MY MOVIE SHELF: The Blues Brothers

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #33: The Blues Brothers

This was another movie whose soundtrack my mother and I had on cassette for our road trips, but unlike The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, I saw The Blues Brothers before I learned its music. Not when it came out. Some time later, on TV. My stepfather would get all giddy and goofy whenever he watched a movie he really liked (still does, probably), and this was definitely one of those kinds of films. I’m sure I don’t know how many times we watched it when I was young, but it was a lot.

The Blues Brothers is a classic, and if you haven’t seen it, then I can’t help you. It was the very first movie based on a Saturday Night Live sketch, and it was unlike every other. Where all those that followed have been slick, glossy, almost canned comedy (whether they were actually funny or not, though I submit only one other — Wayne’s World — was actually legitimately funny), The Blues Brothers is dirty, gritty, bordering on cerebral, and positively filled with insanely great music and musicians — oh, and it’s really really funny.

From Carrie Fisher blowing up everything in sight trying to kill Jake and Elwood (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd), to Illinois Nazis getting forced over a bridge, to Elwood’s DMV address being listed as Wrigley Field, to singing only “Rawhide” and “Stand By Your Man” over and over at Bob’s Country Bunker, to Ray Charles (that Ray Charles) shooting blind (haha) at a would-be thief, to “How much for the women,” The Blues Brothers is hysterical, period. And let’s not forget the INSANE amount of property damage done for the good of the movie. There were so many car chases and massive car crashes in this movie, somebody might think it’s a heist  or a gangster film. And even if the mall scene was a big set, it still got completely trashed. Jesus, just the number of beer bottles smashed in this movie must’ve cost a small fortune, and that’s before Carrie Fisher demolished a building, blew up a giant propane tank, and blew up an entire gas station with a tanker truck.

Getting back to the music, however, let’s say we forget that the Blues Brothers Band is filled with actual professional blues musicians. There are also appearances (and songs) by James Brown, Chaka Khan, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and Cab Calloway. That’s an unbelievable bill of talent, and it’s shocking and great that they were able to get all of them to appear. I don’t even know if I can pick a favorite, because there are things I love about each of them. I’m not a churchgoer, for example, but there’s something about loud, boisterous, celebratory gospel music that is thrilling no matter your personal theological slant, and when Jake and Elwood go to see Reverend Cleophus James (Brown) and his soloist Chaka Khan, I am as saved as they are. On the other hand, Hooker’s performance is raw and guttural, pulsing through you from deep within. Then there’s Aretha Franklin, who is a wunderkind, always, but dancing around in her grease-stained waitress uniform and those old-style house slippers (in matching pink) is possibly the best thing in the film. But, Ray Charles is a capital-E Entertainer, and his rollicking performance of “Shake Your Tailfeather” comes with a group dance number (I can even get my toddler to do the tailfeather move — it’s crazy adorable). Calloway’s performance, though, comes as a sort of dream sequence, with him decked out in white tux and tails. Plus there’s a call and response with all the people in the Plaza Hotel Ballroom. It’s phenomenal.

It’s unlike really any other movie (except, I assume, for its sequel, which I refuse to ever watch lest it sully my memory of this one), which makes The Blues Brothers iconic and essential. I just wish I could get my kids to watch it.

Don’t miss Steven Spielberg as the Cook County Assessor’s Office clerk, and don’t forget, “We’re on a mission from God.”

MY MOVIE SHELF: Animal House

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #18: Animal House

First off, I’m not going to be talking about John Belushi in this movie. That is well-covered territory — so much so that fetuses are doing the “I’m a zit” bit in utero. No, what I’m going to talk about is everything else.

Let’s start with the cast. Yes, there was John Belushi in his first feature film, becoming an international comedy icon and symbol of the slacker dorm room poster industry right before our eyes. There were also two future Oscar nominees (Tom Hulce in Amadeus and Peter Riegert for a live action short film), perpetual That Guy Bruce McGill (as D-Day, his perhaps only truly badass role, though my favorite remains the bartender Al in the Quantum Leap series finale), Karen Allen before she became love interest of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, current villain of the blockbuster Hunger Games movies and Hollywood patriarch Donald Sutherland, and some guy named Kevin Bacon who has literally appeared in so many things there’s a game named after him based on the idea that no actor ever in history is more than six degrees separated from him. That’s one hell of a pedigree for a tiny little comedy made by a bunch of no-names.

Oh, and those behind-the-scenes no-names? John Landis directed Animal House — it was his third film — and would go on to give us The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, The Three Amigos, Coming to America, and more, just in the ’80s. Harold Ramis wrote the script for Animal House with two collaborators; it was his first. He went on to write Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Back to School, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day, among others, plus act in and direct some of the funniest movies of his time. And when Animal House came out in 1978, producer Ivan Reitman was still a relatively new name, but he would become one of the biggest and most respected men in the business.

The movie’s soundtrack is also historically great, featuring indelible songs of the ’60s like “Louie, Louie,” “Wonderful World” and “Twistin’ the Night Away.” The most memorable song from the movie, however, is “Shout” by The Isley Brothers. Originally released in 1959, “Shout” became the signature song for a movie based in 1962 that was filmed in 1978. But that’s not where the story ends. I graduated from high school in 1993, fifteen years after Animal House came out in theaters (more than thirty years since the song’s original release), and that song was still being played at my school dances. Every time, without fail. They still play it at weddings today. It’s a staple of the portable DJ business. Not only that, but the entire way people dance to that song, to this day (arms in the air, crouching down at the “softer now” parts, jumping at the “louder now” parts), comes from this movie that featured it. If you catch an old episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos on cable some night, and somebody’s grandmother falls on her backside while trying to squat as low as she can during this song, it is because of Animal House. That is monumental cultural influence, and it doesn’t stop there.

Animal House isn’t just a movie, it’s a landmark. If it had been made this century, it would have no fewer than two sequels that would have likely diluted its cultural significance,  but as a standalone film-cum-global phenomenon, it wields massive influence over our collective idea of what college is like, of what young adulthood is like, and it has seeped into all manner of things in our society.

When I was a freshman at Syracuse University my best friend came to visit me for a weekend and as we were wandering around the party houses just off-campus, we stumbled into a toga party. Why a toga party? Because of Animal House.

If you went to a college in the last thirty years that had any kind of fraternity/sorority presence, it was because of this movie. Animal House single-handedly revitalized the Greek system on college campuses, for good or for ill. They wouldn’t be here today if not its popularity. (And weird fraternity brother nicknames? This movie.)

The bizarre and completely played-out myth/idea that girls are constantly having pillow fights in their underwear (or less, if a director is looking for an easy path to gratuitous nudity) features prominently into this movie.

Veronica Mars seasons 2 and 3 featured a fraternity jerkwad named Chip Diller. Chip Diller just so happens to be the name of Kevin Bacon’s character in Animal House.

If you’ve ever been able to correctly use sensuous and sensual in sentences because “vegetables are sensual, people are sensuous,” if you’ve ever shouted “food fight” and expected everyone to respond by flinging things, if you’ve ever said “Thank you sir, may I have another,” it is because of this movie.

Oh, and it’s pretty much accepted as the quintessential college party movie. (I saw one list that put Old School at the top, but there would be no Old School without Animal House.) I’m not saying Animal House invented these things necessarily, but it’s undeniable that Animal House made them mainstream and unforgettable. Just as all sci-fi changed after Star Wars, just as all summer movies changed after Jaws, all adolescent/young adult party comedies changed after Animal House.

And yes, John Belushi was a key player in the movie’s overall impact, but for the record my favorite part is when Kevin Bacon gets literally flattened by a stampeding mob of townspeople. Now that’s funny.