Defend the Indefensible: The Blues Brothers

"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses."

C'mon!

"We like both kinds. Country and Western."

Now the Commitments, on the other hand, as both a film and a "band" is far far FAR guiltier of the alleged crimes directed at the BBs in this thread. That is some of the worst shit EVER. Totally indefensible.

It may have turned the stomach of some people that were blues fans before and after the movie, especially black fans, but I don't think that you would have a blues bar or two in every decent sized US city perhaps with out it. If not, why do all of these places have some artwork in the bar referencing the movie?

I know the first time I ever heard Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Sam & Dave and Cab Calloway was when I saw this movie at age eleven.

You couldn't move for Blues Brothers tribute bands back in the 1980's but they all seem to have disappeared now thank god.

I don't know a single person that's seen Blues Brothers 2000.

The first movie is still pretty good. 2000 is pretty bad, but I think it could have been saved had they had more car crashes.

Likewise "the Pianist" and "Prince of Tides".

The second one's a pile of shit, obv.

I reserve my ire for their appearances in bar jukeboxes and classic rock radio. That shit is wrong.

however, can we blame the blues brothers for the musical career of bruce willis?

I liked it better than Jaws too.

This was eclipsed only by a swing type band at a wedding last summer: "Here's another great Robbie Williams track, called Mack the Knife" etc

I hear that, apart from the fact that The Prince Of Tides is probably beyond salvation: "Lowenstein! Lowenstein!". It goes for many other films, though.

never cared for it much beyond that tho.
m.

And Aretha and Calloway come across great even if Landis couldn't direct the numbers for shit.

"Orange Julius? Orange Julius? Three Orange Juliuses."

Let's not forget that this is the director who also brought us Kentucky Fried Movie, American Werewolf in London, and Thriller before turning to absolute shit.

I highly value this movie (not the sequel, not the soundtrack)... as an important part of my childhood with as many quotable lines as any great comedy.

it's funny cuz they're white

http://www.myfonts.com/images/family/gonzalez/orange-whip.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Whip

corrected.

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.

the nun is of course Kathleen Freeman, of Jerry Lewis' rep company and Singin' in the Rain ("rrrround tones").

oh WOW I had never made that connection!!

and I watch Singin in the Rain once a year :(

She also in the Americanized Broadway musical of The Full Monty with terminal cancer, and stayed with it until 5 days before her death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Freeman

She panned the film btw, only complimenting Aretha Franklin's performance (and said even that scene was badly edited).

supposedly the performance part of the Aretha scene came out the way it did was that she had problems nailing both the lip-syncing and the choreography (something she'd never had to do to such a degree before or after), so they had to kind of edit around her at times when they just didn't have usable footage for certain parts.

and also, Landis cut off the sax player's head. (foreshadowing of Vic Morrow)

*rimshot*

It's interesting to read what the early-80s NYC media had to say, but please...the Blues Brothers (and Landis etc in general) is a classic example of a chasm between critics and ticket-buyers.

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

this was enough to make quite an impression on young me

And he's not on the album?

Nope. With the exception of "The Old Landmark" (James Brown with the Rev. James Cleveland Choir), everything on the soundtrack album is recorded by the Blues Brothers band, either with Belushi & Aykroyd ("She Caught the Katy," "Gimme Some Lovin'") or with whichever guests (Aretha, Ray, Cab Calloway).

None of the other songs in the film -- Sam & Dave, Fats Domino, John Lee Hooker, Louis Jordan -- are on the soundtrack record.

Posted upthread:

LANDIS: What’s important to remember about that movie is, it was John and Danny’s intention to exploit their own celebrity of the moment, and focus a spotlight on these great American artists because rhythm and blues was in eclipse. To give you an idea, MCA Records, Universal Records, refused the soundtrack album.
DEADLINE: Why?

LANDIS: They said, who’s going to buy this music? And then, one of the great accomplishments of The Blues Brothers came when we recorded live John Lee Hooker on Maxwell Street, which is gone now. We had Pinetop Perkins, all these legendary people, recording John’s song “Boom Boom.” And when we ended up making a deal with Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun himself wouldn’t put John Lee Hooker on the album. He said, he’s too old, and too black. It was very gratifying when the album went platinum.

I pulled a bunch of my parent's vinyl from storage last week, and among the titles was Briefcase... Spun it earlier this evening, and enjoyed it a bit. Aside from a couple obvious numbers, they dug fairly deep for songs, made sure you knew who did most of 'em to begin with, give the band room to move, and emphasize the humor in Blues/Soul that gets too often forgotten by revivalists (although they do go overboard--some serious cocaine thought went into doing "Groove Me" in comedy Jamaican).

watched this movie with the kids last night and maybe I shouldn't have been surprised at how much they loved it. In a weird way, it's a perfect kids' movie, as long as you don't mind the swearing - the set-up is bare-bones simple, there's no extended dialogue or plot mechanics to decipher, tons of WB-cartoon style physical comedy, a great musical number every 5 minutes or so.

No thank you, ma'am. We may be suckin' back a few beers later on. We'll be here all night. You see, we're the band!

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0008/3453/5487/products/8488566437676557808_GRATEFUL_DEAD_NEW_YEARS_2048x.jpg?v=1537901528

I haven't seen this since I watched it many times as a kid, and my only memories are the country bar scene, Aretha singing "Think," and the car chase/crash, which was my favorite part of the whole thing.

Trying to watch this with others right now but...just can't.

What do you find difficult?

Still can’t get over the Blue Men Sing the Whites resistance I shared with Janet Maslin when it first arrived on the scene

No Orange Whips for you!

Recently revisited this one on 4K, in the extended cut. The only scene which I recognized as new to me was Elwood quitting his job. I'm surprised to learn that this extended version (148 minutes) is actually still shorter than the original cut: 160 minutes, with an intermission.