Change Your Image
dgire
Gire taught Writing Film Criticism at Chicago's Columbia College during the 2017 J-Term. He has also taught journalism classes for the Communications Department at Aurora University (Illinois) 2008-2010. From 1984 to 2006, as an adjunct instructor at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Ill., Gire taught classes in drama, novels & short stories, film & literature, introductory journalism, mass communications and feature writing.
He has also served on Eastern Illinois University's Journalism Advisory Council since 2002, and also served on the Journalism Program Advisory Committee for William Rainey Harper College (1995-2006)
In 2000, he became the faculty adviser to Harper's newspaper, the Harbinger. Both his teaching and advising positions were eliminated following his refusal to censor the student publication. In 2013, he was named "Friend of Scholastic Journalism" by both the national and Illinois chapters of the Journalism Education Association after he provided testimony to the Higher Education committees of the Illinois Senate and Illinois House to promote passage of the Illinois College Campus Press Act, that would make political firings of college newspaper staffs and faculty advisers illegal. The act became law on June 1, 2008.
During a 2014 speech at the Governor's Mansion in Springfield, Ill., Gire called for an extension of this shield law to protect high school journalists and their advisors. A well-supported bill doing just that was signed into law by Governor Bruce Rauner in 2016.
In 2006, Gire teamed with James Bond 007 novelist Raymond Benson to create "Dann and Raymond's Movie Club," a popular, traveling monthly film lecture/discussion series well into its 11th season. He has been the film critic for Fox TV News in Chicago (1988-91), “The Larry Lujack Show" on rock radio AM 89, "The Morton Downey Jr. Show" on WMAQ radio in Chicago, "The John Landecker Show" on WJMK radio, and contributed film reviews for "Mancow's Morning Madhouse" and CBS/WBBM's "Monsters and Money in the Morning." He has won the prestigious Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in Arts Criticism nine times. He has also won awards from the Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Associated Press, and other journalism organizations. He sits on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Headline Club, the local chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists.
Gire is also a former high school, middle school and elementary school substitute teacher.
He served on the Thinking Skills Task Force for Schaumburg Township District 54 1989-1991, the Schaumburg Township District 54 Foundation Board (1990-91), the Wiliam Rainey Harper College Foundation (1996-97) plus chaired the Staff Parish Committee of Our Redeemers United Methodist Church in Schaumburg, Ill. (2005-2008)
Gire is a graduate of Charleston (Ill.) High School and Eastern Illinois University where he earned BA and MA degrees in Speech-Communications.
Reviews
Munger Road (2011)
As a first feature stuck with a budget smaller than an atom, it's an amazingly effective scare fest that knows the best parts to borrow from the giants of the genre
"Munger Road" doesn't break much new ground, but it covers the old ground nicely. Two St. Charles students (Trevor Morgan and Hallock Beals) get a video camera so they can go out with their dates (Brooke Peoples and Lauren Storm), to the tracks on Munger Road to check for supernatural activity. The car engine mysteriously dies and the four kids are marooned in the middle of nowhere.
From John Carpenter's "Halloween," director/writer Nick Smith appropriates the escaped serial killer plot, plus pays homage to the opening-scene tracking shot by having a cop investigate a dark house through a point-of-view camera.
Smith also lifts the swinging ceiling lamp effect from Hitchcock's "Psycho" and briefly the making-a-documentary premise from "The Blair Witch Project" which it stole from "Cannibal Holocaust."
So, don't go to see "Munger Road" for originality.
Go to witness how Smith and his young conspirators (including Polish composer Wojciech Golczewski with his edgy, alarming score) transform the sleepy little community of St. Charles into the scariest Illinois town since Michael Myers roamed fictional Haddonfield.