Nobody puts Baby in a corner, Helen Shiller

The City of Chicago has a big heart when it comes to summer outdoor movies in it’s bountiful parks. Most of the films are rated PG, whether they’re current, like Transformers, or classics, like All About Eve. However, on August 21st, 2008, when Juicy Planet showed up full of glee at Cricket Hill-Montrose Harbor, with a bottle of chilled white illegal and pasteurized cheese arranged like a tiny silver pie cut into triangles, to see the one and only Dirty Dancing, we were left staring up at the dusty cornflower sky, with no movie of no kind, for two hours.

We waited and waited, along with hundreds of other dejected Chicago admirers of Frances “Baby” Houseman and her spitfire sassypants dancer/lover, Johnny Castle. After several concerned Chicago-311 calls were made demanding info on the whereabouts of the missing mobile movie screen truck, lost in the city somewhere with the 3-story-tall projection of the unmistakable face of the young Jennifer Grey, Cricket Hill erupted into a riot of drinky moves and gritty voices, having the time of our lives, together in the dark, without owing anything at all to the city aldermen.