The Nov. 2023 Chicago Sports Spectacular
Jonathan Schmock is an actor, director, writer, and artist. He’s best known for playing the Maître d' in the classic John Hughes film Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
To listen to the interview with Jonathan Schmock, click the play button below (or click here to open the audio player in a new tab/window).
You can meet Jonathan Schmock, as well as various athletes and others, at The Chicago Sports Spectacular.
The Chicago Sports Spectacular is being held at the at the Donald E Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill. on November 17 through November 19.
Tickets, the full guest list, and more information can all be found on The Chicago Sports Spectacular website.
Mike Reflects
As those who personally know me know, I’m actually a bit superstitious about talking about interviews before they’re done.
When I’m openly excited about an upcoming one, there always seems to be some sort of hitch. Whether it be:
- the time back in college when I landed Mindy Kaling and told everybody (literally everybody), only to realize that I’d misread the class schedule and had to back out
- the time (also in college) I put out a press release to other student media announcing my first live interview, and the board messed up in a way that nobody understood a word he said
- the time I booked a live 1 hour with the lead from a network drama, talked it up to everybody I knew, and then had the filming schedule change last minute (so they were no longer off), the publicist get sick with a 100+ degree fever (so they couldn’t step in), and the interview to be unceremoniously cancelled at literally the last minute
It seems that it’s always something.
Even when I first switched over to this new format, and told everyone about how I was going to interview Bob Bergen, tragedy struck. (You can read/hear what happened here.)
You can call it a coincidence, but I don’t spill in advance anymore. Well, kind of.
While I won’t name names, whatever curse has befallen me doesn’t seem to care if I give a cryptic hint or two. So, friends who ask for specifics get stonewalled, but those who request hints are obliged.
When I told a friend (who practically lives and breathes Chicago) that I had an upcoming interview with an actor who “pretty much everyone in the area would recognize”, she was, naturally, a bit curious.
But, of course, I can’t make the hints too easy, or that’s just giving them away.
So, she got this GIF from Season 18, Episode 7 of the FOX show Family Guy.
For those unfamiliar with this moment, it comes during a retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Peter, as Romeo, is trying to convince Stewie (Tybalt) that he is not a Montague, but is, in fact, Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago. Stewie’s Tybalt falls for it at first, when Joe calls him on the phone to ask for Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, and describes Peter, but he quickly realizes that, in that time and place, they had neither phones, nor Chicago.
I think it’s the best hint I ever gave.
And, while Jonathan has certainly had an impressive body of work beyond Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I think this really speaks to the cultural impact that the movie, and his role in it, have had on generations of people.