BY LUCIA MAURO
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Every Sunday, Nick Digilio and his dad would hit all the movie theatres in the Loop. A child at the time, Digilio began his lifelong obsession with film and pop culture. This led to a career as a movie critic and his own eclectic talk shows on WGN Radio (720 AM): "Nick at Night," Fridays beginning at 11 p.m. and Sundays beginning at midnight and "The Nick D. and Garry Lee Show" on Saturdays beginning at midnight.
"My parents were big WGN fans, as most parents are," says Digilio. "I liked Roy Leonard because he talked about film and entertainment, and I listened to him every Saturday morning.
"I would call in as a listener and share my opinions on movies. So he started to give me movie passes. I would go to screenings and call in and talk about movies with him. At one point there was an opening for a producer, and Roy asked me if I’d like to come in for an interview. I did, but I had no experience as a producer and they didn’t hire me. But as a consolation prize, Roy said I could review the garbage films he didn’t want to review. I started doing this in 1985, and the first movie I reviewed was Critters."
Luckily, Digilio was not relegated to bad slasher, spring break or Airbud-inspired dog flicks forever. By 1987, he became an official WGN movie critic and co-hosted the movie segment with Leonard. He also did guest movie commentary with other WGN hosts.
"I don’t have a criteria for all film," he notes, "but I have different expectations for different kinds of movies. My main philosophy is that every movie is legitimate. I hate it when reviewers say, 'Well this was pretty good for a horror movie.’ That’s an elitist attitude. I look at them all as movies. No one genre is superior to another."
He balanced his airtime with serving as the managing editor of WGN’s magazine, Roy Leonard’s Going Out Guide, from 1992 until Leonard’s retirement in 1998. That spring, the station’s program director gave him a shot at a Saturday late-night show with Garry Lee Wright. The ratings were so good that, within a year, Digilio got solo spots on Friday and Sunday. While he doesn’t want to be looked at as WGN’s "movie guy," and restricts cinema coverage to Saturdays and Sundays, he still spends entire days gazing at the big screen.
Digilio’s journey across the often-brutal tundra of airwaves to storefront theatre has been an unconventional one.
In 1988, Digilio was bummed out after being cooped up in the hospital for three weeks with a kidney ailment. One of his friends decided to cheer him up by telling him about a show he saw at The Second City. This piqued the depressed film buff’s curiosity, and he soon found himself taking improv classes at Players Workshop. Alongside some of the disgruntled comics he met there, Digilio left to form the Factory Theater, whose stinging brand of original comedy propelled it into cult-status mania. Digilio–who wrote, directed and acted in many Factory shows–served as its artistic director from 1995 to 1999.
He transferred his experiences of hanging out and drinking beer on Saturday nights with his guy friends into one of Factory’s biggest hits, Alive (which he co-wrote with Mike Meredith). This play, which ran for almost three years, marked Digilio’s early explorations of an ongoing topic–arrested male adolescence.
Digilio has successfully managed to turn ordinary situations and interests into extraordinary opportunities for communicating a gamut of universal ideas.
"It’s all about communication," says Digilio, 35, of his life choices. "At [W]GN, I really like talking with listeners. I won’t just cut off a caller, say thank you and hang up. If not for them, I wouldn’t have a show. I don’t want segments to sound like sound bites. I hang out a lot in bars and do a lot of talking in bars. The kinds of conversations I have with friends are not split into 30-second bits. I want it to be as real and conversational as possible. I want the show to feel spontaneous. It’s okay to digress."
His show covers vast topics with guests ranging from pro-wrestlers, politicians and filmmakers to playwrights, actors and theatre critics. He even interviewed a writer who started her own Web site–www.rejectioncollections.com–where she encourages scribes to post their most outlandish rejection letters. The late-night format allows Digilio to experiment with a looser, more irreverent structure. But he doesn’t stretch into the shock jock sphere.
"I can get away with a little more," he admits, "considering the time I’m on. But it’s not like I’m trying to be shocking. I have an intense personality. There’s no censoring involved because I don’t push the show to that point. I am on a radio station that’s been an institution for years. I don’t want to spit in the station’s face for the sake of getting a laugh.
"[W]GN has had this unfair reputation of being your mom’s radio station. But it covers a lot of varied subjects and is on top of what’s going on in the world. GN was always moving with the times; now it’s ahead of the times."
So Digilio concentrates on prompting dialogue about current events and is a vocal advocate for Chicago’s off-Loop theatre scene. His work in radio and theatre complement each other. In fact, on weekends, he typically races from the stage to the WGN studios. Both arenas have given him refreshingly non-sensationalistic outlets for expression.
"There’s always been a big market for talk radio," he says. "But I think the whole Rush Limbaugh 'I am making a political statement’ kind of radio is not in anymore. Listeners are exposed to so many different kinds of media, and they’re a lot more savvy. I now have 13-year-olds calling in and talking about box office more than the movie itself.
"I never understood 'The Morning Zoo.’ I couldn’t figure out why these guys were screaming. I don’t think you have to have that kind of format for morning drive time. Listeners should get their information from someone they feel comfortable listening to–someone who can give them a real feeling of community."
Digilio initially wanted to become a film director after seeing John Carpenter’s Halloween. He adds, "That was the first time I looked for the director’s name in the credits. I was amazed at how a director could manipulate an audience."
After graduating from Luther High School North, he enrolled in Columbia College’s film program but ran out of money and dropped out. He found his creative niche in improv, comedy, playwriting, directing and acting–primarily at the Factory Theater. Here his shows included the record-breaking late-night classic, White Trash Wedding and a Funeral (about the intrigue surrounding a septic-tank trailer-trash mogul), along with Win Place or Show (the sequel to Alive), Sabotage, Preying Manthis, Escape from the North Pole and many others. Digilio’s adaptation of "High Fidelity" (renamed The Vinyl Shop) ranks as one of his most hilariously bittersweet works about arrested male adolescence. It also paid homage to his impassioned connection to music. The show received an "Audience Favorite" nomination at the 1999 New York Fringe Festival.
"I learned about theatre by doing it," he asserts. "I would have to say that I found my voice as a director with White Trash Wedding. We had to go over the top with this show, but we didn’t make fun of these people. We loved the characters. Nobody felt they were better than the material."
Since his departure from Factory, Digilio has become increasingly involved with The Hypocrites (where he directs David Mamet’s Lakeboat Feb. 15-Mar. 18 at The Viaduct) and is a board member of Barrel of Monkeys, a children’s theatre group that produces works by elementary school-age writers.
A fervent non-elitist, Digilio the director aims to make the actors comfortable and involve them in the process. He prefers working with exciting smaller theatre companies, like The Hypocrites, which he calls "unpretentious." He recently acted in The Hypocrites’ productions of Jack or the Submission and Curse of the Starving Class.
"I don’t think I’ll ever direct a show in a theatre with more than 60 seats," states Digilio. "When a theatre company gets too big, more politics and red tape are involved. I like my theatre bullshit free."
He is attracted to Mamet’s Lakeboat because it’s about a group of middle-aged guys who haul steel across the Great Lakes and desperately try to dress their immaturity in brash macho posturing.
"The play is basically eight guys on a boat just swearing," explains the director. "They’re these insane chest-pounding misogynists. So I’m taking more of a ridiculous approach. I’m gonna play this for laughs. That’s the only way you can do this show. These guys–who say these horrible, violent things–can only be presented in an absurd way."
For Digilio, who grew up in Wrigleyville and now lives in Andersonville with his girlfriend, actress-director Halena Kays, the topic of challenges faced by men of his generation continues to intrigue him.
"I’m always exploring the idea of what it’s like to be a guy," he says, "how screwed up we are, and where we belong in the world. I want it to be more than 'get me the remote’ (as in Rob Becker’s Defending the Caveman). We’re a lot more flawed and a lot more interesting than that. I think a lot of men don’t want to deal with adulthood. I want to hang around and drink beer with my friends.
"I think guys from my generation had time to put off responsibility–unlike our dads who got married very early and were expected to grow up very fast. Mid-life crises used to be a big thing then; you don’t hear about mid-life crises anymore. Guys my age are still trying to figure out who they are. I also find the notion of male jealousy attractive. I have it in me in droves, and I write it all down and explore it on stage."
With Digilio, art really imitates life–usually his own. Then, in true egalitarian fashion, he extends it to an entire generation.