20 Things You Didn't Know About The Blues Brothers
They'll never get caught. They're on a mission from God.
It's been forty years since Jake and Elwood Blues first graced the big screen. The Blue Brothers was released in June 1980, a strange combination of genres that couldn't really be pigeonholed.
It had a ton of chases - was it an action movie? Half the movie consisted of songs - a musical? Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were two of the biggest comedians in Hollywood at the time - a comedy? Would people who would go to watch hundreds of cars be destroyed enjoy the R&B and blues numbers scattered throughout? Would blues fans care about two comedians using their beloved genre as the motivation for a movie?
As it turns out, none of those questions were ever really answered. People took the movie as it was, settling in for two hours of what would grow to be a comedy classic, enjoying the mayhem on the screen interspersed with performances from legendary musical acts.
A movie as chaotic as The Blues Brothers couldn't possibly have come to pass without many behind the scenes stories, mistakes, and fascinating trivia. From a budget for drugs to Catholic approval, here are twenty of the best.
20. The Blues Brothers Started As A Saturday Night Live Skit
Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were both huge starts in the early days of SNL. Since the show was so new, pretty much everything the show did was groundbreaking.
The genesis of the Blues Brothers started out with Belushi and Akroyd singing the blues classic 'I'm a King Bee' in costumes they used for The Killer Bees sketches; a simple combining of two disparate concepts.
They started brainstorming ideas based around their beloved blues music, which led to the two creating the characters of Jake and Elwood Blues. They persuaded director Lorne Michaels to let them perform in character as the musical guests in 1978
Their performance was so well-received that they were asked to create an album of blues standards, which was also extremely successful, considering the state of music in 1979. The success of the album, in turn, persuaded Universal Studios that a full-length Blues Bros. movie would work.