When Vince Vaughn’s newest holiday movie, “Fred Claus,” opens this Christmas, clients at Pioneer Center for Human Services might recognize a thing or two from the characters’ living rooms.
Crews who recently finished filming the movie in Chicago donated a truckload of furniture, clothes and holiday decorations from the set to a Pioneer Center storage facility in McHenry on Friday morning.
“We’ve had some spectacular donations, but this is really something else,” said Donna Kassens, vice president of funding for Pioneer Center, as crews hauled a string of Christmas trees into the storage facility at 3710 W. Elm St.
Pioneer Center is a nonprofit social-service agency that helps people with developmental disabilities, mental illness, and traumatic brain injury, and victims of sexual assault.
The organization operates 13 group homes for clients in the county. One of the residents, 39-year-old Clark Davidson, has a sister who works for Warner Brothers, which is distributing the movie.
Their late grandmother, Myrtle Davidson, was among 20 people who founded Pioneer Center in 1958.
“I send my brother autographed pictures, anything I can get movie paraphernalia-wise – they all go to him,” said Lisa Davidson, a 35-year-old Johnsburg native who now lives in Los Angeles. “So I thought this was a larger way to contribute.”
“The Pioneer Center is great,” she continued. “It gives [my brother] a place to go and gives so many people a place to go and work and be productive. I just admire the organization.”
The donation that crews delivered Friday included seven couches, six Christmas trees, 19 mattresses and 17 garbage bags full of clothes – including some with designer labels.
Pioneer Center donated the clothes to Sparrow’s Nest, which will in turn provide vouchers for Pioneer clients, Kassens said. The other items will be distributed among the group homes and to Pioneer clients living independently in the community, she said.
Much of the furniture is from 15 different living room sets that crews created for scenes in the movie that feature children opening up their Christmas present, said Scott Troha, a studio mechanic with IATSE Studio Mechanics Local 476 who worked on the movie.
Not all of it was donated. Some has to be kept in case the actors need to re-shoot a scene, Troha said.
And, much to Kassens’ dismay, none of the clothes were worn by Vaughn.
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