“It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses.” “Hit it.”
I have to wonder what the executives at Universal Pictures thought while The Blues Brothers was in production. Besides the fact that it went over budget and ran over on time, which are always concerns, it had to have seemed to be a little risky just on the face of it. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the stars, were both popular comedic actors, but their previous outing together, Steven Spielberg’s 1941, had a lackluster reception at the box office (likewise, so did their third and final collaboration, Neighbors; both are actually good films, but have largely been forgotten). Belushi had Animal House to his name, but nothing else of note; Aykroyd didn’t even have that. The characters of the Blues Brothers were known from their appearances on Saturday Night Live, but as a musical act more than just a comedy sketch, and there hadn’t been any prior attempt to bring an SNL concept to the big screen (though obviously there would be several later; other than Wayne’s World, I don’t think any of them were worth watching.)
Musicals were largely a thing of the past. So was blues music. The film called for the casting of several blues and R&B musicians in significant roles, and not only were they not experienced actors, but most of their careers were in slumps at the time; they weren’t going to draw any audiences in on their own. Dan Aykroyd was the writer who came up with all of the ideas, and he hadn’t made a name for himself as a writer yet; in fact, it was his first project, and he handed director John Landis a literal tome — the size of and in the covers of a phone book — which Landis then had to trim down in order to make a working screenplay out of it. Landis himself was also known solely for Animal House and a couple of schlocky cult comedy films — Kentucky Fried Movie and one literally titled Schlock. And then in order to shoot everything that still remained after Landis trimmed the script, they would have to get unprecedented permission from the city of Chicago to film. On the surface, it had to have looked like a risky proposition; there was every chance that it’s large-for-the-day budget of $27 million would be going to a box office bomb. Continue reading
