5 things to know about Milwaukee’s role in the ‘Blues Brothers’ movie
One of Milwaukee’s biggest moments in the movies barely lasts a minute.
As part of the car-crash-filled chase scene near the end of the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers,” Jake and Elwood Blues (John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd) flee Chicago police and Illinois Nazis by careening onto a freeway on-ramp. After racing up the ramp, they manage to stop short at the end of the ramp — which turns out to be unfinished — flip their car around and race into downtown Chicago. But not before one carload of Nazis flies off the bridge and crash-lands in front of them.
The stretch of unfinished roadway? Although it’s supposed to be in Chicago, that actually was the East-West Freeway stretch of I-794, between Milwaukee’s downtown and the Third Ward.
At the time, the unfinished link to the never-built north extension of the Lake Freeway had stood out for years, like concrete fingers with their rebar nerve endings sticking out — not the most likely movie star for a city that hadn’t drawn a lot of major movie productions.
How it happened — and how the filming in Milwaukee went — is just one of the stories told by Daniel de Visé in his new book, “The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv and the Making of an American Film Classic” (Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press). The book, which takes a deep dive into the making of the movie, also serves as a dual biography of sorts of Belushi and Akyroyd, from their respective beginnings to the release of “The Blues Brothers,” which in many ways was the apex of their joint career.
Here are five things de Visé reveals that you might not have known about Milwaukee’s role in “The Blues Brothers.”
‘Blues Brothers’ needed a road to nowhere
The script for “The Blues Brothers” called for a piece of unfinished freeway. While nearly all of the movie’s other exteriors were shot in and around Chicago, the producers found what they needed in Milwaukee, on the stub end of eastbound I-794.
“Not only did it go nowhere,” producer Bob Weiss told de Visé, “it ended on a ramp high up in the air.”
An unexpected connection
David Sosna, an assistant director on the movie, scouted locations for “The Blues Brothers.” To shoot on the Milwaukee freeway stub, de Visé writes, he had to get approval from an unnamed state highway official, who seemed skeptical about the whole thing.
To win over the official, Sosna played a hunch: “Your name,” he asked the official. “You’re Jewish?”
When the official replied yes, Sosna, who was not particularly religious, replied: “A landsman!” The exclamation, a reference to a fellow countryman, drew a smile from the official. Then, Sosna told de Visé, he played his ace: He asked where he could get decent pastrami in Milwaukee.
“We got the bridge,” Sosna remembered.
Director’s recklessness foreshadowed
Filming in Milwaukee started on Aug. 28, 1979.
The scene on the bridge was tricky. A stunt double for Aykroyd had to rev the Bluesmobile up the road, stopping the car a couple of feet past the edge of the pavement. The first time they tried the shot, Landis thought the driver pulled up too short. So he told the driver to go much faster — and that time, according to actor Gene Schuldt, who played one of the Illinois Nazis in the scene — the driver “overshot.” The Bluesmobile went over the road’s edge and got caught in the steel reinforcement rods sticking out of the ramp.
Members of the crew “ran over and held the rear end of the car down while the stunt guys crawled out of the windows,” Schuldt told de Visé. The teetering car was eventually pulled back to safety using a crane. (The scene in the film combined footage from both attempts.)
The recklessness of the shoot foreshadowed another, more deadly stunt gone wrong on a Landis project. Nearly three years later, on July 23, 1982, actor Vic Morrow and two child actors killed by an out-of-control helicopter during filming of a scene for Landis’ “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” Landis and four crew members were charged with involuntary manslaughter; all five were acquitted.
Milwaukee filming fueled delays
The Milwaukee shoot was only supposed to last one day, but, like just about everything surrounding the making of “The Blues Brothers,” things quickly got out of hand. The cast and crew were at the location by 8 a.m. on Aug. 28. But filming itself didn’t start
‘Blues Brothers’ author visit at Boswell Books
Daniel de Visé will talk about and sign copies of “The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv and the Making of an American Film Classic” at 6:30 p.m. March 20 at Boswell Books, 2559 N. Downer Ave. To register for the event, go to danieldevisemke.eventbrite.com.
until 12:20 p.m. And then, when the Nazis’ car went up and over the freeway ramp (with a driver dummy inside), Landis didn’t like the way it looked, so he wanted to do it again. But it was too late into the day, so they shot the next day — and then the day after that.
De Visé says the longer-than-expected stop in Milwaukee reflected “The Blues Brothers’” production problems. By the time production was completed in February 1980, it was nearly two months behind schedule and 37% over budget, costing $27.5 million, according to studio officials.
Spotting Milwaukee in ‘Blues Brothers’ ‘Chicago’
The scene is set in downtown Chicago, so Milwaukee isn’t mentioned (though the City of Milwaukee does get a “thank you” at the end of the credits). But you can find traces of Milwaukee if you look closely — and are good with a “pause” button.
When Jake and Elwood turn onto the freeway, you can see over the interstate the signs guiding motorists to Chicago on I-94/I-43 and to Madison on westbound I-94. Then, just after the Blues Brothers crash through a “road closed” sign, you can see the exit signs for Van Buren and Jackson streets.
En route, you also can catch glimpses of what is now the U.S. Bank Building, the Wisconsin Gas building, the Chase Tower, the pre-Calatrava Milwaukee Art Museum, the top of the Pfister Hotel, the bandshell over the old main stage at Summerfest, and signs for Johnson Controls, Moebius Printing and other businesses.