brian caunter & john bosher – rebels with a camera

Filmmakers, Chicago Overcoat

With the upcoming release of their film, Chicago Overcoat, filmmakers Brian Caunter and John Bosher have a single goal in mind – to bring more movie productions to the Windy City.

As director and producer, respectively, of this gritty mafia crime tale about an aging hitman in the notorious Outfit group, Caunter and Bosher knew they had selected the right idea for the story. “You go anywhere in the world and you mention Chicago and everybody starts doing the tommy gun sounds and they think of Al Capone,” Caunter says.

Caunter and Bosher met as film students at nearby Columbia College. Now working with the indie Chicago studio, Beverly Ridge Pictures, these two film buffs hope to continue the trend of major productions like The Dark Knight coming to Chicago.

“It’s kind of hard for a bunch of nobodies to make a feature film in Chicago,” Bosher says of his film, which features Frank Vincent in the lead role, and Armand Assante and Stacy Keach in supporting roles. “One thing that we did was take a lot of time writing our screenplay and designing our script so that specific actors would take notice [of] it.”

Chicago Overcoat also boasts over 100 crew members and 150 extras – all hailing from the Second City. Whether or not it finds commercial success, the film has succeeded in keeping the city on the film industry’s short list.

“Chicago is great place to shoot,” Caunter says. “This movie – we hope – is going to be sort of a segue for other productions [to] see that you can do an entire movie here in Chicago … of the quality that [you] can get in New York or L.A.” -gavin philip godfrey