by Hank Brockett
In a mishmash of letters and hieroglyphics, this simple yellow letter speaks in a code of long ago. Each symbol stands for a letter, you see, and this letter stands for one simple question.
Will you go out with me?
Today, the eighth grade letter lies far from the “L” classroom encyclopedia John placed it in.
The image of the young twosome in the late 1970s makes one smile when considering where life has taken them since. With flowers in hand, the smile on Pam looks so very familiar to residents who have walked into the Coal City and Wilmington offices of the Free Press Newspapers. And John, with his ubiquitous curly hair fighting free underneath a graduation cap, has the kind of face you’d swear you’ve seen before.
In this case, you probably have.
With the magazine racks weighed down with glossy pages predicting the Oscar race this past Sunday, each nominee found himself under the brightest of spotlights. And after years of obscurity as one of his generation’s most beloved character actors, John C. Reilly now battles the harsh glare of a golden touch. With supporting roles in Gangs of New York, The Hours and a nominated turn in Chicago, Reilly walks carpets of red - a far cry from the snow-walled sidewalks he walked to arrive at Pam Kelly’s house all those years ago.
“It’s always my claim to fame,” said the woman now known as Pam Brooks. “And I’ll always remember him. I don’t know if he would say that about me.”
With dozens of film and stage roles to his credit, the 37-year-old actor stands as Brooks’ trump card in her celebrity run-ins. Need quick connection between your life in this area and, say, Tom Cruise for a friendly game of Six Degrees of Separation? If you know Pam, she knew Reilly, and he co-starred with Cruise in 1989’s Days of Thunder.
And in a way, the world seems a little smaller.
Brooks remembers how the man who came to prominence with such roles as the porn star poet Reed Rothchild in Boogie Nights and an everyman in The Perfect Storm started his career with a turn as Mr. Darling in a Marquette Park production of Peter Pan. Back then, he simply was known as John Reilly. The “C” would come later, as he arrived on the scene too late to stake his claim as the first John Reilly in Hollywood.
“He just kind of kept acting,” said Brooks.
Years after their grade school encounter, Brooks first saw Reilly in We’re No Angels. With her sister, Kirsten, who is still friends with John’s cousin Mike, she has kept up with his career ever since.
Most of the time, that means a more knowledgeable “You won’t believe this, but ...” story from Brooks, who now finds herself happily married to a man who wasn’t on your TV this past Sunday. Her husband even plays along, taking out a recent Chicago Sun-Times at work and admitting to co-workers, “Yeah, this is my wife’s old boyfriend.”
If recent interviews indicate Reilly shies away from the trappings of movie stars whose names can light up a marquee (Pitt, Cruise, Gere, Travolta, Willis, etc.), Brooks can believe it. By all indications, Reilly has stayed true to his roots as that nice eighth grade boy. And the Pam and John story isn’t even much of tabloid fodder for this day and age.
“Eighth grade dating in 1979 was not like dating today,” said Brooks.
Instead, reporters would be left with the cute little stories stored in our memories like safety provisions whenever we feel a bit older. As they sat next to each other during the school day, Pam and John acted in their own unique way. With John as Secret Squirrel and Pam as Morocco Mole, they covertly spoke into imaginary microphones to pass those long school days. The wait for Reilly’s category at the Academy Awards only seemed so long
“I’m pulling for him to win, [partially] so I can see him up on stage,” she said before the ceremony, which crowned Chris Cooper of Adaptation as the Academy’s choice.
But in the imagination, the story plays much differently. There, Chicago’s Mr. Cellophane manages a walk to the podium and pulls out a victory speech.
And we know who to turn to for a translation.