FILMING "THE NEGOTIATOR" FROM SUITE 3200

For those of you who saw the action packed thriller, "The Negotiator", you'll recognize our former building, 77 W. Wacker Drive, as the third Co-Star behind Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey. What you may not know is that the stunt men who rappelled down the side of the building, jumped out of our offices in Suite 3200. In the movie, our office building was supposedly City Hall.

Suite 3200 was directly 12 stories above the Production Set, which was built on the 20th Floor Mechanical area. Two steel hoists were custom designed and fashioned in Hollywood, using blueprints of our offices. After our furniture was moved, the carpets were ripped out so that the hoists could be bolted to the cement floor. Each night for three weeks, our windows were removed, the hoists were positioned to protrude away from the side of the building, and the stunt team tested harnesses and pulleys. Eventually, on one of the last nights of filming, the stuntmen climbed outside and rappelled in SWAT TEAM uniforms, ostensibly to crash through the 20th Floor where Samuel L. was holding hostages, including the Internal Affairs Chief of the Chicago Police Department.

Another interesting "factoid" about these stunts, is that the hoists were designed by Mike Cameron, the brother of film director James Cameron. Mike additionally designed a special body camera, which he wore himself while rappelling down our building. Mike had previously designed the underwater cameras, which were installed on the unmanned submarine that captured the breathtakingly spectacular film images of The Titanic, his brother's monster hit.

The images below were taken from our former Suite during the filming of "The Negotiator". Click on an image to enlarge it.