Seemingly because I am male, when I get talking to people the topic of favourite books/music/films crops up with unerring haste. I think it’s because if they don’t support Manchester United, I run out of things to say, such is my lack of basic social skills. That’s what a childhood spent playing video games does to you. Well, that and going on murderous rampages, apparently.
Back on topic, the answer to my number one film has been for the last 15 years and for the rest of time is the Blues Brothers. Frankly, due to my occasional shallow nature (excepting the odd foray into deeper stuff like Blade Runner), it has the things I like in the medium: car chases and great music. Plus it’s got the coolest guy of all time, John Lee Hooker, in it.
The Brothers and their band were born from Saturday Night Live due to the efforts of blues fan Dan Aykroyd, who had been getting his comedy partner John Belushi into the blues. By luck, Belushi also had a fair old voice on him and the duo formed a band around his singing and Aykroyd's harp playing. Becoming regulars on the show, the 'Brothers' recorded an album Briefcase Full Of Blues that proved successful and led to the film, directed by John Landis, who was coming off the back of successfully helming Animal House, which also starred Belushi.
To surmise the basic plot for any poor souls who haven’t seen this masterpiece: "Joliet" Jake Blues (Belushi) is released from prison, where he is picked up by his brother, Elwood (Aykroyd), in his ex-police issue Dodge having traded the old Bluesmobile for a microphone. Visiting the orphanage where they were raised, they learn it is to be closed by the state unless a large tax bill can be paid in two weeks. Fired up by a dose of evangelical preaching from James Brown, the duo set out to reform their old band to raise the cash by honest means.
Naturally, doing so isn't all that easy. The old band have straight jobs and the brothers end up on the wrong side of John Q. Law, the local Nazis and a bunch of Good Ol’ Boys. Not that the plot is all that important, more of a framework on which to strap a lot of appearances from some of the giants of soul and blues. As well as Brown and Hooker, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin make cameos while jazz scat singer Cab Calloway takes the role of the brothers’ mentor, Curtis. Franklin’s appearance is particularly amusing if just for her muttering of "shit!" as her husband Matt "Guitar" Murphy is convinced to go back on the road.
It’s the actual Blues Brothers Band that is my favourite part of the film. For starters, any outfit with half of Booker T and the MGs in it is always going to have some serious chops and indeed, Donald "Duck" Dunn observes that they’re "powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline" (Dunn’s constant puffing on a pipe during performances is also a great wheeze).
It’d be easy to say the scenes with the band doing what they do best (playing music rather than acting) are the highlights: after all, their versions of Otis Redding’s I Can’t Turn You Loose and Solomon Burke’s Everybody Needs Somebody To Love have become as equally regarded as the originals – the former is often referred to as Blues Brothers’ Theme. But then you have to consider that they somehow managed to fit in a car chase in a shopping mall. A car chase! In a shopping mall! Really, if that’s not genius, I don’t know what is. The only negative about the whole set up is that watching John Belushi at his best makes you angry that he didn't have the sense to stay off the speedballs to stay alive long enough to ensure the horrendous sequel wasn't the complete fiasco it ended up being.
I've seen this flick hundreds of times, including last night. It never, never gets old. I can quote probably every line in advance but it’s still the only film that makes me want to get up and dance. Shake a Tail Feather indeed.
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