Defend the Indefensible: The Blues Brothers

Thanks for that, mark s. People were recently giving me shit because I'd somehow never seen so much as a minute of this film. Guess I should check it out.

lol i will never learn how to spell aykroyd properly

also briefcase full of blues went double platinum tho presumably at least some of that was after the film? i mean the backing band had earned this i guess but

i think Briefcase had maybe less legacy sales than you'd think...

The sweet spot of the Blues Brothers' audience was 17 to 24 i imagine, maybe a little younger at the early end. Like Animal House, the film probably did best in areas where the R rating wasn't enforced.

disco does suck btw

(I think of TBB not as an '80s phenomenon, as they started doing opening bits on SNL in '77 and the film came out in June '80, but as the tail end of the '70s necessarily-compromised attempt at debauched pop multiculturalism)

"yuppies" weren't identified explicitly as a phenomenon in America til around '84, so i look at Ferris Bueller as a more blatant outgrowth of that trend.

lol i will never learn how to spell aykroyd properly

the problem with Landis filming, for instance, the long-gone Maxwell Street market means that brief scene is by far the most visible documentation of something with a long and rich history that many others could have done much more with, given the opportunity

1) Name names - who could have "done much more with" the Maxwell Street market in a movie context?
2) Explain how and why anybody else would have ever been given the opportunity.

Literally the only director I can think of who might have been interested in something like that would be Michael Mann (who's from Chicago) and then he'd probably just have turned it into the backdrop for a car chase or two white dudes having a stone-faced conversation with each other. So, same difference.

The issue isn’t Landis’ relative ineptitude in itself so much as it was a relative ineptitude that got the opportunity to document Maxwell St — within the context of a multimillion Hollywood film — that other directors didn’t. It’s like saying “name singers who could’ve sung ‘Soul Man’ better than Aykroyd and Belushi.’” I can’t be positive, but I bet there might be a couple.

Of course no one else would’ve been given the opportunity — why would a huge budget be thrown at a competent director (maybe one with ties to the community and phenomenon they’re filming) to document a years-long weekend tradition on the south side of Chicago?

I think what you're looking for is a documentarian like Fred Wiseman or Les Blank.

'zackly

isn't John lee Hooker onscreen for about 45 seconds?

Feels like there's a trajectory from "Shout" in Animal House to this to the Lee Atwater / yuppie era that killed popular 12-bar blues by the early 90s.

Are there other Chicago soul/blues performances in movies around this time? Only one that comes to mind is Albert Collins in...Adventures in Babysitting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=552PLnE61TM

There's a bit of narration by Aykroyd at the beginning of Briefcase (and all BB concerts?) that goes something like "the blues as we know it will be extinct by the year 2000")... so, self-fulfilling prophecy?

'zackly

isn't John lee Hooker onscreen for about 45 seconds?

There's a Blues/Soul Club scene in Thief (Cash MacCall performing?).

well, not the first, and certainly not decades... there was Medium Cool (shot around the '68 Dem convention, released in '69), and a fair amount of The Sting, The Fury and quite a few others in the '70s:

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius)

i don't think the folks making medium cool exactly cleared it with daley first...

Are there other Chicago soul/blues performances in movies around this time? Only one that comes to mind is Albert Collins in...Adventures in Babysitting.

He jams a bit in that scene and then occurs one of the least bluesy songs that is purportedly bluesy in film or TV history. Can’t remember if this is before or after the scene where they walk through Grant Park past the nonexistent Grant Park El train.

I was also going to say that the music in TBB is mostly definitely not blues, the genre just happens to make a couple of cameo appearances.

decent point, rush

when did maxwell street market as-was come to an end? didn't it still exist some way into the 80s and even the 90s before the stalls were all folded up and moved on? i think there are directors around who could have done something less sketchy with it: jonathan demme, paul schrader, jim jarmusch, maybe even walter hill? i mean obviously the idea could hardly be be more counterfactual, sadly…

the idea that Murphy and Cropper and Dunn etc know no country tunes is total Landis-land projection

the Dunn and Cropper and Murphy &al. in the film are fictional characters

Maxwell St Market was forced out in ‘94, due to a new UIC building or two. But there is a “New Maxwell St Market” on Des Plaines Ave, started in 2008.

And hey, there’s a documentary about it!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheat_You_Fair:_The_Story_of_Maxwell_Street

isn't John lee Hooker onscreen for about 45 seconds?

Directors Cut? Really? Legit?

Technically an “extended cut” — there’s a handful of scenes stretched out a bit, and some brief additional sequences. The only one of those I remember off the top of my head is a bit where Elwood parks his car in a CTA electrical closet behind the transient hotel, where the car supposedly gets its “powers” from.

And it’s on the 25th anniversary DVD.

Ah right. I thought it was one of those fabled extended versions that hadn't been seen but had been discussed

XP It was also the cut available instead of the theatrical on the original DVD.

also briefcase full of blues went double platinum tho presumably at least some of that was after the film? i mean the backing band had earned this i guess but

― mark s, Saturday, August 25, 2018 10:43 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes indeed.

Evidently a popular Xmas '78 gift.

BLUES BROTHERS
BRIEFCASE FULL OF BLUES

2x Multi-Platinum | October 30, 1984
Platinum | January 5, 1979
Gold | December 22, 1978

Haha, exactly

I was also going to say that the music in TBB is mostly definitely not blues, the genre just happens to make a couple of cameo appearances.

This is probably one of the Blues Brother's biggest problems for me tbh, they flatten the history of Afro-American music down to this level where "blues" stands for everything from Cab Calloway to Aretha Franklin.

The Blues Brothers 2000 soundtrack has some jams, surprisingly.

Speaking of Gerri Hirshey again, what was up with the paperback cover of Nowhere To Run? It seemed to depict Solomon Burke in an Elvis imitator wig.

This is great

https://youtu.be/lVydhKIDoqQ

fair amount of The Sting,

Not as much as you might think overall. Most of it was Pasadena http://movie-tourist.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-sting-1973.html

whole concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTpiL_Leg-Q

Feels like there's a trajectory from "Shout" in Animal House to this to the Lee Atwater / yuppie era that killed popular 12-bar blues by the early 90s.

there's a lot of other little steps along the way, usually involving white people's (and ONLY white people's) reification of 60s R&B - from the Big Chill to the Commitments. But idk seeing people diss this movie for its impact on the music industry or the way it handled the music is strange. Never knew this movie had detractors to be honest.

“Back to the Future” had a white teenager from 1985 retroactively inspiring Chuck Berry, and somehow rock 'n roll survived...

Not knocking the movie with that comment ^, only thinking through its popularity and how it connected the music with being a rebel, etc. xpost

this movie has problems unless you find endless vehicular mayhem endlessly funny

also, as someone pointed out at the time, Belushi's eyebrows were one of his comic assets and he only takes the shades off once.

right, there's obviously some sloppy + stupid stuff in it, I had just never previously heard it criticized specifically for the way it handled the music

xp

morbs can you remember *who* said that abt belushi's eyebrows? i assumed i'd remembered it from pauline kael's review but no

i thought it might've been Kael; it's def a US contemporary critic

Belushi's attempt at an ingratiating accent when they show up at Bob's Country Bunker always gets me.

David Denby slammed the film in New York magazine for being overblown in general and giving short shrift to the cameo stars:

https://books.google.com/books?id=5uUCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false

maybe the eyebrows line was from Janet Maslin in the NY Times

I thought it was Roger Ebert, but I didn't see it in his review (which is online).

lol this is now going to drive me nuts >:(

ha this is playing at the Castro next week and my daughter expressed interest after seeing the Aretha clip, maybe we'll go

xp It wasn't Janet Maslin. She panned the film btw, only complimenting Aretha Franklin's performance (and said even that scene was badly edited).

when i was growing up i never knew it could possibly have been panned, since it's generally really entertaining and funny and the music is good (albeit the loosest definition of the blues.) I guess I get it now, but I don't agree. sure the car pileup comedy isn't really funny, except in the absurd sense. but the BBs underplaying everything while it goes to hell around them still works.

i like how it's pretty respectful overall, even if the respect is often awkward. and it's still refreshing to see a movie where there's zero "scary" bits involving the inner city scenes (cf. Adventures in Babysitting, Animal House, any number of other films too numerous to mention.)

the most (comedy) tense bits involve a nun, a country bar (that's a different kind of problematic, i agree), the cops, and a fancy Near North restaurant.