“My Kind of Town, Chicago Is . . . “

A couple dozen striking writers are still singing Chicago’s praises after the Windy City’s film office junketed them in to pitch the city’s production values. Kathryn Darrell, director of the Chi Office of Film & Entertainment, who planned the four-day event with the Chicago Convention & Tourism Bureau, hopes it pays off in future scripts using the city as a backdrop.

Figured Darrell:”The city is an unknown resource because people in the industry have a tendency to fly over Chicago, but if Chicago is written into the script, they’re going to do at least some of the shooting here.”

The excursion included trips to Wrigley Field, the Tavern, the Checkerboard Lounge blues bar, front row seats to the annual blues festival, the flea market on Maxwell Street and the Art Institute.

The writers ate pasta and pizza at Tiny Gennaro’s Restaurant in Italian Town while Patrick Healy, former head of the Chicago Crime Commission, and Ed Rooney, ex-Daily News reporter, shared anecdotes about Chi’s gangster heritage. There were private tours of the former Playboy Mansion and ride-alongs with police to the crime-ridden South Side.

Darrell estimated the total cost of the junket at about $200,000 (about $8,000 a person). But most of it was underwritten by various companies, including Ambassador East and Hotel 21 East and United Airlines. (One writer told us she spent about $8 on the entire trip.)

Darrell said a trip she put together two years ago for film and TV producers netted the city at least $1.5 million in revenues from new production. So, late last year Darrell pitched the junket in the WGA (Writers Guild of America) newsletter, offering an all-expense-paid trip to any member with five years’ recent credits who was unfamiliar with the city.

TV writer John Vorhaus (“Married . . . with Children,” “Charles in Charge”) said his initial thought about the junket was that the film office was “laboring under the misapprehension that a writer has anything to do with where a film is shot. “My feeling . . . now is that if I ever get a chance, I will write the city into a script. And it’s not to repay the city for giving me a nice freebie. I’ve really fallen in love with the city.”

As to the possibility of love junkets to other cities, Vorhaus said, “It won’t work everywhere . . . Chicago has a story to tell. Would the same thing strike us in Des Moines or the Quad Cities?”