CHICAGO — Someone, I’ve long thought, should make a movie of Lowell Thompson’s life and finally that is happening. A painter/writer/former ad man/legendary storyteller, Thompson is making the movie himself, collaborating with some old colleagues from the advertising world and some new friends. He is typically enthusiastic, saying, “I’m thinking Oscars,” and then erupting in his distinctively joyful laugh.
The film is titled “Channels Changers” and you can see a bit of it on YouTube. It is to be a feature-length movie about the pioneering Black people who began to influence the advertising business during the 1960s and beyond.
Thompson and former Chicago advertising man Cotton Stevenson are co-executive producers of the film. “After I left the ad business and Chicago, I began making documentaries (“Diversity University” (2014), “Stand” (2016) and “The Good Brothers” (2019)) and having some success,” he told me, from his home in California. “I first met Lowell on Facebook and we shared certain political and world views and were both from the ad world. Chicago is where I came right after college. I met my wife. We had a son. When I came to visit earlier this year, Lowell and I met and he told me about his new book and that was that.”
