Bonus Content #1 My first R-rated move was...
also the first VHS tape our family owned.
Welcome to the first-ever R-Rated Movie Club Bonus Content for paid subscribers! Let me take a moment to say “thank you” for your extra support as I launch this newsletter.
Bonus Content is typically tied to the movie in the Feature Presentation. The January 2023 movie was The Blues Brothers and so the bonus Audience Reaction poll is about it, too, as is the bonus essay - a personal reflection on how I came to see The Blues Brothers when I was a kid and it officially became my first R-rated movie.
I hoped to debut early-release podcast audio of both the Feature Presentation and the Bonus Content essay together, but that is taking a bit more work than I anticipated. You’ll get an email notification when it’s ready, however, and I’m hopeful it’s worth the wait. In the meantime, here’s this month’s Bonus Content, and thanks again, all of you!
Reflections on The Blues Brothers
Each generation has at least one piece of defining technological equipment. Likely at least two or maybe more, but certainly every generation has at least one. The radio. The TV. The CD player. The wheel. The technology moves so fast that for some generations, they’ll experience both in their defining years (DVD and Blu-ray, anyone?). For me, the technology I’m thinking about is the VCR.
I was just a kid during video format wars, so no, I didn’t fight in the video format wars. Beta’s what my uncle rented. He didn’t hold with my parent’s VHS ideals; he felt Sony and JVC could have their format war and we didn’t have to get involved. Forgive the oblique Star Wars reference. Anyway, we had a VCR and it served us well and well into the early 2000s. For over 1,000 hours I watched movie upon movie on tape… before the dark times… before the DVD. Okay, last oblique Star Wars reference, promise.
I’m pretty sure the year was 1985, that’s the year I turned six years old. I’m pretty sure that’s when we bought our first VCR and our first tapes. In my memory, we bought four VHS tapes to go with our VCR. First, two were blank. The first was for my mother to record soap operas with the VCR timer so she could “catch up” on the show whenever errands came up during the day. The other was for me to record Saturday morning cartoons. While it wasn’t my favorite cartoon, my mind’s eye sees me excited to record Dungeons & Dragons cartoons in particular. I remember taking a VHS tape filled with D&D cartoons along for a visit to my grandparents’ house and watching the episode Quest of the Skeleton Warrior, with animation MVP Frank Welker as the voice of the title character (along with the memorable bleats of Uni the Unicorn, as Frank’s specialty has always been animated animals. …And Fred from Scooby-Doo.
The other two tapes were movies “priced to own.” That’s an interesting phrase we don’t have now, not for Blu-rays and 4K discs, not for streaming content. Way back in the day, during the format wars, tapes could be very expensive, like $80, $90, $100, or around $250 and up, in today’s money. I love movies, but I can’t imagine spending that much on one! To make up for that cost, there were a lot of VHS rentals back then, even rental clubs. Like, you’d get them in the mail and return them. Just like Netflix. Which wasn’t a thing. The world is a circle. That means many people had VCRs and other players but didn’t own many tapes. Eventually in the mid-80s, they came down to $50, $40, $24.95. You know, a reasonable $70 today. I have many fond memories of looking over movies for sale, movies for rent, and movies, movies, movies as a kid. I do miss that to this day.
I don’t know how much my parents paid, but I know we got two movies that day: Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first and greatest and my most-memorized of the Indiana Jones movies, and The Blues Brothers, which is the topic of the first Feature Presentation for R-Rated Movie Club. Technically, Raiders of the Lost Ark won’t appear at R-Rated Movie Club since it was rated PG, but let’s remember that was a harsh PG in 1980 and they had to superimpose flames over a particularly violent head explosion to tone down the violence and stop the movie from being rated R. I guess Mr. Spielberg saw me as a little baby back then and said, we cannot have this guy writing an article about this movie. Get some flames over that exploding head!
The Blues Brothers immediately captivated me with its music and comedy. I knew about Dan Aykroyd because by then I’d seen Ghostbusters in the theater and I knew about both him and John Belushi from reruns of Saturday Night Live that I watched with my dad. I ended up exposed to a lot of comedy from the 60s and 70s while growing up in the 80s and I think that helped give me an “old soul,” particularly for comedy. All that said, it didn’t take much convincing for this kid to watch these comedians.
The music was infectious. I loved the blues riffs and the R&B licks and I still have an affinity for soul music of that era to this day. I think of all of the songs back then, it’s James Brown leading the church in singing “The Old Landmark” hymn by Rev. WH Brewster that got me going. I still love that song and that performance. I love working in churches today and while we have energetic worship I have yet to encounter any worship service as energetic as that one. I mean, part of that is the culture of the churches I’ve been part of, completely, and yeah, a bit of it is movie magic, especially the somersaulters. Which Google Docs insists is not a real word but I’m keeping it.
As far as I know, this movie was my first exposure to the F-word, which is as far as I can tell, the reason this movie is rated R. I get it. There are more than a few and it fits the MPA’s ratings criteria. As filmmakers, they could’ve gone without some of the language and had an excellent PG movie on their hands, but they kept them in there. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Aykroyd put these F-bombs in the script because he’d just spent around 5 years on television on Saturday Night Live doing great comedy while avoiding certain swear words and this is a sign of unleashed freedom. He didn’t go that route for the sequel, Blues Brothers 2000, which has no F-bombs that I recall and is rated PG-13, yet has extended sequences taking place in a strip club which, well, it’s harder to watch that one with my kids than the R-rated original. There’s plenty of ink spilled about what parents will or won’t let their kids see in movies, but that’s where I’m at
This means that this exchange between Jake and Elwood has my first-known F-bomb:
“You can’t lie to a nun. We gotta go in and visit the Penguin.”
“No. Fucking. Way.” (10:18)
Ah, my first F-bomb! And certainly, not my last.
My memory is fuzzy, but I’m sure I got a stern warning not to use that word and I can’t promise I never did as a little kid but no clear recollection of using it really stands out. Oh, I did once yell a quote from the PG-rated Raiders of the Lost Ark in first grade during a game of tag on the playground when I was tagged and I exclaimed, “You bastards, I’ll get you for this!” not knowing A. what a bastard is, 2. that “bastard” in that context was a swear word, and D. while movie quotes are a lot of fun, none of what I said is an appropriate response in a game of tag. That did not go over well with the recess monitor.
I’ve often half-joked that these two movies, these first two movies we owned, are the two I have the most memorized and could even do a one-person show of them. I haven’t watched them as much in the last 15 years as I did in my first ~30, but yeah, if the aliens landed and said, “Puny humans, perform Blues Brothers or we will destroy you,” I am humanity’s best bet. But come on, this movie is so, so quotable.
“Boys, you gotta learn not to talk to nuns that way.”
“You got my Cheese Whiz, boy?”
“Illinois Nazis.” “I hate Illinois Nazis.”
“I bet those cops got SCMODS.” “SCMODS?” “State County Municipal Offender Data System.”
“It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses.” “Hit it.”
“Got any fried chicken?” “Best damn chicken in the state!” “Bring me four fried chickens and a Coke.” “You want chicken wings or chicken legs?” “Four fried chickens and a Coke.” “And some dry white toast, please.”
“I say we give the Blues Brothers just one more chance.” “Why not? If the shit fits, wear it!”
That one makes zero sense and I love it. The Blues Brothers is proudly my first R-rated movie. It’s fun to write about, to share it with others, and I don’t see it leaving my movie rotation anytime soon.
Bonus Audience Reaction Poll - Rate The Blues Brothers
What about you? Have you seen The Blues Brothers and what do you think? Take this poll to offer your rating and leave a comment to give your thoughts.
Thank you to all of the paid subscribers who help make R-Rated Movie Club possible and that includes bonus content like this. I’m grateful for your support and I hope you’re having a good experience, dear reader. That’s all for this first Bonus Content essay and we’ll see you at the movies!