There’s gotta be a way of tapping into that audience and getting some of
            
            
              these people interested.”
            
            
              Mantegna noted that sports fans, particularly Cubs fans, were devoted
            
            
              to their teams and suggested the cast do something that revolved around
            
            
              that. They agreed, and their “homework” became going to Wrigley Field
            
            
              and attending baseball games.
            
            
              They found themselves in the bleachers with a collection of people
            
            
              that seemed to be there almost daily, and ended up zeroing in on them.
            
            
              “We infiltrated among them; we befriended them,” Dennis says. “We’d
            
            
              bring tape recorders in and tape our conversations without them knowing
            
            
              it. We’d take pictures of them. We investigated their lives and came back
            
            
              and talked about them.” After changing their names and fictionalizing the
            
            
              characters’ lives, members of the Organic Theater Company wrote the play
            
            
              around their newfound friends. “That’s how ‘Bleacher Bums’ came to be
            
            
              written by thirteen authors,” Dennis says, “but it was from an idea from
            
            
              Joe Mantegna, who gets special credit.”
            
            
              “Bleacher Bums” became the company’s next big hit. It also signaled the
            
            
              end of Franz’s five-year involvement with the Organic Theater Company.
            
            
              WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF FILM
            
            
              Franz’s first film opportunity – other than as a glorified extra in Robert
            
            
              Altman’s “A Wedding” – arrived with a role in “The Fury,” directed by Brian
            
            
              De Palma in Chicago, which he won via an audition arranged by a free-
            
            
              lance agent. The movie was to star Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes.
            
            
              “I did my reading for the casting director, Lynn Stalmaster, and when
            
            
              I came home that night,” Dennis laughs, “I hadn’t heard anything, so I
            
            
              cops by driving through the tougher streets of Chicago in Dennis’s father’s
            
            
              car –a non-descript sedan of a type that law enforcement commonly
            
            
              used – pretending to be undercover cops. They’d pull up and park as some
            
            
              apparent illicit act was taking place and watch the action. Sometimes
            
            
              they’d get up to exit their vehicle, just to enjoy the sight of people
            
            
              scattering in every direction. Dennis and Joe also frequented restaurants
            
            
              and diners where policemen congregated, to observe them.
            
            
              “Cops” ends with the emotional shooting of the bad guy. This was
            
            
              the first time The Organic Theater Company tried what Dennis calls “a
            
            
              naturalistic piece of work,” and he liked it. “Not having to perform to the
            
            
              last guy in the back row in the theater,” he notes, “was a major turning
            
            
              point for me. I realized how much I really liked bringing everything in,
            
            
              not pushing everything out.
            
            
              “From that point on,” he says, “I began to look at actors and
            
            
              performances differently. I like watching minds work. I like watching
            
            
              performances that don’t necessarily have a lot of flamboyance.”
            
            
              “Cops” ran for a year and the company eventually took it to Europe.
            
            
              BLEACHER BUMS
            
            
              The last thing The Organic Theater Company did as a group
            
            
              was write and perform “Bleacher Bums.” At the time, Joe Mantegna
            
            
              lived in what is now Wrigleyville, in between Wrigley Field and the
            
            
              Beacon Street Theater. As the group threw around ideas for their next
            
            
              production, Dennis remembers Joe saying, “You know, man, every day
            
            
              when I pass by Wrigley Field, there’s like forty thousand people pouring
            
            
              out of there. And we’re trying to fill up a three-hundred-seat theater.
            
            
              “Bloody Bess: A Tale of Piracy and Revenge,” featuring swordplay and acrobatics, may not
            
            
              have been “a great piece of art,” but it was a crowd pleaser for the Organic Theater Company
            
            
              (from left) Michael Saad, Dennis Franz and Joe Mantegna, as pirates no doubt
            
            
              Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” starring Craig Wasson and Melanie Griffith featured a film
            
            
              within a film, wherein Dennis plays Rubin, director of a vampire B-movie. In photo: Dennis
            
            
              Franz and Craig Wasson