It’s been 30 years since John Belushi was found dead from a drug overdose at a hotel on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Belushi was one of those crazily natural comedians – whether playing a waiter at a Greek café – “No Coke! Pepsi!” – in a “Saturday Night Live” skit or an ex-con on a mission in “The Blues Brothers.”
Belushi and his blues brother Dan Aykroyd – well, replicas of them – were sitting high on a table at an auction house I attended recently. I had seen a photo on the auction website and couldn’t wait to actually see these two characters up-close. I had arrived at the auction house late and instantly began searching for the pair but couldn’t find them. Had they already been sold?
Outside on the dock where furniture was being auctioned, I talked to a man who told me they were still in the auction house down one of the narrow aisles of furniture. I hunted a little more carefully and came upon the back side of them planted in metal lawn chairs on a table.
The tall Elwood and the short pudgy Jake were leaning back in the chairs, as cool as could be, as if they were waiting patiently for me to find them and wondering what took me so long.
They were bigger-than-life replicas of Belushi as Jake and Aykroyd as Elwood, and they appeared to be made of plaster. They wore their trademark dark sunglasses, black suits, black ties, black shoes, white shirts and white socks. Like the movie characters, they had their names painted on their fingers.
I fondly remembered the Blues Brothers movie, especially the scene with Aretha as the owner of a mom-and-pop soul-food restaurant with her husband, who was the brothers’ former guitar player. “You better think,” Aretha sang and danced, pointing a warning finger at her husband who was ready to leave. Even Cab Calloway, James Brown and Ray Charles made cameo appearances.
The 1980 movie was the story of Jake (who’d just gotten out of jail) and Elwood Blues, who headed out in search of the members of their old blues band. On what they called a “mission from God,” they planned to hold a concert to raise money to save the Catholic home where they were raised. The movie grew out of a Belushi and Aykroyd “Saturday Night Live” sketch from 1978. Aykroyd said in a 2010 interview that the story itself came from a newspaper article.
During their trip, they encounter all kinds of people and get into mishaps that make for some amazing crash scenes and some very funny social scenes (Elwood and his toasted white bread, Jake and his four fried chickens and a Coke, the brothers eating like pigs at a fancy restaurant). Through the madness, they emerge as an endearing pair of losers on the run.
The replicas of Jake and Elwood demonstrated to me that you can buy just about anything at auction. I wasn’t around when the guys sold, but I’m sure they went to a good place where they will be the ultimate conversation-starter.
