It's 106 miles to Chicago, we have half a pack of cigarettes...

September 22, 2023 7:52 AM

...it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. The Stories Behind The Making Of The Blues Brothers [55m] is a 1998 documentary about the 1980 film that defined an era and the likes of which will likely never be made again.
posted by hippybear (57 comments total)

Flaws and all, it's possibly my favorite movie.

Thanks for the link!!!!
posted by wenestvedt at 8:14 AM on September 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

Dan Ackroyd is a Kingston native and can be regularly seen around town. I heard back in the 90s he opened a Blues Brothers themed restaurant, complete with cop car appearing to punch through the brick facade.
posted by Kitteh at 8:18 AM on September 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

“Fix the cigarette lighter.”
posted by ob1quixote at 8:22 AM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks for this hippybear. Ouke jr was raised on this movie. When he was really young, he had the habit to fall asleep watching video. Only The Blues Brothers, night after night after night. We even had to buy a 2nd VHS because it was completely worn out. (He could recite the Illinois Nazi speech during his kindergarten years.) Eventually he learned to fall asleep like a normal person.
When he was 9 years old, Booker T played in town in a venue that started their shows around 10. I put him to bed and woke him up a few hours later and I carried his sleepy ass in a cab. While he was eventually registering what was going on he asked where we were going. "the baaand! the baaaand!" He had an awesome night.
I've seen some concerts over the years, but this is still such a sweet memory for the both of us.
posted by ouke at 8:32 AM on September 22, 2023 [38 favorites]

For more Blues Brothers entertainment, check out Nathan Rabin's article on his 2022 visit to the Blues Brothers convention in Joliet.
posted by JDC8 at 8:37 AM on September 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

For a long time I’ve been imagining a Blues Brothers participatory viewing experience ala The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
posted by neuracnu at 8:50 AM on September 22, 2023 [17 favorites]

Orange whip?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 8:59 AM on September 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

Orange whip?

Three orange whips!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 9:06 AM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

“Lou, I learned something a long time ago. When you've got good musicians, you don't have to say anything. And if you don't have good musicians, there's nothing you can say.”—Cab Calloway telling Lou Marini why he always just went straight ahead.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:23 AM on September 22, 2023 [16 favorites]

“… and don’t come back, until you’ve redeemed yourselves!”

Quicklyreceedingnun.gif
posted by armoir from antproof case at 10:41 AM on September 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

I like the movie as much as the next person but it's worth keeping in mind that the recklessness and disregard for safety that Landis brags about in this short (driving cars 100MPH down streets lined with people) would kill two children and actor Vic Morrow a few years later while making Twilight Zone: The Movie.

For a deep dive on the subject, check out Outrageous Conduct.

He has also supported his son, Max, who has been accused of multiple sexual assaults.
posted by dobbs at 10:48 AM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

debbiedowner.gif
posted by bondcliff at 10:49 AM on September 22, 2023 [23 favorites]

For a long time I’ve been imagining a Blues Brothers participatory viewing experience ala The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

So we sit around in an old struggling independent theater eating huge buckets of fried chicken and dry white toast, chain smoking and drinking, throw bottles at a chain link fence around a stage, get scolded and thwacked by a nun with a yardstick, drive through a mall and smashing it to pieces, blow up a number of buildings, getting chased around by Carrie Fisher with a rocket launcher, machine gun and flame thrower and bombs all interrupted occasionally with some song and dance routines and climaxing in the world's largest car crash pile up?

Yeah, I'm totally in. We're going to run out of theaters in a hurry, though.
posted by loquacious at 10:49 AM on September 22, 2023 [19 favorites]

”The car’s got a lotta pickup”
posted by armoir from antproof case at 11:02 AM on September 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

After much discussion with his peers, my dad took us kids (I was 9!) to see this movie. It was an R-rated film—my first R-rated film ever. My uncle assured my dad that there wasn't anything too gross or crazy for a kid to handle.

And he was right. For an R-rated film from 1980, there's surprisingly little filth. There's innuendos, maybe one or two F-words. No nudity or even sex scenes. The violence is so cartoonishly over the top it might as well be a Bugs Bunny film.

It's just such a joyous experience. A lot of it went over my head, but I followed the general idea "they were on a mission from God", they had to get the Band back together and do One Last Show! The rest is just hilarious set pieces and fantastic musical numbers. My father loved the movie, and my dad was a notorious stick-in-the-mud. Here I was having NO IDEA who Cab Calloway was (or Aretha Franklin) and completely loving those performances and cinematic triumphs. I barely knew who James Brown was, and I remember the people in the church getting so overjoyed that they were flying into the air! Cab Calloway and the Band transforming magically into spotless white outfits and the stage into a 1930s musical. I loved that performance and played the soundtrack record to death.

Saw it many times after that on VHS. Saw it probably a couple years ago, too. It holds up. Nothing like it before or since.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:26 AM on September 22, 2023 [15 favorites]

Forgot to mention that I was born and raised in the City of Chicago, as were both of my parents. My mom's side of the family goes way back in the city. So there was something magical about seeing the city I was familiar with on the big screen.

Chicago is vastly different than what it was in 1980 (Elwood's SRO apartment with the L running right outside is now the Harold Washington Library, and the entire city is much cleaner and less grimy than it was then).

I still think this is the most quintessentially Chicago movie ever made though. Probably only us Olds feel that way though.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:44 AM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

As another Chicago native, the thing that always strikes me is the establishing shot of the skyline at the beginning of the movie, and how many buildings aren’t there yet.
posted by notoriety public at 11:50 AM on September 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

I remember when I was a kid in the 80's, going to a college basketball game and they had a Blues Brothers act for the halftime show. It was years before I realized this was not Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi.

One of the best elements of this film is the total disregard for things to absolutely make sense all the time, in the way that it's someone telling you a story and making embellishments and you don't question them because it's one heckuva story. Like SoberHighland, when I first saw it, I really didn't know who the performers were, but the music was divine. As a Star Wars fan, I remain utterly devoted to Carrie Fisher appearing in a sewer with a M-16.

Shoutout, as well, to the homage by Hanson and Weird Al.
posted by Atreides at 11:52 AM on September 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

After much discussion with his peers, my dad took us kids (I was 9!) to see this movie. It was an R-rated film—my first R-rated film ever. My uncle assured my dad that there wasn't anything too gross or crazy for a kid to handle.

I remember my father taking me to see the Westworld/Soylent Green double feature in 1973. I was SIX.

In 1974, he took SEVEN year old me to see Jaws. The underwater scene at Ben's boat fucked me up FOR YEARS.

On the other hand, the same year, the neighbor lady took me and her kids to see Blazing Saddles. The campfire scene had us rolling on the floor in laughter.

For comparison, The Bad News Bears was in 76. I was 9 (and it was a kid film anyway, right?).
posted by mikelieman at 12:01 PM on September 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

It's a long story, but I had a weird minor John Belushi fixation in high school (for reference, this was in the early to mid 90s), which led to me watching, and taping, The Blues Brothers off of a local UHF channel. I've long had parts of that film memorized, Monty Python and the Holy Grail-style.

It's only recently that I've seen the full, not edited-for-TV version, and that's mainly because my spouse had never seen it before. It was a mission from God, and now he is a convert. In the TV cut, they had removed the scenes with Twiggy, probably for length, and had dubbed over the curse words, but other than that, it was the same old movie I remembered.
posted by May Kasahara at 12:05 PM on September 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

This was one of the movies my dad was eagerly waiting for us to be old enough to show us (the other was Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and I'm grateful for that; it's simply one of the best and most fun movies ever made. I always forget how long it is until it's over, and where did the sun go?! It doesn't feel like two and a quarter hours while you're watching it!

(Also how weird is it that there's two movies tied to Saturday Night Live that are worth a damn and they're both set in Chicago music scenes, about a decade apart?)
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:24 PM on September 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

This movie is the reason I, a kid from Suburban Boston, knows the mailing address for Wrigley Field.
posted by bondcliff at 12:30 PM on September 22, 2023 [11 favorites]

Lots of love in our house for this movie. It introduced me to a lot of great music that wasn't played on the radio-- Cab and Booker and Sam&Dave and more-fun Ray, and Aretha being gritty, and especially John Lee Hooker growling and moaning. I'll get some playing intending to get work done, and I do, but then I start dancing and singing so I guess I get a workout done instead.
Always regret not going to the open-call for extras at the Palladium when they were shooting the concert scene.
posted by winesong at 1:23 PM on September 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

It introduced me to a lot of great music that wasn't played on the radio-- Cab and Booker and Sam&Dave and more-fun Ray, and Aretha being gritty, and especially John Lee Hooker growling and moaning.

That's what I like about this movie and the Blues Brothers in general: not only do they acknowledge their inspirations, they're positively REVERENT. The movie gave a paycheck and some exposure to a bunch of older artists who needed it. And on their live album, they made it a point to say who recorded the original versions of their songs, with John Belushi exhorting the audience to listen to as many blues records as they can.
posted by MrBadExample at 1:42 PM on September 22, 2023 [20 favorites]

That's what I like about this movie and the Blues Brothers in general: not only do they acknowledge their inspirations, they're positively REVERENT. The movie gave a paycheck and some exposure to a bunch of older artists who needed it. And on their live album, they made it a point to say who recorded the original versions of their songs, with John Belushi exhorting the audience to listen to as many blues records as they can.

Seconding this. The foundations of my musical tastes tare based on 11-year-old me going from the movie to the live album to Wilson Pickett / Otis Redding / Sam Cooke / etc.
posted by bassooner at 1:51 PM on September 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

I grew up in Joliet and Blue’s Brother was the only thing I could refer to that people had heard about it.
posted by roguewraith at 1:54 PM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is a DVD extra, not really a stand-alone documentary.
posted by Ideefixe at 1:57 PM on September 22, 2023

This movie is the first movie I ever bought for myself. I used to walk on the regular to the Blockbuster in the little strip mall with the Kmart across the street from the Cumberland Farms and just before the Jo-Ann Fabrics to rent Blues Brothers. A lot and finally when the tape appeared in the used video bin, my mom let me have it, mostly because she was sick of renting the thing. :)

And yes, like the latter comments, this movie introduced me to a lot of great music and encourage me to explore and find even more stuff that wasn't in the sphere of an 80's Florida kid.

My best friend and I dressed up multiple times as Jake and Elwood - for school plays, talent shows and our hit video for Anatomy Class - "The Blues Brothers Sing the Digestive Tract".

Y'all, I'm beginning to think I might have been a weird kid.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:57 PM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

"The Blues Brothers Sing the Digestive Tract"

This sounds in every way completely amazing.

No, no. Don't burst my bubble. My imagination is really going haywire with this one.

I'm picturing maybe a guest appearance by Slim Goodbody? And possibly something from Joe, who had many ailments many of which were digestive. His organs were more chatty than he was, really.
posted by hippybear at 2:01 PM on September 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

"Permission to use violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers ... has been approved..."
posted by UhOhChongo! at 2:38 PM on September 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

This is a DVD extra, not really a stand-alone documentary.

Is it still a DVD extra if it's not on a DVD? 🤔
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:48 PM on September 22, 2023

bondcliff: “This movie is the reason I, a kid from Suburban Boston, knows the mailing address for Wrigley Field.”

I still routinely use the address online. It's my address on this very website.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:52 PM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

The coolest kids at Lincoln Junior High in the fall of '79 were the ones whose parents let them go to watch the police chase being filmed over the course of several nights through the sleepy suburban streets of Park Ridge, IL. (It's where Elwood goes through the stoplight that was yellow, sir.) It still comes up in conversation at reunions and such, and I'm still jealous.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 4:14 PM on September 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Definitely going to watch this. I lived in Chicago from 1977 to 1982--in other words, from the time that Animal House blew up to a few months after Belushi died--so I think that you can imagine how big of a deal he was in the lives of me and my peers at the time. I never saw him in person, although I knew people that had, or claimed to have had.

One thing that I occasionally think about, though, is that, after BB had finished filming, he was starting to prep for his next film, a rom-com named Continental Divide co-starring Blair Brown. He wanted to be in decent shape for it, and was maybe also starting to reconsider the party-hard lifestyle that he was notorious for, so he started going to a martial arts school in Chicago's Lincoln Square. I went to Lincoln Square all the time, and had recently dropped out of the martial arts school that I had attended for a few years. What might have been...
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:50 PM on September 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Watching this 'Making' makes me wonder if I ever saw this movie.
Maybe not.
I do know I saw a terrific performance (by several of my neighbors) at the Barre [VT] Opera House several years ago.

Sharing this...
posted by MtDewd at 4:55 PM on September 22, 2023

With almost every beloved 80s comedy, there's stuff that makes us cringe today. There are rape jokes, there's racist stuff, creepy conservative undertones, etc. Offhand I can't think of any jokes in this movie that would be super offensive to a modern audience, and that's pretty remarkable for a big, loud, coked-up 1980 comedy with a bunch of National Lampoon guys involved in it. It's still the fun, crazy movie you remember from when you were a kid, without those moments where you stop and go, "Oh, shit, the protagonists are basically Libertarian sex pests, aren't they?"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:12 PM on September 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

My parents spent a lot of time in the Chicago-Madison area, and recognized the locations of the final chase, which were all over the region.
posted by cheshyre at 5:17 PM on September 22, 2023

I am sitting here crying laughing over the thought of The Blues Brothers Sing the Digestive Tract. My school video projects were never that inspired.
posted by Tesseractive at 5:43 PM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

A somewhat unreasonable part of my childhood was spent trying to count the total number of totalled cop cars in the chase scene. Such a great movie.
posted by kaibutsu at 6:07 PM on September 22, 2023

After much discussion with his peers, my dad took us kids (I was 9!) to see this movie. It was an R-rated film—my first R-rated film ever. My uncle assured my dad that there wasn't anything too gross or crazy for a kid to handle.

I was 11, same situation. My folks took us to everything on Saturday night to see whatever was opening. So I saw a lot of R-rated stuff and didn't think much of it but still had to wait until I got home to sheepishly look up what "one prophylactic, soiled" was when Frank Oz said it on screen. (and why did he sound like a Muppet?)
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:38 PM on September 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

As another Chicago native, the thing that always strikes me is the establishing shot of the skyline at the beginning of the movie, and how many buildings aren’t there yet.

You might also notice that during the last car chase with the two Nazis in pursuit, the skyline is actually downtown Milwaukee. =)
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:48 PM on September 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I drove to Chicago for the first time about a decade ago. I drove my wife nuts because I kept unconsciously slipping into Elwood's speech patterns.

The only time I realized I was doing it was when I saw a sign and cut across several lanes (no traffic!) so that I could whip down a ramp onto a new road just so I could say, "This is definitely Lower Wacker Drive."
posted by Ickster at 8:02 PM on September 22, 2023

I'll also say that Jake and Elwood may not have been paragons of liberal virtue all the time, but they hated Illinois Nazis, so they're good in my book.
posted by Ickster at 8:04 PM on September 22, 2023 [13 favorites]

May Kasahara, I also grew up on VHS taped from TV movies and just saw the full/real Airplane (which my entire family can still quote) for the first time. They cut out a lot. I’m not sure if our copy of the Blues Brothers taped off of WGN or our VHS of The Superbowl Shuffle is the most Chicago thing we owned.
posted by Bunglegirl at 10:47 PM on September 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

More good stuff from 2012

https://www.metafilter.com/123269/Shit-What-Rollers-No-Yeah-Shit
posted by freakazoid at 6:32 AM on September 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Odd that some scenes from the movie are blurred out and others are not.
posted by schrodycat at 8:42 AM on September 23, 2023

Yeah, I was bothered by that. I think that's for copyright purposes. You can do snippets of scenes as fair use, but I think if you get much beyond 20 seconds you start running the risk of a YouTube takedown.
posted by hippybear at 8:53 AM on September 23, 2023

> Dan Ackroyd is a Kingston native and can be regularly seen around town. I heard back in the 90s he opened a Blues Brothers themed restaurant, complete with cop car appearing to punch through the brick facade.

I went to school in Kingston between 1992-1997, and he did indeed have a bar for a while named Aykroyd’s Ghetto* House Café. There were three floors, each with a different theme; the top floor had a bunch of DA memorabilia...I remember sitting at a table near a bunch of framed Doctor Detroit photos. IIRC it sort of got a rep as a townie bar, so students didn't go there much and I think it closed just before or after I left. I think I only went once or twice out of curiosity before my friends and I decided it wasn't our scene.

Back then he often hit the student bars (I saw him at least a couple of times, just hanging out), and there were a lot of stories about him hitting on undergrad-age women (including one of my housemates' girlfriends).

* "Ghetto" because that was the unofficial name for the area where most of the students lived and probably still is, despite the university's attempts to re-brand it as the "University District."
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:23 AM on September 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Years ago I made a mix of the songs from the Blues Brothers with sound bites from the movie to set up each track.

MixCloud link.
posted by mmrtnt at 10:15 AM on September 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

In the early 90s Aykroyd also had a place called The X-Ray Club on Queen West in Toronto. If memory serves right, it was on the SW corner at Duncan. In the back of it was another, smaller, less-known spot called Ultrasound.

I was in film school at the time and I had a classmate who was hilarious named Ed and he used to beg the students and prof to come see his band. They played every Monday at Ultrasound. However, the band had a terrible name and none of us would go and every week he would beg us again.

So, one day a couple of us decide to head down and check it out. This was after many months of lame apologies for not showing up. Turns out they were an absolutely amazing live band. Hiliarious, talented, energetic... they'd play their own songs but also did great covers of Madonna and Prince and many others.

Within a few more months they released a short cassette which went on to sell 80 thousand copies and in under a year they signed to Warner Records for a million dollar deal. Of course, they were The Barenaked Ladies.

Though I'm not a big fan of much of what they've output since then, I still think that original output was pretty great and they were superfun live.
posted by dobbs at 2:23 PM on September 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I wonder when Frank Oz left Joliet Penitentiary for the PPD.
posted by Tenuki at 3:22 PM on September 23, 2023

Grew up in the south suburbs (not far from Joliet), saw the movie in the theater when I was 7. Our kid minds were blown and it was all we could talk about for months. We got the soundtrack album that Christmas, and used to race (and crash) our electric slot cars in the basement while listening to Peter Gunn - it fit perfectly.

These days I play bass and mostly watch the movie to catch what Duck Dunn is up to. “Shake a Tailfeather” is my favorite - Ray Charles is great but Duck is just non-stop on it the whole song.
posted by xil at 4:08 PM on September 23, 2023

Tenuki

I saw both movies and never made that connection!
posted by mmrtnt at 4:09 PM on September 23, 2023

Hut. Hut hut. Hut. Hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut hut.

Hut.
posted by hearthpig at 5:18 PM on September 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

I should have said because I think it's not obvious, that gesture I'm making in my profile picture is an attempt at Ellwood's response to the sommelier telling him, “Wrong glass, sir.”
posted by ob1quixote at 8:55 PM on September 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

You know, this post reminded me that I hadn't watched the film in too long, so yesterday afternoon I cued it up and started the 2:30 long director's-cut. (Which has the whole "parking the Blues Mobile under the elevated railway transformer", extended street performance scene, and all the exposition shots you'd ever want.)

And all the time while watching it, and telling myself "I can pause this and go flip the laundry", I didn't interrupt it once because it's (even at 2:30) such tight, over-packed film that flows from scene to scene. As mentioned in the documentary, it's a musical, and I think the multiple-police-car-pileups are symphonies.
posted by mikelieman at 5:08 AM on September 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

?This is a DVD extra, not really a stand-alone documentary.

So?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:17 AM on September 28, 2023