Tom Hanks, Angel of Death © 2000, 20th Century Fox All Rights Reserved

For four days, from May 21 to May 24, I hang out with the prospect of seeing Tom Hanks while he was in Geneva, Illinois, shooting "The Road to Perdition." And I feel better for it.

For four days I blow off work to do this. There's this buzzy vibe that happens just hanging around a real live movie shoot. You're gonna be working for the rest of your life anyway and if there's an opportunity to be...to see what happens on a movie set...if there's a possibility of human validation...

That's my justification anyway.

I figure that by the time the movie comes out, I'll be bragging about how I was actually in it but ended up on the cutting room floor. Like this guy I knew back in college who told everybody he was in that Joan Jett/Michael J. Fox movie, "The Light of Day." He swore he was in a scene where he was standing behind Fox at a urinal in the bathroom of a Chicago rock club called The Metro. "Well, they cut my scene," he said when I told him I hadn't seen him anywhere in the movie. But, really, I had no reason to doubt him. So far as I'm concerned, he was validated in "The Light of Day."

At 6:00 a.m., the first day of the Geneva "Perdition" shoot, there's already security and cops near the blockades that cordon off the three block area where they're preparing to film. Sawhorses blockade the shooting arena and it's raining but that doesn't stop people from milling around.

I grew up in Geneva. It's a little town about 40 miles west of Chicago. For this movie, they refaced the buildings for three blocks on the south side of State Street (Geneva's main drag) to make it look like it did back during the Depression. Supposedly, the real Al Capone used to spend time in Geneva for a little r & r while running bootleg whiskey from Albert's Corner in Elburn (a liaison point where illegal booze was transported from New York)—which was situated at the crossroads of Illinois Routes 38 and 47—to Chicago. Route 38 is the same as State Street once you get into Geneva and, if you keep heading east, you'll end up in Cicero. Cicero is where Capone learned the ropes, where he and his cronies pretty much usurped the entire city government and police department to build their own dirty "business." Keep travelling from Cicero, a little further east, you end up right in the heart of Chicago—a city, that to this day, even though Capone was a killer, a bootlegger, a racketeer and pimp, loves the Capone myth. In fact, in the early '90s, a nightclub called "Capone's" opened up on Chicago's North Side and nobody batted an eye at its blatant celebration of organized crime. And outside of St. Charles, IL, along the Fox River, there's a popular restaurant called "Al Capone's Hideaway" where you can get a killer, cardiac bursting, prime rib dinner.

In "The Road to Perdition" Al Capone is played by Alfred Molina, that whack job who sang "Sister Christian" flying on coke in "Boogie Nights". If anybody should play Al Capone, its Alfred Molina. Sure, De Niro played the gangster in Brian De Palma's 1987 "The Untouchables" but Molina's got the right eyes for the role.

"The Road to Perdition" isn't about Al Capone though. Its about Michael O'Sullivan (played by Tom Hanks), Capone's number one hit man, a ruthless killer known as "The Angel of Death." Putting Hanks in the role of a killer is an especially subversive move by Hollywood standards but, then again, the film is based on a wholly subversive art form—the graphic novel. Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner wrote the source material and the film is being directed by Sam Mendes, who did "American Beauty"—probably one of the ballsiest Oscar winning movies since 1969's "Midnight Cowboy." ÊAt least on first glance, "The Road to Perdition" has the hopeful possibility of being a very anarchistic film under the umbrella of big budget, mainstream Hollywood.

So...

It ended up raining everyday while they were shooting on State Street but that didn't matter. People herded around hoping to catch a glimpse of, well, anybody. It was a weird waiting game, solidifying my theory that there's this belief if you are able to see a celebrity in human form, that you somehow become connected—somehow become validated in life.

I know this guy who went to California one time and, while he was getting a box of Ho-Ho's at a 7-11, this souped-up yellow VW Bug pulls into the parking lot. Out of the car pops Paul Newman (who is also in "The Road to Perdition"), who runs into the store like at one in the morning and buys a gallon of milk and a pack of Swisher Sweets. He runs out of the store, jumps back into his Bug and burns rubber out of the lot. Later, this guy I know says to me, hey, you know that Paul Newman, he's a helluva nice guy. And I wonder, how the hell does he know that? Just cuz he buys a gallon of milk and a pack of Swisher Sweets at the 7-ll?

Then I realize—it's the connection. For one brief moment, Paul Newman shared this guy's airspace. Of course he's a helluva nice guy.

Back on the "Perdition" set, there's a bunch of families hanging out by the barricades. Kids playing hooky from school with their parents' blessing because, after all, what's more important than the movies? I'm wondering if anybody even knows what the word perdition means when this kid comes running down the street yelling at his mom that Tom Hanks just ran out of the Geneva Hotel and jumped inside one of those old cars and drove off. Ê

Right now, that kid is somebody...

And I know this is true. Because back in the '70s, when I was a kid, I was in this store in Geneva called Ron's Pet Shop—it's a bread store now—but I'm looking at the turtles and in walks Gilligan, I shit you not. Only he didn't have on that floppy hat so I'm like 10 or something and my buddy, Mike, dares me and I walk up to Gilligan and say, "Hey, little buddy, where's the Skipper?" And Gilligan gives me the deadest look I've ever seen. Didn't matter though. The next day, I got to tell all my buddies at school that I met the real Gilligan and they all treated me like I was THE KING or something. So it's true, you tell people you've met a celebrity and your social status skyrockets.

I wonder if the idea of Tom Hanks playing a cold-blooded killer enters anybody's mind waiting for a glimpse. Near one of the blockades on the corner of Fourth and State, a woman holds up this huge sign she must have spent hours working on—"WE LOVE YOU TOM!"

Possible headline scrawled across the town's newspaper, The Geneva Republican —"KILLER HANKS SUBVERTED BY LOVE IN OUR HOMETOWN".

And, suddenly, everybody's validated.