JL: Exactly. It has a little different ending.
IR: I watched the extended version last night, and I guess I really couldn't tell.
JL: That's good! [He seems happy that the extended version felt organic to me.]
IR: The screenplay for "The Blues Brothers" is credited to Dan Aykroyd and you. Can you talk a little about how the screenplay was developed?
JL: "The Blues Brothers" was a development deal before they were on "Saturday Night Live." That's one of the reasons NBC and Lorne Michaels [creator and executive producer of "Saturday Night Live"] are not involved. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd created the "The Blues Brothers" before "Saturday Night Live." I met them both, you know, on "Animal House." And Danny was always into blues and rhythm and blues. He really is a maven. He's a very skilled musician. He really knows his stuff. He really has a love for it. John was really much more into heavy metal. But John, during "Animal House," really got into the blues in Eugene, Oregon, where he met a guy named Curtis Salgado who was in a blues band. And Johnny really got into it and became as passionate as Dan—became Danny's disciple sort of—and made up these characters. And the idea was to do a movie about them eventually, and what happened was, with the success of "Saturday Night Live," John and Danny started performing as Jake and Elwood at the Lone Star Cafe in New York backed by Delbert McClinton’s band. Gosh. Leon Russell, Willie Nelson's band, and the Grateful Dead. They had a lot of backup bands. [Chuckles.]
IR: Wow.
JL: And they were performing. They used to warm up the audience on the show as Jake and Elwood, and finally they were able to perform on the show as Jake and Elwood, and the response was so huge that Steve Martin invited them to be his opening act at the Universal Amphitheatre for a summer tour. So Danny and John took this very seriously and put together with Paul Shaffer this extraordinary band—the Blues Brothers Band. And that opening act was recorded live by Atlantic Records and became this gigantic, successful album. So you had this situation with this triple-platinum album "Briefcase Full of Blues" with John and Danny. John and Danny being the stars of the hottest show in the world and John being the star of the hottest movie, "Animal House." Universal went, "Hey, wait a minute, don't we have the rights to make a movie?!" They sort of put us into production very quickly. I'm still amazed we got away with it.
IR: How do you feel about DVD, as a medium, offering more chances for more people to see a director's cut—or something being as close as it could be to a director's cut—given it has been 25 years?
JL: I still have mixed feelings about all these making-of things because they give everything away. And a lot of it's my fault. You know, I made "Thriller," and to finance "Thriller," which is a Michael Jackson thing, we did this “Making of Thriller," and that was the very first sell-through video.
IR: I guess it's like a magician being forced to reveal his tricks.
JL: I don't know. I still have mixed feelings about it. But at the very same time, as a film buff, I love it. I love seeing them, you know. So that’s why I usually don't do commentaries because when I listen to them I think, "Shut up. I want to hear the movie."
IR: "The Blues Brothers" was originally released about 25 years ago. Looking back on it now, what do you feel the most proud of about the movie? Do you have any favorite scenes?
JR: I don't know. I think the thing I can say with 20/20 hindsight—25 years of hindsight—was how successful it was in terms of what John and Danny were trying to do. I made fun of Danny in the script—that whole "mission from God" makes fun of Danny. He's really evangelical about this. In '79 all the music on the radio was disco. It was all ABBA, and the Bee Gees were a big act, and Danny and John did something unique—they exploited their own celebrity to focus a spotlight on these great artists. In that way the movie was very successful. You would never think that the blues—rhythm and blues—was in disfavor now. Now it's acknowledged for the great American music it is. And I think that has a lot to do with the movie. I'm quite proud of that.
