The Accidental Movie Mogul

Chicago magazine | December 2019: Alex Pissios had already received a red eviction notice on his house in Hawthorn Woods when his luck finally turned. It’s a story he’s polished until it gleams like a rhinestone. A developer of residential properties on the North and West Sides, he’d been taken down by the real estate crash of the ’00s; when the final tally came, he would owe creditors $13 million. He was 35, his career was finished, and his old associates had written him off. His wife had gone back to work as a dental hygienist, and Pissios spent his days changing diapers and driving the kids to school.