Did Belushi/Ackroyd give Chicago history lesson w/ The Blues Brothers?

I’m honest enough to realize that “The Blues Brothers” isn’t classic cinema.

It came out the summer following by first year of high school – a time in life when I had the time to watch the many movies that were made. The film based off the Belushi/Ackroyd “Saturday Night Live” characters was long (and would have been longer if director John Landis had had his original vision approved), over-convoluted and in some points nonsensical.

BUT THERE IS one reason why I will never tune away from a showing of the film if I happen to stumble across it – the film depicts a segment of Chicago that just doesn’t exist any longer and never got much attention paid to it when it was around (unlike “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” which shows us the official take on touristy Chicago).

As someone who was born in the South Chicago neighborhood and who was raised in suburban Calumet City, The Blues Brothers was the film that was made in my home neighborhoods (although to be honest, there never was a Our Lady of the Blessed Shroud orphanage in Cal City that needed saving).

In fact, the closest to Calumet City that the film came was when they used the remains of the old Dixie Square shopping mall in Harvey (two towns to the west) for the chase scenes involving the Illinois State Police.

But the 95^th Street bridge, the Baptist church that served as the “Triple Rock Church” and home of the Rev. Cleophus James (a.k.a., singer James Brown) and the “Curl Up and Dye” hair salon where the late Carrie Fisher’s vengeful hair stylist plotted the Belushi character’s death.

ALL ARE PLACES I could take you to in the old neighborhood and show you where movies were made nearly four decades ago.

Even outside of the city’s 10^th Ward, the film gives us the sight of what was once the old Maxwell Street market where one could easily repurchase any item that might have been ripped off from you.

Or that flophouse of a residency where Ackroyd’s character lived (and which Fisher’s character took a bazooka to)? It was under the “el” tracks down on Van Buren Street in the South Loop (back when the area was decrepit), and I still remember one of my first assignments for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago was to report on the fire that destroyed the building for real.

So what brings all of this to mind? The city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events likes to show movies on a giant screen in Millennium Park. Tuesday night will be a showing of The Blues Brothers. Admission is free and you can sit outside and get a laugh (unless you’re so politically uptight that you can’t bear the thought of watching a film in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and Great Lawn).

MEANING BELUSHI (the native of suburban Wheaton) AND Ackroyd will live on, as will the music of the late Brown and Cab Calloway (“Minnie the Moocher” will never die because of this film).

And even that moment when we learn that Bob’s Country Bunker features both kinds of music – country AND western. Where we’re also subjected to a ludicrous Belushi/Ackroyd take on the Tammy Wynette classic “Stand By Your Man.”

The combination of elements of current Chicago and bits that are long past are something that always amuse me and make the film (along with “Medium Cool” from 1969).

The latter film showed us the Grant Park of the past that became the site of anti-war protests back in the Vietnam era, the Uptown neighborhood of old, and the lengthy shot early in the film of a man on motorcycle rushing videotape from an auto accident scene back to the TV studios downtown (riding along the length of Lake Shore Drive into the Loop) is one that captivates me because of the number of times I’ve made a similar drive during my life.

THERE'S ALSO THE Chicago of "Call Northside 777," but much of it is before my time, and was long ago subjected to the bulldozer. What a shame.

Yet those don't compare to the compare to the bit in The Blues Brothers when Illinois Nazis (yes, we all “hate” Illinois Nazis) wishing to kill the musical duo drive off the end of an incomplete bridge, and wind up soaring thousands of feet into the air before crashing down into a car-sized Chicago street pothole.

Which the Blues Brothers conveniently happen to drive right over in their one-time Mount Prospect police squad car. Silly? Ridiculous? Totally absurd? Of course.

But didn’t I warn you the film was nonsensical!?!

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Our cinematic image preservation also gives Illinois some economic benefits

I’ll be the first to admit that I get a kick out of film and television productions where I can recognize Chicago in the background – even if it’s a Chicago of the past.

There’s even an otherwise-forgettable Bruce Willis film “Red” from a few years ago that I only remember because its story chose to have its tale of international intrigue wind up in the Second City – of all places.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION AND murder on a world-wide scale being resolved here. As if we didn’t have enough local political hacks and plots to contend with.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Because Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday tried to score himself some political points by boasting of the number of entertainment projects that are made in Chicago.

He cited $358 million being spent during 2013 – creating the equivalent of 4,200 full-time jobs. Which is nearly double the $184 million that was spent during 2012 – which previously had been considered a record-setting trend.

Are we in Chicago just that entertaining? Or gritty looking? Or are we generic enough that we can pass for the set of just about any place on Planet Earth?

I’M NOT GOING to get into the economics of it so much. All I know is that I find it amusing when I suddenly see a location on the film screen (yes, I still prefer the idea of seeing a film in a theater, rather than putting money into a red box to get a copy) that I routinely pass through.

Sometimes, even some fairly obscure spots that I’m amazed anyone else has ever heard of.

Heck, I know how residents of the Bush, a little subsection of the South Chicago neighborhood, still go on about how a little storefront once passed for the "Curl Up and Dye," a neighborhood beauty salon where actor Carrie Fisher could be seen reading technical manuals about flame-throwers and antipersonnel mines in her on-going plot to kill John Belushi's "Jake Blues" character in "The Blues Brothers."

 

For his part, Quinn went Tuesday to the set of “Chicago Fire,” a new television drama about firefighters in our fair city – which had better not dare think it could shoot anywhere else. Although anyone who ever saw the Blues Brothers sequel – “Blues Brothers 2000,” knows that the only thing worse than actor John Goodman trying to be a Belushi-like character was the sight of Toronto trying to think it could resemble Chicago.

OF COURSE, MUCH of the reason why so many productions are willing to come to Chicago is because the local government likes the idea of being used as a background for so many stories.

It’s quite a change from the days of “M Squad,” a 1950’s-era police cop show where actor Lee Marvin’s “Frank Ballinger” character gave us an image of a tough cop so over the top that one could argue that Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” character was a wimp, by comparison.

An image that helped influence then-Mayor Richard J. Daley into thinking that “Hollywood” attention just wasn’t worth the “bad” press!

Watching those “M Squad” episodes now, one realizes how limited the Chicago settings were – because film crews were usually trying to elude the authorities who would have cited them for the lack of a permit (that the city never would have issued).

IT’S NOT LIKE the later year films such as “The Blues Brothers,” which might be a simple-minded film with a sketchy story line – but which also used so many gritty Chicago scenes that the film truly is a tribute to a Chicago that isn’t truly with us anymore.

Similar to the old “Call Northside 777” film starring James Stewart as a Chicago Times reporter. Those scenes of Stewart wandering about the Back of the Yards back when it was a Polish enclave truly are something – along with other scenes depicting downtown sites that we have to think twice about what is there now.

In short, films that make the “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” moments at Wrigley Field or the Art Institute look just a bit simple, and lame, by comparison.

Although one of my favorite Chicago-based films to watch may well be “Medium Cool,” a late 1960s film that definitely is dated in its sensibilities and its look.

BUT HOW MANY other films could give us real-life moments of the now-infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention (it helped create an image that resulted in us getting Richard Nixon as president) and the protests that spouted out as a result of its presence in Chicago?

And how many other films could give us a candid moment with one of its own camera crews getting caught in the teargas that police used on said protesters?

Although the beauty of Grant Park throughout the years also manages to come through, despite the chaos that took place within it.

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Chicago can make cinema so special

I don’t get out to the movie theater as much as I used to, but I am still a fan of film. One of my favorite genres, so to speak, is Chicagoana.

Maybe that is just evidence of how much of a Chicago-geek I can be, but I have found that the presence of the Second City on the silver screen can add such character to a film that even a clunker becomes bearable.

WHEN A WELL-written screenplay is combined with competent acting and a Chicago setting, the result is a film that registers in my brain as unforgettable.

A Chicago connection is why I am actually looking forward to two upcoming films, and will try to get to the theater to see them. “Chicago 10,” which purports to be documentary-like but is really a dramatic retelling of the insanity that hit the United States in the summer of 1968, was released in Chicago on Friday.

The other is “Public Enemies,” which stars Johnny Depp, in the story of John Dillinger and will feature his jail break in Lake County, Ind., and his eventual slaughter by the feds outside the (still-standing) Biograph Theater. It will be made this spring at area locations (including the county jail in Crown Point, Ind.), and is to be released early next year.

WITH CHARACTERS LIKE Judge Julius Hoffman, Dillinger and Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, these films have potential to be entertaining. With the presence of Chicago, they ought to be interesting. And if they wind up as clunkers, it will be director incompetence – not the setting.

The real question is how they will wind up comparing to some of the all-time great films that use Chicago. It will be interesting to see if either film can displace any of my own personal “top 5” Chicago films, which I am listing chronologically.

CALL NORTHSIDE 777 (1948): This dramatic re-telling of how Chicago Times reporters were able to clear a man wrongly convicted of a long-forgotten 1930s police slaying intrigues me because of how it uses Chicago scenery.

Back in an era when most films were shot in studios, this film actually sought out many of the sites associated with the real story. Seeing the courtrooms at the Criminal Courts building, the New City police district (now East Chicago Avenue station) and the reception areas and cellblocks at Stateville Penitentiary back when they all were new and clean is a shock.

Hearing the Back of the Yards neighborhood when Polish was the language that wafted through the air (rather than the current Spanish) gives me a sense of the ethnic feel that will always be a part of Chicago’s character – even if the actual ethnicities change over time.

And when James Stewart’s reporter character, McNeil, goes to the Illinois Parole Board to plead his “case,” he makes his argument in a room I am all too familiar with. What was once the Illinois Supreme Court chambers is now a legislative committee meeting room where politicos ram through public policies that put their interests ahead of the people.

MEDIUM COOL (1969): This film tried to tell a story that was still very contemporary – we get to see the Democratic National Convention of 1968 and the infamous riots that broke out between Chicago police and anti-war protesters who were upset that Democrats were not doing enough to get the army out of Vietnam.

In fact, filmmakers shot some of their footage during the actual protests in Grant Park, and one of their camera operators got hit with teargas along with the protesters.

Anybody who watches “Chicago 10” should go out of their way to see this film, which worked real footage with the actors. The new film, regardless of how true it tries to be to fact, is by definition a revisionist account.

Chicago in this film looks a little more like its contemporary counterpart, although watching scenes shot in the South Loop where protesters interact with police and the National Guard show just how decrepit that part of the city was becoming.

Then, there’s my own personal favorite scene, where Illinois State Police officers are rehearsing how to cope with anti-war demonstrators. What makes the scene so funny is that some police play the part of Hippies and allow themselves to be arrested – that is, if you can envision Hippies in crew cuts and Bermuda shorts going around saying, “peace” and “love.”

THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980): Let’s be honest. This is a stupid film.

The story is truncated and, in some parts, absurd. (Dropping a car with would-be Nazi stormtroopers from hundreds of feet in the air and expecting us to believe they would survive?) The blues music sung by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd is all wrong – it’s more Memphis soul and Detroit r&b than Chicago blues. This is a mediocre Saturday Night Live sketch dragged out to 2 ½ hours.

BUT WHAT MAKES the film bearable, in fact what makes it memorable, is Chicago.

Unlike “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” where the lead character plays hooky by going to the Art Institute and Wrigley Field, this film digs into the seedy underbelly that is the real Chicago.

Watching Elwood Blues show off the power of his one-time Mount Prospect police car by jumping the fully-erect 95th Street Bridge that separates the South Chicago neighborhood from the East Side is unique because no other film would even dream of using that site.

THE BLUES BROTHERS also lets us see the extinct seedy strip that used to exist along Van Buren Street in the South Loop, the real Maxwell Street market and the old Dixie Square Shopping Center in south suburban Harvey.

Even when The Blues Brothers goes to an upscale location like the Chez Paul (the long-defunct French restaurant), we get to see some of the most uncouth behavior ever envisioned on screen. Those snobs deserve to have to endure Jake and Elwood.

I have just one gripe. According to the story, Jake and Elwood are from Calumet City and visit the orphanage where they were raised. In reality, nothing in the film was shot there, and I know because I am a one-time Cal City resident who first saw this film at the River Oaks Theater.

UNTOUCHABLES (1988): From the Sean Connery character’s spiel about doing things “the Chicago Way,” to seeing scenes in the LaSalle Street financial district and realizing the buildings haven’t changed much since the 1920s, this film is Chicago.

Robert DeNiro as Alphonse Capone was interesting, even though DeNiro is only in a few scenes and is actually a minor character.

Now I realize that the film’s facts are totally skewed (Frank Nitti didn’t die from being thrown off the criminal courthouse roof). But the film gives a sense of Chicago as it existed 80-something years ago, and successfully uses the parts of the city that have changed little in appearance. Every time I have business at Union Station, I can envision the film’s climactic gun battle.

In my mind, the title “The Untouchables” has come to mean this film, rather than the 1960s-era television series based on the Oscar Fraley book of the same name that tells the tale of how Chicago-based G-man Eliot Ness led a team of agents in combating The Outfit.

ONLY THE LONELY (1991): John Candy and Jim Belushi make totally unrealistic Chicago police officers (what kind of cop gets transferred to a precinct in Florida?) in this film about a man (Candy) who remains a little too attached to his mother (played by Maureen O’Hara).

The film gets it right in understanding that in Chicago, even white people have a sense of their ethnic roots. It has its characters hanging around the neighborhoods, rather than at downtown tourist sites.

And it also contains my favorite Chicago film scene ever – Candy’s first-date picnic with Ally Sheedy with the exploding scoreboard at the old Comiskey Park looming in the background. This film was shot just months before the one-time “Baseball Palace of the World” was torn town.

OF COURSE, THE presence of Chicago cannot save all films. One of my least favorite films ever was “Switching Channels” (1987), which is all the worse because of the ridiculous way it portrays the city.

The film is an attempt to update “The Front Page” (1931 and 1974) and “His Girl Friday (1940) to the modern era. These reporters are not newspaper-people; they work in television. One character goes so far as to denigrate newspapers as, “19th Century journalism.”

KATHLEEN TURNER PLAYS Christy Colloran, an anchorwoman who supposedly covers all the big stories that take place in Chicago County.

Chicago County? We live in Cook.

About the closest I can come to saying anything nice about this film is to note that it also stars Burt Reynolds as Turner’s editor, and it isn’t any worse than any of the “Smokey and the Bandit” films.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Chicago municipal government has a separate agency devoted to (http://egov.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalEntityHomeAction.do?entityName=Film+Office&entityNameEnumValue=15) working with film crews wishing to use the city as a backdrop.