  You can find the thread about the film here.

The picture at the top is not great quality, but my IPhone was the only thing I had when the helicopters returned after my tour for a second go-round.  The photo does provide some idea, though, of how close we were to the action.