DALE HAWES

"The Blues Brothers". (1980)

 

The Blues Brothers is an epic, "Hero's Journey" archetype. It is a well written movie. 

 

In the film our hero comes from an oppressed beginning (jail) and journeys to an unfamiliar land (the world on the outside of jail that he no longer recognizes) and he is convinced by a wise old sage (Cab Calloway) to go on an adventure in order save the land (their orphanage). In this film our heroes are convinced they are on "a mission from God" and in so are found living out the Biblical reference where Jesus says, "If any of you want to follow me you must first pick up your cross and then follow me", or put another way, no good deed goes unpunished. Even though the Blues Brothers are acting on behalf of the Catholic Church they are violently kicked out of the penguin's office, accused of speaking blasphemy by a fellow follower of the faith and find themselves on the wrong side of the law even though they never intended on hurting or damaging anyone. Conversely everyone who is sworn to protect the people (the head nun, the police, the Good Ol' Boys and others) are willing to do untold damage to both the brothers and the community just to try and stop our hero's from doing the right thing. The nicest thing about the movie is that despite the huge cross section of humanity represented in the film (Red necks, black people, white people, prisoners, cops, guards, rich, poor, whatever) no matter who we are or what we do we are ALL brought together by great music.

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   When the Blues Brothers was being filmed, Mayor Jane Byrne of Chicago desperately wanted to seduce more Hollywood filmmakers to shoot in her city because movie productions generate a lot of money. In order to keep the film companies coming back she let this production do ANYTHING they wanted. It was obscene what the production got away with. Things like dropping a car from a helicopter 40 stories in the air and letting it free-fall onto one of the most densely populated cities in the world, stunt driving through and completely destroying a suburban mall & never paying for the damages, shooting a multi dozen car crash and pile up under a elevated train bridge, racing 100 miles an hour for over a mile down Lake St. for the sake of one shot, just to name a few things. These were all very dangerous stunts, so much so that it's safe to say without the aid of modern computer generated effects, it would be impossible to shoot this film today. Mayor Jane Byrne was not a very popular mayor at the time, but to her credit, she was responsible for making the city a popular place to film a movie. Chicago remained so until the mid 1990's when Mayor Richard M. Daley decided to tax film productions for all services the city provided. This was not the case before. He did this to attempt to squeeze more money out of the movie industry for the city. It didn't work because after that many productions went to Canada instead of Chicago.

   

D. Hawes