This year we go on a mission from God as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Blues Brothers.
The characters to Jake and Elwood Blues, player by John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, originated as a Saturday Night Live skit. In the film, the brothers are newly released from jail. They discover that the orphanage in which the grew up owes $5,000 in property taxes and will be shut down if they can’t pay. Jake gets and epiphany: they have to re-form their own band, the Blues Brothers, to raise the cash.
Along the way, they run afoul of the Illinois Nazis, the police, and Carrie Fisher.
The film also features Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown in cameo roles. I seriously wore out the vinyl soundtrack of the film long before I had ever seen it.
To apply a hoary old cliche, Chicago itself is also a character in the film. But don’t just take my word for it! “Chicago is one of the stars of the movie. We wrote it as a tribute,” Dan Ackroyd once said. Blues Brothers is credited with putting Chicago on the map as a filming location, and many other films in the 80’s would soon follow suit. It does, in a way, feel like a fun travelogue of the city as it spans the Joliet Correctional Facility, Wrigley Field, Dixie Square Mall, and the Richard Daley Center.
Today’s prompt: in what film would you say the city is also a character?
Next week’s prompt: musical biopics.