Original subtitles

Ladies and gentlemen

"Joliet Jake" Blues-- John Belushi

Here,s Elwood-- Dan Aykroyd.

Some people say that...

going to college and going on in life...

and doing something different from what one studied in college...

means that you wasted your college years.

Well, I studied criminology, sociology...

deviant psychology, abnormal psychology...

and I went into show business.

All I,m saying is we gotta figure out some way to get that money honestly.

Well, that could be a problem.

It,s like the Penguin says. we gotta make that move towards redemption.

We gotta go to church.

"You gotta make that move toward redemption. You gotta go to church."

Bullshit.

Come on.

'Alleluia

Amen

The band.

The band.

Do you see the light?

The band!

Do you see the light?

What light?

Have you seen the light?

Yes! Yes!

Jesus H. Tap-Dancin, Christ!

I have seen the light!

The cíub where we came up wíth the Blues Brothers...

was a speakeasy that I had in Toronto called the 5O5 Club...

and John was up recruiting The Natíonal Lampoon Radío Hour...

trying to steal talent from Second City and bring them to New York.

He managed to grab Gilda Radner.

I didn't wanna go 'cause I was on a children's TV show.

I had Second City. I was making more money than the prime minister of Canada.

Plus, I had my speakeasy. I had walls ofcash--

Literally, cash in the walls from this after-hours, illegal booze can...

called the 5O5 Club.

The night John came up to recruit...

we came back to the booze can and we started to play old blues records.

And I had a Downchild Blues Band. Put them on. he said, "Who's this?"

I said, "Downchild Blues Band a local blues band.

You,re from Chicago. You should know about the blues."

He said, "I'm into Grand Funk and Allman Brothers."

I said, "Well, that's all blues."

And I reacquainted him with blues...

and he reacquainted me with sort of heavy metal...

and howard Shore was in the place that night.

He eventually became musical director of Saturday Night Live...

and we were saying, "We should put a band together."

And he said, "Yeah, you could call yourselves The Blues Brothers."

Subsequently, that,s what we did.

Belushi was very into heavy metal.

He had his head-banging room in--

They had a town house in the Village in New York...

and he had this padded room, and you'd go in there--

Only Michael Jackson. he's the only other person I know...

who plays music that loud.

They,d crank up this hea metal stuff and your fillings would hurt.

It was like, "Aaah!"

When I was working at Saturday Night Live as an arranger in 1978...

Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi came back from a weekend in San Francisco...

and they had stayed up all night with Curtis Salgado...

listening to blues records.

Curtis Salgado is the harmonica player with the Robert Cray Blues Band.

On the way back on the aeroplane, John and Danny...

came up with the idea of these two characters...

that later became called the Blues Brothers.

Back then ít was just to sort of explore the music have fun wíth ít...

make the audience laugh in the warm-ups--

Pull off our appearances on Saturday Night Live...

and kind of come off to sell these characters.

But as it evolved, the mission was to...

reacquaint people, or acquaint people for the first time...

with this tremendous form of American music.

We rehearsed the Saturday Night Live band...

and we were hoping to get this routine on the show.

The fact that John and Danny were so popular--

They were heroes already with the public.

We wore the suits for a couple ofoccasions.

Then we took the act to the show as a warm-up act.

The timing was right. The public was behind these kids from the get-go.

Once we got the show, we started to play around on weekends.

We played at the Lone Star Cafe.

Our backup bands at one time were like Willie Nelson's band...

and Room Full of Blues, Duke Robellard's band.

We got letters and cards and phone calls...

which led to another appearance ofthe Blues Brothers.

Then we put it on the show with Carrie Fisher's guest host appearance...

and with Steve Martin subsequently.

Then Steve Martin asked us to open for him at the Universal Amphitheatre.

When we looked into the crowd at the beginning ofthe show...

there's Jack Nicholson.

It was like the who,s who of hollywood, all with their dark glasses on.

Nicholson was right in the first seat, and he had his shades on.

I looked over, and he caught my eye...

and he lifted up his shades and--

"Wow!" Lowered his shades. Cool.

No one was prepared for the phenomenal success...

that Jake and Elwood suddenly had...

because they opened for Steve Martin at the Universal Amphitheatre...

and then an album was made of that.

'And that album was-- l thínk to thís day..

It like the highest-selling blues album...

which is pretty bizarre.

We came along at a time when there was a real lull...

and a dip in American music tastes...

and one fad was going out...

and people weren't really sure what the next fad was going to be.

It was black music it was blues and rhythm and blues...

and at that time, black music was Nile Rodgers and Chic...

singing "Le Freak."

It was all disco.

It was the discolnew wave cusp...

and in there we were able to slot in...

and do the song that a lot of people knew...

but with a different kind oftwist to it...

and with the image associated with who the Blues Brothers were.

The album went on to sell three and a half million copies...

and we had a viable entertainment act after that.

We put the band back together, we do a few gigs...

we get some bread, bang, five thousand bucks.

Yeah, well, getting the band back together...

might not be that easy, Jake.

The band itself had basically been assembled already..

By Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and really by Paul Shaffer.

Įohn Belushi and I handpicked this band...

2O years ago.

We started to play with the Saturday Night Live band...

and "Bones" Malone was there and Paul Shaffer...

and Bones said, "have you ever heard of Steve Cropper and 'Duck' Dunn?"

I hadn't really heard of them, but I knew ofthe Stax-Volt movement...

in the ,6Os in Memphis.

A buddy of mine used to call me...

and usually if I was in the middle of mixing or overdubbing...

they'd say, "Steve is busy. he can't come to the phone. Leave a message."

Well, we had this thing that he would call and pretend he was somebody...

and he,d say, "This is President Nixon" or "This is Stevie Wonder"...

or this is da-da-da-da-da-da.

I get this call, and they say John Belushi's on the phone.

I go, "Oh, yeah, my buddy. hey, Alan, what's goin' on?"

He said, "Who?" I said, "Alan, this isn't you?"

He said, "No, this is John Belushi."

One night I got a call, long ago, from John Belushi.

It was about 3:OO in the morning, and I thought it was a friend of mine...

putting me on, and he said, "This is John Belushi.

We're gonna put this band together. I like your bass playing.

Would you come to New York and rehearse?"

I hung up. Five minutes later, he calls back and says...

"This is not a joke. It's John Belushi."

Anyway, I told him, "I'll have to get back to you."

So, in talking to Robben Ford a little bit later, he said...

"Who was that?" I said, "Believe it or not, it was John Belushi.

He wants me to come to New York...

and start rehearsing for some shows next week."

He says, "You gonna do it?" I said, "I don't know if I can."

He said, "Well, I,ll do it." So--

When my artist said he'd do it, I said, "We'll work something out."

Having them come along, Duck and Steve...

because they were real R&B guitar players...

and real men of soul...

legitimized what we were up to and gave us...

sort of a whole purpose and a meaning there...

just beyond doing kind of a comedy act...

and we started to revive some of these songs.

It was very important to John Belushi...

to have a hot lead guitar player.

I kept saying to him, "We can get somebody good."

He wanted to jump and get that spot in the band filled.

I was swappin, licks with Johnny Winter...

and this guy named Doc Palmers, I think it was...

had told them about me.

So they come up and they introduced themselves.

"Hi, my name is John, and this is Dan.

We're thinkin, about makin' an album.

Would you like to help us make it?,,

And I said, "I would be glad to help you make it."

We saw him playing at a club on Columbus Avenue.

He played wíth James Cotton. i'had seen hím before.

I'd known of his work, and we approached him.

When I was talkin, to 'em, and we were supposed to be negotiatin'...

he goes, "Well, Matt.

Yes, that,s good, then. You're gonna help us.

So I think your figure,s gonna be like...

65O."

I go, "Oh, no, man. I think that should be more."

And he goes, "Oh, no! I'm sorry. I meant 6,5OO."

And I almost fell offthe chair.

F6,5OO! Jesus, I couldn't believe that.

I didn,t think it was gonna be near that much.

So the band was pretty much intact...

although there was this very political, it's a long, involved story...

like "Rashomon"-- lots ofsides--

But Paul was prevented from being in the first movie...

by unnamed people.

But he couldn't be in the first movie.

There were some problems with Paul Shaffer's availability...

owing to a contractual dispute with Saturday Níght Líve...

and all sorts of difficulties.

So he couldn't get out of his contract...

and so John Landis had seen this film where I played the piano...

and John Belushi knew I played piano...

so, voilá, I was on the plane.

And then Willie hall-- Duck and Steve recommended Willie.

They knew hím from Memphís. They played wíth hím ín Memphís wíth lsaac Hayes.

Some people that we hired were in the original Saturday Night Live band.

Most notably, the three horn players.

Our friend Lou Delgado from the Saturday Night Live show...

played the fourth horn part...

but there was no fourth horn player in the movie...

so that's one ofthe anomalies ofthe movie.

You're hearing four horns playing, but there's only three of us on-stage.

The Blues Band has amazing musicians.

It's a Memphis rhythm section...

with a New York horn section...

and the ídea of takíng that kínd of fatback rhythm...

and putting slick New York horns on top of ít...

combíned wíth the specíaí vocals and harpp playing of Dan'Aykroyd..

Was really amazing.

The're a great band and great to listen to.

If you listen to the records, you can hear them doing great stuff.

The guys in the band are some of the most accomplished musicians...

you'll ever come across in your life.

We recognized their talent, their abilities.

They recognized that although we were not the greatest...

vocalists/harp players...

we weren't the greatest front men...

we provided an energy and a package for the band...

and sort ofan enclosure to reintroduce the world...

to a lot of this music.

Danny's a maven. I mean, he's a real--

Not only a true fan but an expert in blues and rhythm and blues...

and has a real passion for it.

I used to get more people, interviewers and fans as well, goin'...

"What's the thing on Belushi and Aykroyd?

They really can't sing, can they?,,

I said, as far as I'm concerned--

I think I'm a fairly well-qualified musician.

I'd been a producer for so many years.

I said, "I think he sings better than some artists that are out there."

If you heard John Belushi at rehearsals like we did--

I have some cassettes at home ofthe original rehearsals...

little pieces of it.

He was good. This guy had great time. I think he was a drummer.

He had such a love for it, and he played drums in a band.

He kept decent time. he had his rhythm down.

He never missed a step or a cue.

We tried to pick blues songs that weren't Delta blues.

We've never been a Delta blues band...

and Delta blues is the primitive rural blues.

We were always a Chicago, electrified urban blues band...

fused with the Memphis Stax-Volt movement.

I thínk what we tríed to do ís represent that ín the movíe as best we couíd

The creatíon of the mythology of these characters...

has been very strong, versuccessful..

To the point where it kind of scary.

I meet people who tell me that Jake and Elwood Blues...

are these legendary blues artists, and I think, "Uh-oh."

We put together what I like to call...

the third-greatest rhythm and blues revue in the world...

the first being James Brown, the second being Tina Turner's...

and the third being us.

First you trade the Cadillac for a microphone.

Then you lie to me about the band.

Now you're gonna put me right back in the joint.

They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God.

Me and the Lord...

we got an understanding.

We're on a mission from God.

Would it make you feel better if you knew...

that what we're asking Matt here to do is a holy thing?

You see, we're on a mission from God.

- We need this gig. - We're on a mission from God.

Judy Belushi and John and I come up with...

sort ofthe back story and the concept of the Blues Brothers...

as sort of filling in our own conceptions...

of who they were and where they came from after the first album came out.

I remembered all that stuff from crim...

and sat down and kind of used...

used it in creating the profile...

of two guys who start out, basically, ín an orphanage...

and homeless...

and end up in a life of crime because they never really had a famlly

Most of your criminals...

have that as an origin.

Danny had said--

Thinking up all these adventures for the Blues Brothers.

They had a big life, and it sounded great.

So we made the deal at Universal Studios...

and Danny went away to write.

I really didn't know how to write movies.

I don't think I'd ever even seen a screenplay.

I was told that most screenplays were 12O to 15O pages long...

but when I sat down to write The Blues Brothers...

there were so many descriptive passages in there--

Paragraphs and paragraphs of shots, of concept...

of ideas, of descriptions, and eventually...

it just kind of ballooned up.

The thing about Dan Aykroyd-- he's a marvellous writer.

What he has that's really great are ideas.

His conceptions are so strong.

I had the idea that since there was no way...

I could get it all into one movie or one script...

I figured I might as well get the knowledge that I have...

about the Blues Brothers-- all ofthe conceptions...

John's input, my input, Judy's input--

And put it all in one volume--

Even though it would be prohibitively long--

And, I figured, devise the method ofwriting...

actually two scripts at one time.

Dan Aykroyd had written, actually, a 324-page script...

that actually had a story...

for recruiting each member of the band individually.

Now, that script, which, by the way, was delivered to me...

in the covers of the Valley Yellow Pages...

,cause it was as big as a phone book--

Dan tried to take the sting out of it...

with humour, making it look like a phone book.

Dan Aykroyd wrote an incredible tome...

about these two guys...

and John then took it and edited it...

and tried to make it into a screenplay for him that he could shoot.

I thought, "There's no way to shoot this."

It was pretty incoherent, but it had great ideas...

and epic characters...

and a real respect for the music...

and it was pretty-- it was big!

I didn't know what Landis was gonna do with it...

but he was an accomplished film-maker.

He had written scripts before, and he was able to take it and distil it...

down to an actual form of screenplay at 12O pages.

We started shooting before we had a finished screenplay, really.

Won,t you welcome, from Calumet City, Illinois...

the show band of Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues--

The Blues Brothers!

All blues music has great humour in ít...

and just the rhythms and the feellng of joy..

That comes from singing it and playing it, I think--

We viewed all of it...

as being able to be relatively easily...

transmitted out there to the audience.

The songs were chosen by Danny and me and John...

and it's just what we liked or what was interesting...

or what was appropriate to the scene.

I remember going to his apartment in the Village where he and Judy lived...

and this was during the period when he was selecting music.

He had this incredible shelf of 45s.

And he'd put something on for about four measures.

"Nah." Snap it.

Put another one on, listen to it.

He'd throw it on the floor and stomp on it.

It was like Blutarsky in Anímal House.

I said, "What are you wasting them-- Give 'em away to somebody."

He said, "I hate this crap."

Personally, I wasn't a big fan ofthis music all along.

I mean, when it,s good, any music is great-- when it's really good.

But I learned to appreciate it by being exposed to it through these guys.

John really knew the stuff, and so did Danny.

If the music didn't work, throw it out. They didn't care.

We would rehearse it three times. Boom! Out.

If it wasn't fun, we didn't do it.

It's always frustrated me that many people...

don't consider the movie a musical, which makes me nuts...

,cause it has more music than most musicals.

Because to him it's a musical.

It's almost non-stop music. There's always music in the background.

There's all these musical numbers.

He really felt that he was directing a musical.

I have a great love for the classic hollywood musical.

Musical comedy is an American theatrical form.

It's ours.

I knew the action part of it...

but to me, loving old hollywood and old hollywood musicals...

that's what I kept visualizing.

It's almost like a camouflaged musical.

Musical usually means...

that main characters break into song to express emotion...

and that doesn't happen in this.

It was a new kind of musical.

It was absolutely. It was catching rhythms of life...

in the city and the times.

The musical numbers in the movie...

were kind ofthe crown jewels ofthe piece.

The shoe leather that got you from one musical number to another...

was something that we always tried to keep to a minimum...

so that we could get into the great musical numbers...

that were the set pieces, if you will, in the movie.

There was an attempt to do every kind of performance.

By that I mean like operetta--

Traditional musical comedy, which is the American form...

where people are talking, and then they burst into song...

but the song furthers the plot.

I wanted to do that. l did

Then there's performance numbers when they're on a stage performíng.

So I did that too.

I díd every kínd of number that had been done in a film.

That was the intention.

He not denyíng that there are carchases.

Qf course there are car chases, but there was a rhythm to them.

They were musical numbers. They were production numbers.

If you listen to the scoring and look at the screen...

those cars were dancing, baby.

Those cars were dancing.

The hard thing in a musical is getting a number that feels organic--

That doesn't feel like a sudden departure in the picture.

I think we were very successful...

with most of the numbers in The Blues Brothers.

Musicals are inherently expensive because of the recording and the music.

It's much more expensive now because of what's happened to the--

To buy a song now is much more costly.

I mean, in 'Animal House I paid $2,OOO for a Sam Cooke tune.

Now I'd pay $6O,OOO, $7O,OOO for the same piece of music.

I only remember one problem, and that was with a song...

called "Sweet home Chicago."

Come on

Baby don't you wanna go

Back to that same old place

Sweet home Chicago

l was waiting to hear from the studío...

who owned that song so we could negotíate the publishing rights...

and I'wasn't hearing anything.

Then I'got a memo from a guy here at Universal that said they weren't sure.

So I did a little research of myown and it turned out that MCA...

owned the ríghts to that music

And so I let the guy know.

After an embarrassed phone call, we had the rights to that song.

But, pretty much, it all was fairly easy to get.

I hired this man, Carlton Johnson...

who used to choreograph The Carol Burnett Show for years.

Very talented choreographer. He 's passed away

Carlton was a very tradítíonal..

Kind of corny-- da-da-dada-- you know.

He was great, because he had to work with a variety of acts...

the different guest talent that we had in the movie...

and work with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd

John and Danny aren't real dancers...

therefore l won't use real dancers.

So Carlton Johnson, our choreographer, was told, " I want amateurs only "

And so I shot several numbers ín Chicago...

and by the time I put them together, I thought, "Ooh, that was a mistake."

So when we did the church scene, we brought in professional dancers...

unlike "Shake Your Tail Feather," all amateurs in Chicago.

The Ray Charles number was bíg ín that...

we were out on the streets of Chicago.

We even had people dancing up on the elevated, up on the train.

So that was tough.

All right Do the Twíst

When we shot the outside of Ray's Musíc Exchange...

with the hundreds of people in the streets dancing...

it was freezing cold

It was freezingy and yet, the sequence take splace in the summer.

So we had all these poor dancers out there...

wearíng short-sleeve shirts and thíngs, dancing away

It was like 25 degrees.

Ow!

Cut! Yes!

Essentially, all of the moves in the movie are Carlton's...

and some of the moves that we used subsequently in the act...

when we went on tour were Carlton's...

and as I do "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" today and "Soul Man"...

We still do some of the moves that Carlton taught us today.

Then it came about who we wanted.

Aretha Franklin, we wanted John Lee Hooker, we knew we wanted

Ray Charles. We wanted James Brown.

Unfortunately-- Fortunately for us, but unfortunately at the time...

except for Ray Charles, most ofthese people weren't working.

It was easy to get 'em. You called up and said, "hey, you want a job?"

They went, "Please!" So that was not the hard part.

It was great. We were getting to work with our heroes.

And it was fantastic to be going to the likes of Aretha Franklin...

and Ray Charles and James Brown to ask them to participate.

No one had really done anything like this before.

So it was really very exciting for all of us.

There are certain singers-- B.B. King, Aretha Franklin...

who have trouble with lip sync to playback...

and the reason for that is interesting.

It's because they never sing a song the same way twice.

So it's quite great if you're seeing them live...

but if you're trying to shoot them to playback, it's a pain in the ass.

,Cause it's like, "What is your mouth doing?"

The only problem that you have editing musical numbers...

is do performers do it the same way take after take?

'And can they lip-sync their dialogue--

Theír song, especially if they're the ones who made the song famous?

I'm not gonna mention any names.

- You better think - Think

Think about what you're tryin' to do to me

- Yeah, think - Think, think

Let your mínd go Let yourself be free

Let's go back, let's go back Let's go way on to way back when

I dídn't even know ya

You couldn't have been too much more than ten

I ain't no psychiatrist I ain't no doctor with degrees

It don't take too much hígh I. Q. to see what you're doin' to me

- You better think - Think

Think about what you're tryin' to do to me

- Now, now, now think - Thinky think

Let your mind go Let yourself be free

- Oh, freedom - Freedom

- Freedom - Freedom

Freedom

Yeah, freedom

Right now Freedom

- Freedom - Freedom

Freedom

Oh, freedom

They were not easy numbers to cut.

Lots of takes. Lots of different camera angles to choose from.

Performance variations. Those are hard days, to shoot those scenes.

And I think they looked-- I think they looked pretty good.

One ofthe reasons it's so choppy...

was because Aretha couldn't lip-sync correctly.

And the other was my fault.

I was doing jokes that were not amusing to anyone but me.

I have a shot...

where you see "Blue Lou" Maríní ín the background..

And he's framed so that you're cutting hím here...

whích I found terribly funny, but everyone else went, "That's weird"

I remember getting criticized in a review..

By Janet Maslin that in a coupie of the shots I picked In the diner...

"Blue Lou," the saxophone player...

you only see his legs ,cause he's jumped up on top of the counter.

And they complained about-- She complained...

about how badly this was done and we shouldn't have used this shot.

It seemed to work when we were doing it...

but I guess everybody has his opinion.

So I go to see the Aretha scene, and half the scene...

I'm dancing and I'm cut off from like here.

You don't see the top of my head.

And so, when I came back, Landis says, "how'd you like the scene?"

I said, "It sucked!" he said, "What are you talkin' about?"

I said, "It sucked. I busted my ass to learn this dance sequence...

and to play at the same time, half the time you can't see my head."

So Stephen Katz says...

"You signed up for a lot of money and a little head, and that's what you got."

- And now, people. - All right, Reverend!

When I woke up this morning...

I heard a disturbin, sound.

The James Brown scene that takes place in the church...

you know, we found that James couldn't sing the same way twice.

And so what we did, we took the track, the music itself...

and that was done to playback, and people sang to playback...

except for James Brown, and we recorded his lead vocal live.

Let us preach To the old

We'll constitute it In the old

I preach

Feel it, tell it and live

lt will, ít will

When you shoot someone live, lip-sync's not a problem...

,cause they're live.

In the first movie, John Lee hooker is live.

James Brown was live.

Ray Charles was playback, Aretha was playback..

And all the Blues Brothers stuff. was playback

But it really makes no difference, because the artists are the ones...

who perform it regardless.

It's for technical reasons whether it's live or not.

Dan Aykroyd ís a motor-head

The character of D-Day ín Animal house...

was actuaíbasedon Danny'Aykroyd..

By Harold Ramis and Chris Miller and Doug Kenney...

and I didn,t know Danny at that time.

I learned later that, "hey, this is this guy."

He likes bikes he likes motorcycles.

Danny's idea of a good tíme ís to get in his car in Los Angeles...

and dríve to New York, straíght.

He enjoys that.

I've always liked cars...

but I was really wrítíng--

The whole concept of the Blues Mobile and why it was an old police car...

was basically Flwood's concept.

It was sort of livíng ínsíde the character.

Elwood is a genius driver.

He does extraordinary things with this car.

She caught Katy

And left me a mule to ride

She caught Katy

And left me a mule to ride

Car's got a lot of pick-up.

It's got a cop motor, a 44O-cubic-inch plant.

It's cop tyres, cop suspension, cop shocks.

It's a model made before catalytic converters...

so it'll run good on regular gas.

Whattaya say? Is it the new Blues Mobile or what?

Fix the cigarette lighter.

At that tíme, the hottest police car in Ameríca...

was the Dodge Monaco wíth the 440 cubic-inch engine...

and that became the Blues Mobile because Elwood...

knew that he had to stay, at least, íf not one jump ahead of the law..

On the same kind of technological footing with them.

That's really Flwood's call.

Aykroyd decorated the thing.

That's why you saw all those cigarette packs.

They were Chesterfield King packs.

Had to be matches, gum wrappers.

There were lots of different Blues Mobiles.

There were Blues Mobiles...

that were specífically for hígh-performance driving--

Stunt driving.

Basically, the idea ofthe magic car came from me.

I finally just said-- Danny tends to want to explain this stuff.

In fact, in the new movie...

at one point the car goes underwater...

and Danny wanted to show propellers coming out.

I said, "That's James Bond. We don't have Q. It's a magic car.

It does it ,cause I said so.,,

That's one of the things about film. You show people: there it is.

You want a giant bug? There's your giant bug.

You don't have to explain your giant bug.

A couple of scenes that were omitted from the first movie:

One was, which I-- One of my favourite was--

Sort ofexplained how the Blues Mobile got imbued with special powers...

to do back flips and that, and it was that we parked it...

in a secret hiding place under the El train in Chicago...

in a transformer room to which I had a key

The room opened up with these big steel-plate doors...

and inside were these humming transformers...

and the Blues Mobile parked in there every night...

and sort of absorbed the power of the electrical transformers...

under the El train.

We actuali shot a scene...

where you saw it stored under thís transformer...

and the big eíectrícal hum.

It was part of the "Peter Gunn" thing and..

I cut it out.

The movie was too long. I had to cut stuff, and quite honestly..

I think I saíd to Danny:

"Are you gonna go with each print and explain to people...

,See how we're parked near this transformer?

That's why the car can do this stuff."'

That makes no sense!

In Danny's head, it made sense.

The Blues Mobile that was supposed to tumble end over end--

And originally the notion was to launch the miniature...

and the miniature it self was about four and a half feet long.

There were all these novel ways that the effects guys...

were proposing to do that, and we started going out to see some tests...

which really fizzled, one after the other.

We finally decided to get a bunch of guys and throw it in the air...

and I thínk that's the way we did it.

'And then cut to the Nazis' station wagon...

being dropped over the Lower Wacker area-- a vacant lot--

And we had a target zone of 5O by 5O feet--

I remember there was a specific thing where we wanted to drop the Pinto...

belonging to the Illinois Nazis past the--

You wanted to see it fall past the skyline.

How we were gonna do that was actually drop the Pinto from a helicopter.

We had to have the Ford Pínto certífied by the F.A.A.

They actually wanted to know about íts un-airworthiness.

Cause they were afraid it might be like an airfoil..

And somehow in the middle of the drop go sailing off over Lake Shore Drive.

So we had to do drop tests where we dropped the Pinto from the helicopter...

had to hit a specific place.

We were using the area where they store salt...

that gets spread during the snowstorms oft he winter.

It has nothing on it during the summer...

and it's away from a populated area.

Although, it is within the city.

We proved to the F.A.A. and the city that we could hit a mark.

We dropped this Pinto, and it fell right on the X where we wanted it...

and flattened it.

It was this high when we got done with it. That's how we did that shot.

I've always loved you.

We were fortunate enough to find the Dixie Mall in harvey, Illinois.

An abandoned mall.

It was a one-in-a-million.

You don't go around finding these things abandoned

ln fact, we felt like archaeologists from the 31st century or somethíng...

going into this place with our flashlights.

'All the power was off, dust flying everywhere...

and the place had been closed for over a year.

I'm proud to say we were the first movie to trash a mall.

Because I thought, "Mmm, mmm."

That sequence came out of a location scout.

It was perfect for what we wanted, and we ended up shooting there for a week.

Before they go in the mall, there's this giant parking lot...

that they drive around, and it's like...

"how we gonna fill this parking lot?"

So we made a deal to get brand-new cars--

Every car in that parkíng lot is a brand-new car--

That's just there to fill up the parking lot.

Qtherwíse we couldn't fill the parking lot.

I remember the productíon manager sayíng...

"Don't hít any of those cars"

You got us into this parking lot, pal.

Now you get us out.

You want out of this parking lot? Okay.

- Would there be anything else? - Yes. Do you have a Miss Piggy?

It had, I thinky a 130, 140stores originally

Actually we did them all over.

We went in there and remodelled the whole works, put in breakaways...

and decorated all those stores.

We hadstores that were being dressed..

By people that had franchises that were there.

There were two types of stores: Ones we could wreck, and ones we couldn't wreck.

There's pants and burgers.

Yeah. Lots of space in this mall.

We had híred-- l won't say their names--

But the most famous private security police force in the country.

And we had hired them to guard--

Cause we had millions of dollars of merchandise in there.

We made a deal wíth suppliers.

Anything we didn't break we didn't have to pay for.

So we had guards there, and things were being stolen...

and called the police, and it turned out the guards were doing the stealing.

We had to get guards to watch the guards.

And background action. Enjoying yourself.

And car!

In the mall, all those stunt guys weren't drivers.

Those stunt guys were--

Everyone on foot in the mall are stunt people.

So that's where the huge numbers came in.

I do remember that Danny Aykroyd...

thought that shooting at that mall...

was just one of the greatest things he'd ever seen--

That he'd thought this up, and here it was...

this bizarre carchase combining consumer goods and police cars...

in his own mail

I'll never forget the sheer delight...

that this idea he'd had late one night...

was now being played out ín a very big way

Cut! Stop!

Part of the joke of the first Blues Brothers is size.

Everything's gigantic. Everything's exaggerated to such a huge extent.

It was interesting. People were going, "Car crash? Song?

Gee, that doesn't compute?,,

I just couldn't describe events without...

getting into trouble and without people looking at me like...

"What have you got us into?"

Yeah, well, we did run over...

but the footage is gonna be excellent.

It's movie history.

I know, I know.

No, I think, in this sequence, we're gonna be two days over.

It'll all be on the screen. I promise. Okay. I'll see you in L.A.

Qbviously, one couldn't duplicate the first movie.

It would cost too much. It cost $27 million then...

which is much more than what we got now, actually.

But that was a huge amount then. That was probably like 6O now.

We did this epic--

We had 34 cars going 11O miles an hour in downtown Chicago.

I don't think you could do that again.

Ten-seven-niner still engaged.

Vehicle travelling southbound approaching Chicago city limits.

Commander advises will contact Chicago precincts for local intercept.

Maintain pursuit.

Use of unnecessary violence...

in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers...

has been approved.

Just the fact...

of what it took to film that in Chicago...

tying off blocks and blocks of city streets...

and multiple days of filming for really seconds of film--

We would shut down the city on weekends, I guess on Sundays...

when there wasn't a lot oftraffic or people out...

so no one would, hopefully, cross in front of us.

We had I don't know how many hundreds of P.A.s...

at every intersection, every alley, every doorway...

so that no one would walk out and get hit.

This is definitely Lower Wacker Drive.

If my estimations are correct...

we should be very close to the honourable Richard J. Daley Plaza.

- That's where they got that Picasso. - Yep.

We had great drivers.

The doubles for Belushi and Aykroyd...

were Tommy Huff and Eddie Donno...

and Tom Huff was a brilliant driver.

And what we were doing in that movie that was unusual...

is they were going that fast we were going 1OO miles an hour.

So there's one shot in the movie, when I shot it...

I looked at it in dailies and said...

"People are gonna think I sped this up."

So we reshot it with pedestrians on the sidewalk.

It was probably a wasted effort...

but there's a shot where you see the Blues Mobile coming towards us...

then arounda corner andunder the El traín...

followed by these twenty-some police cars.

They're going 100 miles an hour.

We put people on the sidewalk so you could see they were going...

100 miles an hour.

And what was complicated about that was that on a city street...

you have to make sure that all traffic is stopped

So we were shooting very early Saturday and Sunday mornings...

on a lot of this stuff.

And to make sure all traffic was stopped meant you had to have...

a P.A. with a walkie-talkie at every alley and street and lots of cops...

for half a mile or a mile.

These were big undertakíngs, thís stuff. We díd bíg stuff.

Lots of effects-- mechanical and visual effects...

that made that happen, and really one of the classic chases of all time.

The Blues Brothers was really the first big picture...

allowed to shoot in Chicago since Daley had passed away

You may have heard that Daley had-- this is Mayor Daley--

Had come up with an edict that there would be no filming in Chicago.

He wasn't gonna allow it.

Partly because ofan old MSquad episode...

with Lee Marvin, where it showed a Chicago cop accepting a bribe.

You know, and Mayor Daley's, "That's it."

One of the big issues, given what we were planning, was...

how would we get permission to get the city of Chicago...

to let us film all of this.

We met wíth Mayor Jane Byrne.

We had met with her to say how happy we were to be shooting in Chicago...

and so forth, and she asked was there anything that she could do for us.

It was so Chicago-- Mayor Byrne was very instrumental.

And then other people-- high-placed--

These kind of people-- helped us too.

Because, for instance, shooting in Daley Plaza.

You knowy Cook County Board said, "No, no, no."

We went above them...

to the people who owned the Cook County Board.

This is no longer true in Chicago.

And we were able-- But it was amazing...

the cooperation we got from the city and the police.

Good news.

The mayor of Chicago is gonna allow us...

to take over Daley Plaza and drive the Blues Mobile...

through the lobby ofthe state office building.

Good news: We got the permission. Bad news: We got the permission.

Background action!

Action!

They got what they wanted. It was slick.

It worked terrific. Brakes worked good.

- How'd it look? - Looked terrific.

I couldn't see it. I had my eyes closed.

The first thing I thought about was those Sam Fuller movies.

I thought I was going to be making this great war movie.

That's what went into my mind. I saw it as a battle sequence.

And it really excited me, because we had the tanks...

we had the army-- we had so much stuff going on.

We had conversatíons-- How many I.S.P.s?

Illinois State Police cars. We got like 6O I.S.P.s...

and 42 Chicago city cop cars and 17 ambulances.

15O National Guardsmen, 6O Chicago cops.

35O guns.

There's 15O batons.

Four Sherman tanks, three helicopters.

7OO pounds of prime rib.

And 4OO troops. Well, ifwe've got the 4OO troops...

then what about the SWAT team?

Įohn Landis directs-- directed this movie...

as General Westmoreland might prepare a battle.

Come on, men! Screaming! hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle!

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!

Get those weapons ready, mister!

Hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle!

We had a place called "the warroom"...

And in the warroom were maps of Chícago and aerial views...

and this was where all the planníng was done.

If you're gonna tie off major sections of Lower Wacker Drive...

or Lake Shore Drive, these things had to be carefully coordinated...

and with the assistant directors and Chicago police and fire departments...

we staged some very, very big gags.

Get your arms up in the air, people!

From a logistics standpoint, I think the hardest number...

was the Cab Calloway number...

which was a giant, live, large concert...

that we actually shot here in Hollywood at the Palladium.

There were thousands of extras, ín fact, so many..

That we had promoted the audience through a local radio station.

Faster!

In between the set-upsy we're entertaining them...

with local disc jockeys and giving away prizes and so forth.

And there were wardrobe changes and lightíng effects and so on.

I think that wasy logistically..

As far as anything inside was concerned, the most difficult.

You guys know "Minnie the Moocher"?

I knew a hooker named Minnie Mazola.

No, the song "Minnie the Moocher."

- Yeah. So what? - hit it!

I had a rough start wíth Cab.

He came to Chicago to prerecord "Minnie"..

And he was quite taken aback by the tracks.

He listened to them and said, "That's the way it sounded 50 years ago."

Cause we were recording 50 years to the day he had written it.

'And I said, "Yeah, that what I want"

He wanted to do it disco. He had just cut a disco version.

He told me he'd done "Minnie" cha-cha, "Minnie" twist, "Minnie",polka...

"Minnie",rumba-- done all the major dance crazes...

and he didn't understand why we wanted to do it this old-fogy way..

And I told him, "Because that's great, and that's what I want."

He was very unhappy about it and in a very bad mood..

This old guy and he went into the recording studio...

and went in and did a take...

and afterward said, "how was that?"

And I said, "I was unhappy with that, Cab."

And his eyes got narrow. he said, "What was wrong with it?"

So I said, "Well, it was mediocre.

And you're Cab Calloway, so it should be great."

And he said, "Oh, great? I'm sorry. You didn't tell me you wanted it great."

Really angry. So it was like real quiet.

So he goes back in, he puts on the headphones...

and we do another take, and it was great.

It,s the one that,s in the movie. It was great.

But he finishes, and he takes off his headset and says, "how was that?"

And I said, "That was great."

And he said, "You gotta tell me what you want!" and stormed out.

And I thought, "Oh, shit."

But then when he showed up on location...

he was lovely, and he had a really good time on the movie...

and so there were no problems.

But it was a rocky start. I thought, "Uh-oh."

John Landis is something else. he is the greatest.

He loved sharing his experiences, and I don't know of anybody...

other than Duke Fllington, who would have more stories.

The fact that he warmed up to us, and wanted to--

There was no aloofness, no distance--

That made us feel very warm towards him.

He was a sweet man, and what a performer, man.

We used to sit down and talk.

He used to talk about the times that, you know, the early days...

when he was shootin, in Hollywood, the things that happened to him.

And he was a very friendly dude.

I told Cab that one thing that got me was that...

he just went absolutely straight ahead, you know?

And he says, "Well, Lou, I learned something a long time ago.

When you got good musicians, you don't have to say anything.

And if you don't have good musicians, there's nothing you can say."

- Got any fried chicken? - Best damn chicken in the state.

Bring me four fried chickens and a Coke.

You want chicken wings or chicken legs?

Four fried chickens and a Coke.

It's a good movie. It's--

It's about Chicago, it's about music, it's about--

It's about two hours.

There's no sex and drugs in the movie.

I had a funny story happen with John that I've told before...

but it wasn't funny at the time.

We were having quite a big fight. We were over here at Universal...

shooting the interior ofthe church on stage 29...

and it involved drugs.

I was extremely angry about this cocaine.

I'd thrown away a bunch of cocaine, and John was furious.

We had a big fight, and we went out on Lankershim.

So there's Jake Blues, in complete-- he's in drag.

And I'm out there, and we're yelling.

We're really mad, and we're having an argument.

And he finally said, "Fuck this, and fuck you!"

And he sort ofsticks his thumb out.

I don't even-- But this car coming the opposite way goes--

Makes a huge U-turn, this convertible...

and there's this kid, a real stoner, goes...

"hey, John Belushi, man!"

John jumps in the front and says, "Take me to the Chateau Marmont!"

Off. Gone. Like that.

At the time it was not amusing, but in retrospect, it's pretty funny.

Over there is Alan Rubin.

Over that side. That way.

- Alan Rubin. - hi. how are you?

We all know John as a "bad boy"...

but a giving, wonderful soul.

You go to his house and open his refrigerator...

like you were at your friend's.

He would kill for his friends.

John was the type of person...

that if he decided you were his friend, then he...

more oríess íookedafteryou from then on.

He was quite a faithful friend to me.

The guys were always partying and stuff.

I was, and still am, sort of like a loner, you know.

But whenever he saw me sittin, over in a corner anywhere...

he'd always come over and says, "Matt"--

he says, "What's the matter?" he says, "Are you okay?"

He was a serious individual, but he was always clownin' around.

That was kind of about the basic of it.

And he was just a great guy.

We hung out he'd come by the house...

and sit there and clean out my refrigerator.

When I'd run out of food, he'd go somewhere else.

No, he was just a super guy, a very giving guy and a lot of fun.

He also a person who might show up at your house at 2:00 in the morning.

And I loved him very much and still miss him.

John was kind of-- Like I say, you wanted him as your next-door neighbour.

You wanna hug him.

John was a wonderful person. I adored him.

In fact, everybody adored John Belushi.

This is MrJohn "Be-lu-chee"...

- and Mr Dan Aykroyd. - Polaroid.

Mr Dan Polaroid. I've been callin' him everything like--

- "Be-lu-shee." -Just a minute. I'll get you in.

- Stay back till I call you. - Belushi. he's not Italian.

Now, I,ve compared these people, and I may have to swallow all of this.

I'm figurin' on them to take their places.

We,ll just say this: Abbott and Costello, hope and Crosby...

and Martin and Lewis and Sinatra and his little group...

and everything like that, but they couldn't carry these guys' jockstrap.

One night nobody could find John. We didn't know where he was.

We needed him for a shot...

and someone said, "I saw him walking over across the street.

He crossed the street and went over into that neighbourhood over there."

So we began to look for him, and we went to a house in the neighbourhood...

sort of basically looking for telltale signs of him...

and someone said, "Oh, yeah, he went into that house there."

We knocked, and the guy came to the door and said...

"Yes, Mr Belushi's in on the couch. he's asleep."

Perfect stranger.

Turned out John had walked off the set...

gone to somebody's house, knocked on the door, said...

"You know who I am. John Belushi. I'm tired, I'm hungry."

He walked in to the guy's fridge, opened the fridge...

stood at the fridge, the guy said, made himselfa sandwich...

had a glass of milk, and then said, "Can I crash out on your couch?"

Perfect stranger, crashed out on the couch.

John really was America's guest, and...

that really crystallized it, you know.

That was really a funny night.

Warden threw a party ín the county jail

Prison band was there and they began to wail

The band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing

You should have heard those knocked out jailbirds sing

- Let rock - The Blues Brothers is a movie...

that for whatever reasons...

wherever I go all over the world, people love that movie...

and these things take on a life of their own.

I would have never imagined that 17 years later...

I would still be playing with the same guys.

Dan Aykroyd has helped blues probably more than anybody--

And John Belushi, if he hadn't have died--

I think from that first movie.

There was some criticism given to John and Danny...

but they've done more for blues than anybody in the last 2O years.

Dan Aykroyd's passion for rhythm and blues--

It's basically black American music.

One of the things the movie did quite successfully...

was draw attention back to these great artists.

And you can talk to James Brown or Aretha Franklin...

or any of these people, and they'll tell you...

their careers were revitalized, and I really am proud of that.

It broadened my audience...

and it certainly introduced people to me...

who were not aware of who I was.

As soon as I got with The Blues Brothers Band...

and we did The Blues Brothers movie, one...

I couldn,t believe how I was accelerated, man.

I just knew we were making a great movie.

In my heart, I knew.

And even though, maybe the reviews weren't great...

and people said it wasn't gonna do well...

I knew it was gonna last forever.

I know the fans were there. Without question, the fans were there.

And they go crazy when we go open a house of Blues...

and there's 2,OOO people, and they're all goin' nuts.

They love this band.

My wife and I were at EPCOT Centre...

and it was about 11:OO at night, it was gettin' kind of dark.

And this guy goes, "Man. Murphy Dunne, man.

I-It's-- Man, Mur-- It's Murphy. Is that you?"

And I said, "Yeah. What are you gonna do?"

He said, "Oh, no, I'm not gonna-- I just-- Can I touch you?"

I said, "Yeah. It's okay. hi, how are you?"

Yeah, it just knocks me out when it happens.

It funny thoughy thís one appearance...

when I hold up that prophylactíc--

It's weird. People still talk to me about it to this day.

They say it cracked 'em up.

Every now and again, even on a street, somebody'll say...

"hey, it's the Penguin!" which is great fun.

The movie is very much like Dragnet.

Jack Webb, very straightforward. "Thank you, ma'am."

Certainly I did something right, because people love these characters.

There are wonderful things in the movie.

I think he's one of the great film-makers of our age.

He's certainly made some of the best pictures of our time.

He's a great director.

He's like a directing animal. he's like an animal.

If there was an animal called "director," it would be John Landis.

It's 1O6 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.

Ladies and gentlemen, take a good look at these two kids...

because you're gonna see a lot of 'em.

They're gonna say, "here they come and yonder they go."

They come on like "We the people" and go off like gangbusters.

- Shotgun Britton, ladies and gentlemen! - God bless you, sir.

Shotgun Britton!

This production is happy people.

They are very professional people and very alert people.

Sean Daniel, vice president of Universal Pictures and good guy.

- But not for long. - Bob, come here.

Look at this.

Robert K. Weiss, of "Robert K. Weiss Presents."

The producer of the motion picture. Thank you, Bob.

- Cut. - Cut.

Cut. I've gotta clean up.

When in Hollywood, visit Universal Studios.

Okay, cut.