Former WGN Producer Chases Hollywood Dream, Wins Washer And Dryer

VENICE, Calif. — In the middle of the coronavirus crisis, former WGN 720 AM producer Michael Heidemann packed up his Chevy Malibu and moved to Hollywood without saying goodbye.

I didn't know he was gone until he showed up on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Then, I spotted him dancing in a 21 Pilots music video and picking a guitar in a toga on "Let's Make A Deal."

Heidemann played a song for host Wayne Brady — and won a washer and dryer.

We met up on the Venice Beach boardwalk when my storytelling tour of America rolled into Los Angeles. He showed up almost unrecognizable with his long, sandy blonde hair tied in a ponytail, and walked right past me.

"I think the California blonde went to my head," he said. We laughed.

I never would have pegged Heidemann as a Chicago deserter. I got know to Heidemann in Chicago as "Michael J. Foxy," his singer-songwriter stage name. He hosted a downtown open mic and played coffeehouse gigs around town when he wasn't booking guests for the "Steve Cochran Show" and overnight radio hosts and producing podcasts for a less-than-hip AM radio audience.

"I thought I was living the dream, just being the radio guy by day and then playing shows on the weekend," he said. "And then everything changed."

Heidemann got laid off when management restructured at WGN. He worked a stint at a suburban radio station that didn't last. COVID-19 shutdowns put the kibosh on playing music around town. And last summer, he regularly heard gunshots near his Streeterville apartment as civil unrest manifested in looting and vandalism downtown.

"It was dark times, man," Heidemann said. "I went to bed one night, and I was like, 'Alright, big man upstairs, what do I do? Should I keep doing this radio thing … or just do whatever?' … I packed up all my stuff and got the heck out of Chicago. … I didn't think twice."

Soon, Heidemann was busking on his guitar on P. Diddy's Star on Hollywood Boulevard near a subway stop with excellent acoustics. A street performer dressed as Freddy Krueger sometimes accompanied him on "drums" by playing his razor fingers on a trash can.

"I was out there playing for tourists, squashing all my fears," he said. That's where a "Jimmy Kimmel Live" producer plucked Heidemann for a man-on-the-street segment featuring comedian Ray Romano.

"I decided to have a new life. To be this new person, I had to break from the old person I was. I had to shed away people from Chicago and all the things I was doing back there," Heidemann said.

"I put all my focus on filling my calendar with something every day, whether it's sending emails, taking new headshots, an audition or a job or a COVID test that you need to work on the studio lot. … I'm 100 percent focused on the dream of being an actor and building a career from the ground up. I was working at a bank when I got out of college and found a way to get into radio. And now I'm doing the exact same thing with acting."

The hard work continues to pay off. At first, Heidemann picked up paying "audience" gigs on "America' Got Talent," the Daytime Emmy Awards and Jay Leno’s new game show, "You Bet Your Life," to name a few.

He appeared as a silhouette in a Mercedes-Benz TV commercial that played during the Oscars.

Over the past few months, Heidemann has been a regular on a major studio’s lot after scoring a role on a green-lit TV show that contractually he can’t talk about in detail, yet.

And in between, he's been passed over for roles more times than he can count.

"When casting directors say, 'Sorry, we're going with someone else," … I say, 'Nice meeting you, goodbye, I have somewhere else to be,'" he said. "Rejection is nothing compared to all those nights walking a mile through snowstorms to get to the radio station for an overnight shift. These LA casting agents don't know what I've been through, man."

Before we parted ways, Heidemann serenaded folks on the Venice boardwalk with an original Michael J. Foxy tune.

Every performance, he told me, puts him a step closer to his California dream — or, at least, an acting gig that might lead to an apartment big enough for the "Let's Make A Deal" washer and dryer sitting in storage.

"That's the dream, man," he said. "I want clean clothes and/or a mansion in the hills."

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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