[If you find a formatting problem, see my note in the Profile feature of this blog. One edit done 3/23/13.]
This movie is very familiar to
American viewers, and I will just mainly offer a few notes on details of it.
Similar to The Shining (1980; see my second
January 31 review), it is a child of its time that seems an exemplar of a
certain kind of well-built movie, which has now been around so long that its
many fans, young and old, have parsed it to death.
The Blues Brothers (“BB”
for short) is what has been considered (probably rightly) the best movie that
came out of TV’s Saturday Night Live.
It is the second notable film in the career of director John Landis,
whose first hit was Animal House
(1978), and who helped write the final screenplay for BB. (Dan Aykroyd, one of its costars, wrote BB’s the original treatment, a 300+-page
effort that had to be winnowed down.)
Landis is always interesting to
listen to in commentary related to BB—whether
in a making-of feature (which has shorter and longer forms) that is included in
different editions of BB (videotape
or DVD) or in promotional talk for BB’s
sequel, The Blues Brothers 2000
(1998). (This latter film did less well, making much less than it cost,
according to its Wikipedia article.)
BB is another film I’ve watched many times over the past 30 years,
and I actually didn’t see it in the
theater when it first came out. I think I first saw it on cable TV in the
mid-1980s. It always seems to go down smoothly, even if your viewing is split into
parts you space out through a day or across days (depending on your prerogatives).
The extended DVD version is interesting for added tidbits, but even in the
original edit, the film seems to sprawl a bit, while its construction (visual
style and editing) makes it very serviceable, yet while some of the acting
(especially of some of the musicians who are not professional actors) is pretty
wooden.
Some scenes are well done (I
especially like the Chez Paul [restaurant] scene, with both its humor and
editing). But even where some connecting scenes are on the routine side, the
fact that the movie tucks in a variety of blues and R&B music, whether
heard from a car’s eight-track tape, heard as “underscore” music, or presented
as played live (whether really live or not), is truly what jazzes the movie up,
literally and figuratively. I myself am a big fan of blues and a lot of
R&B, and these forms of American music sampled here are mainly what endears
fans to this movie.
But also, a main draw is the
conceit of two white blues musicians, “Joliet Jake” Blues (played by John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Aykroyd), who grew up in a Catholic orphanage
in a seamier section of Chicago, raised in part by another man, Curtis (played
by Cab Calloway)—all three dressed in conservative black suits, black
fedoras, and Ray-Ban–type sunglasses. Jake and Elwood have also helmed a locally touring blues band that, as one of its members says,
was “powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.”
Origin of the main characters; the movie’s main storyline
The band itself is fascinating
to listen to. The Blues Brothers characters were introduced on SNL a few years before the movie was
made. Jake (Belushi) performed lead vocals and Elwood (Aykroyd) did
accompanying vocals and played harmonica (his instrument, quirkily, carried
onstage inside a locked briefcase). How the characters were developed Aykroyd
describes in a film DVD extra. Their presenting music on the TV show led to
recording of a hit album (the Blues Brothers and their band recorded Briefcase Full of Blues [1978], which
charted to number 1 in the U.S. and spawned the Top 20 single “Soul Man”; other
albums followed with or following the movie release, including Made in America [1980]). I remember a
roommate playing part or all of Briefcase
now and then during my sophomore year of college (1981-82).
As marketing-related
considerations on the TV/film level go, the idea to make a movie with these
characters was put into action “while the iron was hot”; Landis in making-of–doc
commentary says that the original deal was for development, but suddenly the
studio pushed for the film to be made. Thus Landis started shooting before a
script was finished. Aykroyd’s fullsome original draft is probably what allowed
as much creativity in the finished product as there is.
While apparently a lot of the
original script’s backstory was left out, the movie is chock-full of earthy
humor, occasional absurdism, and other fun originating from the two rather
humorless-seeming oafs, white blues musicians who main source of personal “color”
is the affectation of their forever wearing black suits and sunglasses.
Apparently in keeping with their inevitable moral character, they can engage in
occasional petty crime even in pursuit of a larger, noble aim—in this movie’s
story, getting money to pay property taxes on their orphanage lest it be shut
down. Viewers have remarked that church property typically isn’t taxed, but the
opposite idea posited here contributes to the Macguffin of this film, the
objective of Jake and Elwood’s rambling odyssey—to secure $5,000 to cover the
orphanage’s tax bill, before the church sells the facility because it doesn’t
want the increased liability (apparently “one too many” orphanage plus tax
bill).
J & E comically make many enemies
In the process, Jake and Elwood
run afoul of many, including the owner (played by Jeff Morris) of a
countryside bar “Bob’s Country Bunker”; the leader, Tucker McElroy (played by
Charles Napier) of a C&W group The Good Old Boys; and plenty of law
enforcement personnel (including two long-suffering sorts, Troopers “Daniel and
Mount,” who have been tailing Jake and Elwood since Elwood, with a horror of a
traffic record, ran a red light). The law enforcement contingent of the
plethora of enemies they’ve made in their odyssey take part in the final scene
where J & E are caught just as they pay the orphanage’s bill. The contingent
includes a host of police; Army; rappelling-down-a-building sorts like a SWAT
team; and enough others, in all manner of vehicles (tanks, a helicopter…), that
would lead you to think they were responding prodigiously to a major invasion
by a foreign enemy.
To add to the fun are a small
crew of men J & E also inadvertently offend—the only types of white folk
that in this country could look “obviously dubious” in contrast to J & E
(or just about anyone else): a group of “Illinois Nazis,” headed by a leader
(who does craft-type painting of a model bird in spare time) played by Henry
Gibson [URL] (always one for brave role choices) and his “Gruppenfuehrer [sp?].”
The Nazis are played the way, in movies, they often seem best handled—as
quintessential buffoons who might be serious in their beliefs but will be made
the butt of jokes in short time. (Comic/director Mel Brooks has said that
his own preferred way to depict Hitler is just to make him look laughable and
ludicrous.)
The movie makes creative, and at other times adopting, use of blues and
R&B modes
Interestingly, many of the
performers who partook in this film were born in or around 1950, including
Landis, Aykroyd, and Belushi. But numerous “old-timers” take part too,
especially those who reflect the longevity of the blues/R&B that the film
so lovingly celebrates: Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, and John Lee Hooker among them. The Blues Brothers’ backup band itself reflects both the
initially synthetic nature of this project, and what the band and the film so
enticingly resulted in. The session musicians, including bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn (who died recently) and guitarist Steve Cropper (both of whom
helped make up the 1960s group Booker T and the MGs), were combined with
numerous others, for a band that eventually became associated in people’s minds
with the Blues Brothers and with each other. A look at the band’s Wikipedia article gives a list of the musicians, late-1970s-era and later.
According to a making-of doc,
producer Robert Weiss (he was one of several producers) said the band
represented a fusion of a Memphis rhythm section
with a “New York”
horn section (he probably said “New York” because the horn players came from
the Saturday Night Live band). Dan
Aykroyd, whose keen love for and expertise on the blues was a guiding force of
writing the film, characterizes the band as “Chicago electric urban blues fused
with the Memphis Stax/Volt movement,” the latter names (Stax, at least)
reflecting record labels. (he references Chicago more in keeping with the genre
of music intended.)
The film’s opening song, under
some of the opening titles, represents the signature approach of this band. After
we see Jake emerge from prison, his pudgy frame put into relief by the glare of
morning sun, as prison gates open semi-portentously, he stands in his dark suit like a cross between a dipshit
and Mr. Kodiak Grizzly. He and Elwood embrace, and the music heralds the start
of film’s two-hour fun-train. The opening song, “She Caught the Kady”—with
lyrics like “She caught the Kady [a train, apparently] / and left me a mule to
ride,” originally partly written by the bluesman Taj Mahal—seems in its bare
bones a basic blues song (and roughly on a par with Hooker’s more Delta-blues
type contributions within the film). But “Kady” is energized and made rather
stirring by the Blues Brothers band with its sturdy guitar/base/etc. rhythm
section and the fanfare-like horns. In this example, the movie all at once (1)
“uses as an orienting trope,” (2) celebrates, and (3) elevates (sometimes
almost with overproduction) the language and texture of the blues; and of
course the movie adds some authenticity when some famous names do more typical
versions of their own blues or R&B songs—Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and
James Brown.
James Brown, in
particular, is a marvel. He plays a minister (at an apparent Baptist church,
though the studio setting makes it look pretty cavernous) named Cleophus James.
He speaks part of a sermon that ought to sound familiar (“Don’t get los’ when
the time comes, for the day of the Lord cometh—as a thief in the night!”). But
when he sings a song in a signature James Brown way, adapting to gospel (during
filming, the backing music was prerecorded, and only his vocal was recorded on
the set live, according to the making-of doc), I’ll be darned if I know what
his words are a lot of the time, but to the point, that music and his
performance are so gut-appealing that you
swing right along with them. You seem to get what you need of the meaning
just from his intonations, rhythm, accents—stuff that includes what linguists
call “paralanguage” and what blues and jazz singers do to add color and
creative rhythm to singing.
(It’s interesting to compare
this film’s stagey, comically overdrawn depiction of music and dancing at a
Baptist church with the more realistic depiction in the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers [2004], the DVD for
which contains an extra that includes two extended gospel-song takes that were
sampled in the film, which are wonderful to listen to.)
The script’s writing is witty in unexpected places
Some spoken lines within this
long story may seem a little baroque, but if you see the film several times,
you appreciate the creativity of the fancier lines (examples of which we’ll see
below). Other times the script can have an almost Samuel Beckettian simplicity,
as when, early on, Jake and Elwood are about to be pulled over by police:
Elwood: “Shit!”
Jake: “What?”
E: “Rollers [police behind them].”
J: “No!”
E: “Yeah.”
J: “Shit!”
We can look at more elaborate
examples via a kind of adult continuing education test (some quotes may be a
bit off):
Question: How did Jake wind up in the “joint [prison],” where we
find him at the start of the film? Answer
(per Elwood): “The reason he got locked in the slam in the first place is from
sticking up a gas station to cover you guys. He paid for the band’s room
service tab for that Kiwanis gig in Colt
City.”
Q: How does Matt “Guitar” Murphy’s wife (played by Aretha Franklin) reveal to Matt that two men, whom she doesn’t know at first, who want to
see Matt are present in their diner? A:
Wife: “We’ve got two honkies out here dressed like Hasidic diamond merchants.”
Matt: “Say what?” Wife: “They look like they’re from the CIA or something.”
Q: How do Jake and Elwood and Matt “Guitar” Murphy greet each
other, with a trading of notes from their checkered pasts? A: Matt to Jake: “How was Joliet?”
Jake: “Oh, it was bad. Thursday night
they served a wicked pepper steak.” Matt: “It can’t be as bad as the cabbage
roll at the Terre Haute Federal Pen.” Elwood: “Or the oatmeal at the Cook County
slammer.” Matt: “Oh, they’re all pretty bad.”
Q: How does Jake invite Elwood to join him at a table at the Chez
Paul? A: [said with mock high-class
archness] “Come, Elwood. Let us adjourn ourselves to the nearest table, and
overlook this establishment’s board of fare.”
Q: How does the Mystery Woman played by Carrie Fisher explain
how she got seven limousines for the elaborate ceremony that her family had
arranged for her pending marriage to Jake, before Jake ignominiously skipped
out, and “betrayed” her? A: “My
father used his last favors with Mad Peter Trollop [an organized-crime figure,
presumably].”
Q: What are the ironies employed where a good-natured joke is made
about the blindness of the character Ray played by Ray Charles? A: After Jake, Elwood, and the band
start checking out items in the store Ray’s Music Exchange, Ray appears from a
back room, raising a kind of protective screen. “Pardon me,” he says. “We do
have a strict policy concerning the handling of instruments; an employee of
Ray’s Music Exchange must be present.
Now, may I help you?” A bit later, when a young boy sneaks in and tries to
steal a guitar hanging on the wall, Ray suddenly pulls out a gun and shoots
toward the boy, hitting the wall intentionally. This scares the boy off. Of
course, we merely smile at the idea that Ray could be such a good, scare-tactic
shot when he is blind (something that doesn’t play into today’s debate
connected with recent gun control issues).
Q: When Maury Sline, a booking agent played by Steve Lawrence,
meets and J & E in a sauna, where Jake strong-arms him into arranging for J
& E to have their band play a large facility in order to raise $5,000
quickly, what does Sline say that reveals his earthy sense as well as his
ethnic side that includes use of Yiddish terms? A: He scorns J & E for being about to wear the same “[update 3/23/13] vakatsye suits”—I found this spelling (for a word meaning "vacation") in the Yiddish section of a multi-language dictionary I have—the Yiddish word basically means, in this context, “outlandish”; and
he notes how when people come for entertainment, they “want to tummle [sp?; essentially
meaning, make a racket], they want to carry on!”
In memoriam re several players
It’s surprising how many of the
actors and musicians in this film have died, reflecting the 33 years since this
film came out, as well as the varied ages of these people in 1980 (this list
may be incomplete):
