http://www.barraclou.com/memorial/dixie/
And if you want to watch the chase scene again armed with all this new knowledge, here you are. Note the before-they-were-known cameo by Pier 1 Imports:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3CGibsWT8
My mother has been going through stuff trying to get rid of it (I'm FINALLY getting her collection of rock music magazines) and she found a copy of Chicagoland's Community Guide, a 1978-79 publication my family used to choose a house upon our return to the area. (I was born in Waukegan, a Chicago suburb.) The book is filled with retro pictures of malls and shopping centers that probably only make you nostalgic if you're of my generation - I now see what they mean about your reflective mental state when you hit middle age, or maybe it's just because almost everything in the present sucks. Anyway, I was reading this and wondering where the mall was that got trashed in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers that was filmed in that area at that particular time. Well, unfortunately that mall is not featured in this publication, but thanks to the magic of Google I can bring you that information anyway. So, to mark the 35th anniversary of the summer that The Blues Brothers filled movie screens.... The Blues Brothers' demolition derby was filmed at the Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illiinois, which is south of Chicago but not close enough to be included in Chicagoland's Community Guide. Or maybe the makers of the book simply excluded it because it was a high-crime area. The mall had opened in 1966 and closed in 1978 due to mall incidents including a kidnapping and a fatal shooting. The last store to go was the Jewel grocery store, which closed in the summer of 1979. Twas a serendipitous occurrence for Blues director John Landis, who was looking for a place to film the movie's car chase and set up shop in the shopping center in the summer of '79. (I can't imagine it's easy to find a mall that's one level with no escalators getting in the way.) Many of the former tenants' signs were still up, so it would be easy to recreate that mall ambience, although a few of them did not want to be associated with the film and asked that their appearances be occluded for the filming. The most notable of these was Walgreens, so their former location was turned into a Toys R Us for the occasion. (If you squint when the outside of the mall is shown in the film, you can still see the drug store's sign.) If you're eagle-eyed enough (freeze-framing the DVD is very illuminating) you can also see that many of the stores - Toys R Us and the record store especially - are not very well stocked and were obviously fake storefronts. In reality, the Jewel did not open out into the rest of the mall, but that was changed for the film. The film's makers were unsuccessfully sued in 1981 for reneging on their promise to clean up their mess when they were done, but it didn't matter. After a lengthy deterioration and failed preservation efforts, the buliding was finally torn down in 2012 after asbestos was found in the structure. A McDonald's now stands near the site with a statue of Joliet Jake and Elwood inside to mark the historical significance of the area. Here's some fascinating "then and now" pictures and the original mall layout:
http://www.barraclou.com/memorial/dixie/ And if you want to watch the chase scene again armed with all this new knowledge, here you are. Note the before-they-were-known cameo by Pier 1 Imports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3CGibsWT8
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Because every child of my generation who played with one of these grew up to become a racist: We'd better ban these albums while we're at it, or at least play them backwards to ensure that there aren't any hidden racist messages on them: And we'd better remove this video also, although I never heard of any animosity between Tom Petty & Michael Jackson when they were neighbors in Encino in the pre-Neverland 1980s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoV-awiHpuM I never thought I'd live to see the days that my parents talked about, of Communist witch hunts when you had to watch what you said, or wrote, or what products you bought, or even thought, for fear of being considered a subversive. I was wrong. |
Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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