The following is an excerpt from The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of American Film Classic, published by Atlantic Monthly on March 19. The author is Daniel DeVacy, personal finance reporter for USA TODAY.
One summer evening, in the 1980s, I walked into a Chicago theater and saw my city on the big screen, almost for the first time.
I saw The Blues Brothers, the crazy musical comedy about car crashes, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd and directed by John Landis.
The film was released on June 20, 1980. I was 12, and it was rated R, so I didn't see it until two years later, at the Parkway Theater on Clark Street, where movies cost a dollar or two and no one asked how old you were.
Since that night, “The Blues Brothers” has been my Chicago movie.
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Critics at the time criticized it. Today, “The Blues Brothers” ranks at or near the top of the list of great Chicago films. For many Chicagoans of a certain age, the “Blues Brothers” are essential. And to me that means I wrote a book about it.
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Is there a better Chicago movie than The Blues Brothers?
Is there a better Chicago movie? Probably the sibling's biggest rivalry is “Ferris Bueller's Day Off,” the great John Hughes comedy, released six years later.
Here, let's pause for a brief geography lesson.
I'm from the city: born on the South Side, raised mostly in the North.
John Hughes was from the suburbs: Northbrook, to be exact.
(Random fact: My father and I would drive to Northbrook on Thursdays in the summer to watch bike races. My father had immigrated from Belgium and raced bikes with other immigrants from the Low Countries in his youth. But that's another story.)
Hughes sets many of his films in Chicago's suburbs, especially in the North Shore, the necklace of suburban gems that surround Lake Michigan, north of the city: places like Winnetka, where a “Home Alone” house has just been put up for sale, with a cool $5.25 million.
North Shore kids used to flock to the city on weekends, generally heading to downtown, the Miracle Mile, or Wrigley Field.
In this sense, Ferris Bueller was a perfect depiction of a wealthy suburbanite's relationship with the city.
It was a great Chicago movie, but it wasn't my Chicago movie.
Chicago is like “The Blues Brothers” if you're poor
“Chicago is like 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' if you're rich, and 'The Blues Brothers' if you're poor,” one local musician recently noted in Jacobin magazine.
I would define the dichotomy more in terms of city and suburb, but you get the idea.
Ironically, Belushi was a suburbanite himself, born in the city but raised mostly in Wheaton, a place so remote that it barely qualifies as a suburb.
But Belushi fled to Chicago at his first opportunity. The Blues Brothers, the fictional characters, were largely residents of the city.
When Elwood retrieves Jake from Juliet's prison at the beginning of the film, their final destination is a failing apartment in the Loop, a downtown space defined by L's paths.
“How often does the train pass?” Jake asks.
“A lot of times, you won't even notice,” Elwood answers.
Much of the film was shot in the suburbs, but not John Hughes's. Noooo: We're talking about Harvey, a hamlet in the south suburbs that had enough crime problems to shut down a mall at the height of the mall era. and Wauconda, a quiet outpost further from the city than Wheaton.
Jake and Elwood seem to spend most of the movie trying to get back to town. Since The Warriors came out a year ago, no one has fought so hard, and against such odds, to return home.
“106 miles to Chicago” Where exactly?
It was never clear where the brothers were supposed to be when they set out on their final mission, and Elwood announced, “It's 106 miles to Chicago.”
In the film's fictional plot, the band plays a spectacular show in the ballroom of the fictional Palace Hotel, on the fictional Lake Wasapamani.
The production gave few clues about its location: The crew filmed the exteriors at the South Shore Cultural Center, an old Mediterranean Revival building on Chicago's South Side. They filmed the interiors at the Hollywood Palladium, an art deco mansion on Sunset Boulevard.
Fortunately, much of the film takes place in the city, paying homage to Daley Plaza, the government's downtown campus. Maxwell Street, the famous open-air market; Lower Wacker Drive, the base of a double-decker road that runs through downtown; Bronzeville, the South Side neighborhood home to the fictional Ray's Music Exchange; And Chez Paul, the real River North restaurant where North Shore kids and their parents gather for dinner.
And here's another reason why “The Blues Brothers” is so important to Chicago: When the film hit theaters, 44 years ago this month, it gave many Chicagoans their first real look at their city on a movie screen.
More: What a 'mission from God' really is for 'The Blues Brothers'.
Drought on Lake Michigan movie
In my childhood years, precious few movies were filmed in Chicago, a ban dating back to the early years of Mayor Richard J. Daley. Daley, a powerful Irish-American politician from the Southwest Side, drove film and television crews out of his city in 1959, when an episode of a now-forgotten series called “M Squad” depicted a Chicago cop taking bribes.
If you grew up in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia or Los Angeles, you could see your city on screen all the time, in priceless cinematic works like “Saturday Night Fever,” “Dirty Harry,” “Rocky” and “Chinatown.”
A few film crews made their way to Chicago: Remember the movie “Cooley High”? But not much.
However, by 1979, when “The Blues Brothers” came to town, Mayor Daley was dead. Jane Byrne had just taken office as the first female mayor of Chicago. She was happy to let the production in.
Friends of the late mayor had lined up against Byrne, calling her a “broad lunatic” and worse.
When Byrne met the cast and crew, Belushi asked if his friends could drive the car through the Richard J. Daley Center lobby.
“I wouldn't have a problem with that,” Byrne replied.
Thus, Mayor Byrne and “The Blues Brothers” opened the doors of Chicago as the stage for a new generation of classic films.
“The Breakfast Club” (1985) and “Home Alone” (1990) are set in the Chicago suburbs. “The Untouchables” (1987) is old Chicago. “The Fugitive” (1993) is a Chicago action film. “High Fidelity” (2000) is a Chicago hipster.
And “The Blues Brothers” is my Chicago.
