Bits and Pieces of Movie Trivia

• Frank Oz - Prison Officer (Behind window)
• Cab Calloway - Curtis
• James Brown - Reverend Cleophis
• Chaka Khan - Church soloist
• John Landis - Cop in the first over-turned cop car
• John Candy - Mr Mercer (parole officer)
• Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) - Wine Waiter
• John Lee Hooker - Musician on Maxwell St
• Aretha Franklin - Matt "Guitar" Murphy's wife
• The three backing singers are her sisters.
• Ray Charles - Owner of "Ray's Music Exchange"
• Twiggy - Blonde in sports car
• Steven Spielberg - Cook County Assessor
• Joe Walsh (from the Eagles) - First prisoner to jump on table

See you next Wednesday

Supposedly, the phrase is the title of a film that Landis had an idea for at the age of 15. He describes the film as the kind of movie that a 15 year old adolescent boy would have made. He sometimes uses ideas from this movie, and when he does he puts the phrase in as a homage. It is not in all of his movies.

Frank Oz

Airport scenes in Into The Night and Coming To America have a call over the PA system for a "Mr Frank Ozkerwitz" to pick up the white courtesy phone. This is Frank Oz's real name. Landis has a fetish for Oz and The Muppet Show.

The Girl from Ipanema

The music that is played in the elevator scene is The Girl from Ipanema - a piece of music which is present in other John Landis films.

• The Blues Brothers Band consists of already well-respected musicians, who have recorded and written with the likes of Eric Clapton and Otis Redding.
• The customer in Toys R Us who asks for the Grover toy appears in the credits three times - once as the customer, once as the stunt co-ordinator, and his name is also the first of the stunt men.
• John Belushi was extremely disappointed at the film's reception, and it is rumored that this contributed to his accidental (?) death from cocaine. The film went on to become a definitive cult movie, still drawing crowds years later. Recently, the authentic Blues Brothers Band has been touring the world, playing gigs after showing the film.
• This film holds the world record for the number of cars crashed.
• John Belushi was known as the Black Hole. He went through about 1000 pairs of sunglasses during the making of the movie. Apparently, John would do one scene, and then lose them before the next scene.
• The limousine seen outside the Chez Paul belonged to the owner of the restaurant. He almost had a heart attack when the stunt driver smashed through a letter box with his first attempt at parking.
• John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Carrie Fisher went to the Chez Paul after the shoot. John and Carrie were the wild ones; they would spend half the night dancing on the table.
• The incomplete bridge near the end of the movie is apparently quite a famous bridge in Milwaukee, not Chicago. It was referred to as The Bridge to Nowhere because it never seemed to get closer to completion.
• They used five or six Pinto's for the Nazi car that flew off the bridge. There was a lot of trouble getting a permit to do this; they had to prove that they could accurately predict where the car was going to land. They dropped one as test run (it landed in a cornfield). They sawed two in half, to get the camera inside them. They used one for the low-drop (into ditch in the road), and two for the high-drop (off the bridge).
• Both the Chez Paul and the Cook County offices were filmed inside a sound studio, and not at the actual venues.
• The whistle-blowing warden in Joliet is John Landis' step-father.
• A number of scenes were removed from the film. The missing parts are related to Elwood getting fired from a shaving-cream factory for eating handfuls of the stuff.
• The woman on the cutting-room floor in the credits is the mother of John Landis.