The Blues Brothers is a 1980 American musical action comedy film directed by John Landis.[4] It stars John Belushi as "Joliet" Jake Blues and Dan Aykroyd as his brother Elwood, characters developed from the recurring musical sketch "The Blues Brothers" on NBC's variety series Saturday Night Live. The script is set in and around Chicago, Illinois, where it was filmed, and the screenplay is by Aykroyd and Landis. It features musical numbers by singers James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker. It features non-musical supporting performances by Carrie Fisher and Henry Gibson.
Universal Studios, which won the bidding war for the film, was hoping to take advantage of Belushi's popularity in the wake of Saturday Night Live, the film Animal House, and The Blues Brothers' musical success; it soon found itself unable to control production costs. The start of filming was delayed when Aykroyd, who was new to film screenwriting, took six months to deliver a long and unconventional script that Landis had to rewrite before production, which began without a final budget. On location in Chicago, Belushi's partying and drug use caused lengthy and costly delays that, along with the destructive car chases depicted onscreen, made the film one of the most expensive comedies ever produced.
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Owing to concerns that the film would fail, its initial bookings were less than half of those similar films normally received. Released in the United States on June 20, 1980, it received mostly positive reviews from critics and grossed over $115 million in theaters worldwide before its release on home video, and has become a cult classic over the years. A sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, was released in 1998. In 2020, The Blues Brothers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[5]
Blues vocalist and petty criminal Jake Blues is released from prison after serving three years for armed robbery and is picked up by his brother Elwood in his Bluesmobile, a battered former police car. Elwood demonstrates its capabilities by jumping an open drawbridge. The brothers visit the Catholic orphanage where they were raised, and learn from Sister Mary Stigmata that it will be closed unless it pays $5,000 in property taxes. During a sermon by the Reverend Cleophus James at the Triple Rock Baptist Church, Jake has an epiphany: they can reform their band, the Blues Brothers, which disbanded while Jake was in prison, and raise the money to save the orphanage.
That night, state troopers attempt to arrest Elwood for driving with a suspended license due to 116 parking tickets and 56 moving violations. After a car chase through the Dixie Square Mall, the brothers escape. The next morning, as the police arrive at the flophouse where Elwood lives, a mysterious woman detonates a bomb that demolishes the building, but leaves Jake and Elwood unharmed, saving them from arrest.
Jake and Elwood begin tracking down members of the band. Five of them are performing as "Murph and The MagicTones" at a deserted Holiday Inn lounge and quickly agree to rejoin. Another turns them down as he is the matre d' at an expensive restaurant, but the brothers threaten to become regular patrons until he relents. On their way to meet the final two band members, the brothers find the road through Jackson Park blocked by an American Nazi Party demonstration on a bridge; Elwood runs them off the bridge into the East Lagoon. The leader of the Nazi Party swears revenge. The last two band members, who now run a soul food restaurant, rejoin the band against the advice of one's wife. The reunited group obtains instruments and equipment from Ray's Music Exchange in Calumet City, and Ray, "as usual", takes an IOU.
As Jake attempts to book a gig, the mystery woman blows up the phone booth he is using; once again, he is miraculously unhurt. The band stumbles onto a gig at Bob's Country Bunker, a honky-tonk in Kokomo, Indiana. They win over the rowdy crowd, but run up a bar tab higher than their pay, and infuriate the Good Ole Boys, the country band that was booked for the gig.
Jake and Elwood race back toward Chicago, with dozens of state and local police and the Good Ole Boys in pursuit. They elude them all with a series of improbable maneuvers, including a miraculous gravity-defying escape from the neo-Nazis. At the Richard J. Daley Center, they rush inside the adjacent Chicago City Hall building, followed by hundreds of police, state troopers, SWAT teams, firefighters, and the Illinois Army National Guard. Finding the office of the Cook County Assessor, the brothers pay the tax bill. Just as their receipt is stamped, they are arrested by the mob of law officers. In prison, the band plays "Jailhouse Rock" for the inmates.
Belushi and Aykroyd created the characters Jake and Elwood Blues in performances on Saturday Night Live. The name "The Blues Brothers" was Howard Shore's idea. Aykroyd developed the blood brothers' backstory and character sketches in collaboration with Ron Gwynne, who is credited as a story consultant for the film. As related in the liner notes of the band's debut album, Briefcase Full of Blues, the brothers grew up in an orphanage, learned the blues from a janitor named Curtis, and sealed their brotherhood by cutting their middle fingers with a steel string said to have come from Elmore James's guitar.[8]
Belushi had become a star in 1978 as a result of both the Blues Brothers' musical success and his role in National Lampoon's Animal House. At one point, he managed the triple feat of being the star of the week's top-grossing film and top-rated television series and singing on the No. 1 album within a year. When Aykroyd and Belushi decided they could make a Blues Brothers film, the bidding war was intense. Universal Studios narrowly beat Paramount Pictures for the project. John Landis, who had directed Belushi in Animal House, was aboard as director.[2]
The project had neither a budget nor a script. Universal head Lew Wasserman thought the film could be made for $12 million; the filmmakers wanted $20 million. It was impossible to settle on an amount without a screenplay to review, and after Mitch Glazer declined to help him, Aykroyd wrote one on his own.[2]
Aykroyd had never written a screenplay before, as he admitted in the 1998 documentary Stories Behind the Making of The Blues Brothers, or even read one, and he was unable to find a writing partner. He put together a very detailed volume that explained the characters' origins and how the band members were recruited. His final draft was 324 pages, three times longer than a standard screenplay, written not in a standard screenplay format, but more like free verse.[2] To soften the impact, Aykroyd made a joke of the thick script and had it bound with the cover of the Los Angeles Yellow Pages directory when he turned it in to producer Robert K. Weiss. He titled it "The Return of the Blues Brothers", and credited it to "Scriptatron GL-9000".[2] Landis was tasked with editing the script into a usable screenplay,[9] which took him about two weeks.[2]
Other musicians in the cast include Big Walter Horton, Pinetop Perkins, and John Lee Hooker (who performs "Boom Boom" during the Maxwell Street scene). The members of The Blues Brothers Band were themselves notable. Steve Cropper and Donald Dunn are architects of the Stax Records sound (Cropper's guitar can be heard at the start of the Sam & Dave song "Soul Man") and were half of Booker T. & the M.G.'s. Horn players Lou Marini, Tom Malone, and Alan Rubin had all played in Blood, Sweat & Tears and the house band on Saturday Night Live. Drummer Willie Hall had played in The Bar-Kays and backed Isaac Hayes. Matt "Guitar" Murphy was a veteran blues guitarist who played with Memphis Slim and Howlin' Wolf. As the band developed at Saturday Night Live, pianist Paul Shaffer was part of the act and cast in the film, but owing to contractual obligations with SNL, he was unable to participate, so actor-musician Murphy Dunne (whose father, George Dunne, was the Cook County Board President) was hired to take his role.[9]
Over 500 extras were used for the next-to-last scene, the blockade of the building at Daley Center, including 200 National Guardsmen, 100 state and city police officers, with 15 horses for the mounted police (and three each Sherman tanks, helicopters, and fire engines).[11][12]
The film is also notable for the number of cameo appearances by established celebrities and entertainment-industry figures, including Steve Lawrence as a booking agent, Twiggy as a "chic lady" in a Jaguar convertible whom Elwood propositions at a gas station, Steven Spielberg as the Cook County Assessor's clerk, Landis as a state trooper in the mall chase, Joe Walsh in a cameo as the first prisoner to jump up on a table in the final scene, and Chaka Khan as the soloist in the Triple Rock choir. Muppet performer Frank Oz plays a corrections officer, and in the scene where the brothers crash into Toys "R" Us, the customer who asks for a Miss Piggy doll is played by stunt coordinator Gary McLarty. Singer/songwriter Stephen Bishop is an Illinois state trooper who complains that Jake and Elwood broke his watch (a result of the car chase in the mall). Makeup artist Layne Britton is the old card player who asks Elwood, "Did you get me my Cheez Whiz, boy?"[citation needed] Prior to becoming well known for the character Pee-wee Herman, Paul Reubens had a minor role as a Chez Paul waiter with one spoken line.[13][14]
Principal photography began in July 1979, with the film's budget still not settled. For the first month, things ran smoothly on and off the set. When Weiss saw the supposedly final $17.5 million budget, he reportedly joked, "I think we've spent that much already."[2]
In the next month, the production began falling behind schedule. Much of the delay was due to Belushi's partying and carousing. When not on set, he went out to his familiar Chicago haunts such as Wrigley Field and the Old Town Ale House. People often recognized him and slipped him cocaine, a drug he was already using heavily on his own, hoping to use it with him. "Every blue-collar Joe wants his John Belushi story," said Smokey Wendell, who was eventually hired to keep it away from the star. As a result of his late nights and drug and alcohol use, Belushi often missed unit calls (the beginning of a production day) or went to his trailer after them to sleep, wasting hours of production time. One night, Aykroyd found him crashing on the sofa of a nearby house, where Belushi had already helped himself to food in the refrigerator.[2] 152ee80cbc
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