Quote of the Day (Harold Ramis, on the Original Dream Cast of ‘Animal House')

“The cast we had picked was Chevy Chase as Otter, Bill Murray as Boone, Brian Doyle-Murray as Hoover, [Dan] Aykroyd as D-Day, and [John] Belushi, of course, was Bluto. None of them wanted to do it except for Belushi. They were very competitive. Chevy thought he was onto a big movie career, and he wasn’t going to share the limelight with Belushi.”—American actor-screenwriter-director Harold Ramis (1944-2014), quoted in Chris Nashawaty, “Building ‘Animal House,'” Entertainment Weekly, Oct. 9, 1998

Take a look at the guys in the above picture. Now, imagine them replaced by the prominent names mentioned by Ramis. Quite a difference, eh?

By “we” in the above quote, Ramis had in mind himself, his co-writer Chris Miller, and co-producers Ivan Reitman and Matty Simmons. John Landis, brought in to direct, had his own ideas—and sounds like he rubbed the original creative team the wrong way by calling the project “my movie.”

In general, Landis desired to cast straight dramatic actors—quite a contrast from those mentioned above. But some of his other choices were, shall we say, unusual. He sounded out Jack Webb to play Dean Wormer and Meat Loaf for Bluto, in case Belushi wouldn’t or couldn’t take on the role.

But, for my money, his most unusual idea was Kim Novak as Mrs. Wormer. She had, by this time, fled Hollywood without completely abandoning her film career.

But the hard-drinking, libidinous dean’s wife would have been quite a change from the far more restrained roles that the blond Fifties goddess played in films like Bell, Book and Candle, Pal Joey and Picnic.

What might have happened if she decided to go through with it? Might other roles have come her way? Would she have played the wild cucumber scene with the same uninhibited delight that Verna Bloom did, or would she have tantalized Otter by staying just out of reach, aisle after aisle in the supermarket, as she did with Jimmy Stewart early in Vertigo?

We’ll never know. But it’s as startling an alternative casting idea as the original choice for Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate: Novak's fellow blond Fifties star Doris Day.

Movie Exchange of the Day (“The Blues Brothers,” on Lying to a Nun)

Jake (played by John Belushi), surprised as they arrive at their old orphanage: “What are we doing here?”

Elwood (played by Dan Aykroyd): “You promised you'd visit The Penguin the day you got out.”

Jake: “Yeah? So I lied to her.”

Elwood (incredulously): “You can't lie to a nun. We got to go in and visit The Penguin.”

Jake: “No... fucking... way.”—The Blues Brothers (1980), written by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis, directed by John Landis

Elwood is right: You can’t lie to a nun. But, as we find out in the following hilarious scene, Jake is right, too, to be wary of their spontaneous visit to the orphanage where they grew up: the decidedly pre-Vatican II Sister Mary Stigmata is about to leave her mark on them again.

I suspect I was far from alone in laughing like hell at Sister Mary beating the stuffing out of brothers Jack and Elwood. Yes, the rough-and-tough nun is a stereotype. But nearly every Catholic baby boomer at least knows of someone who’s experienced this particular form of discipline, and a number have known it firsthand as well.

I wish I got a kick out of the rest of the film—which premiered on this date in 1980—as much--even if the Catholic hierarchy has gotten over its uptight attitude toward the film upon its original release and now hails it as a "Catholic classic."

Like Caddyshack, another 1980 comedy that starred two leading members of Saturday Night Live’s Not Ready for Prime Time Players, The Blues Brothers has a frustratingly ramshackle structure. Yes, we know that comedy isn’t pretty, and there are some wonderful scenes here that make me wonder if my friend Jim isn’t right in regarding this as one of his favorite comedies.

But the whole thing is heavily reliant on raucous motion (the huge, squealing car chase) at the expense of wit. Moreover, funny bits just happen—they don’t build and develop. It feels exactly like what it was—a five-minute TV skit puffed up to two hours—and the strain shows.

In a way, director John Landis’ interaction with John Belushi here anticipates his later relationship with another breakout SNL star of a few years later, Eddie Murphy. The prior Landis-Belushi collaboration, Animal House, was a monster hit.

Two years later, however, momentum had swung away from the director and decidedly toward his star. The film was a hit—as of yet, nothing was going to stop Belushi.

But puffed up by ego, hopped up on drugs, the star was becoming considerably harder to work with. At one point, Landis couldn’t film a scene because Belushi was catatonic from a cocaine-and-Quaaludes combination. (In a couple of years, of course, he’d be dead all too soon.)

Similarly, in 1983, Landis helped Murphy avoid the sophomore jinx by making his second film, Trading Places, even more memorable than his debut, 48 Hours. By 1988, however, the Landis-Murphy partnership proved decidedly lame with Coming to America. The star’s gifts were still in evidence—in fact, they still are—but he was becoming less amenable to suggestions --and to the end of his remarkable ‘80s box-office run.