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B O O K R E V I E W 55 F A L L Q 3 I S S U E is a very real thing, and most moviegoers look back with fondness, even reverence, on films like "Back to the Future," "Beverly Hills Cop," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Ghostbusters," "Top Gun," and "Die Hard." Many of these titles have been rebooted, or at least given sequels, in recent years. Three recent books tap into moviegoers' affection for the 1980s. Two of the tomes offer exhaustive accounts of the making of a pair of f ilms representative of the era—John Landis's "The Blues Brothers" (1980) and Brian De Palma's "Scarface" (1983)—while the third is the autobiogra- phy of a figure who first came to attention, in both television and features, during that decade, writer-director-producer Ed Zwick. Each of the volumes has its strengths and limitations, but anyone who looks back fondly at that decade—at least for what was in theaters and on TV—will find plenty to enjoy here. R e l e a s e d a t t h e s ta r t o f t h e 1 9 8 0 s, "The Blues Brothers" ironically reflects the preference for tacky gigantism that characterized the tail end of the New Holly- wood movement, including Hal Needham's "Smokey and the Bandit" (1977), Landis's " N a t i o n a l L a m p o o n's A n i m a l H o u s e " ( 1 978), a n d Steve n Sp i e l b e rg 's " 1 9 4 1 " (1979). In theory, "The Blues Brothers" tells a relatively simple story of a pair of wayward Chicago blues musicians—"blood brothers" Jake Blues (John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd)—who seek to raise funds to spare a Catholic orphanage by resuming their performance career. In practice, however, the film is a sprawling cacophony of action and sound, comedy and fury: car chases, elaborately executed slapstick, and, above all, lovingly filmed musical performances by icons such as James Brown, Ray Charles, and, of course, Aretha Franklin. In his book on "The Blues Brothers," author Daniel De Visé acknowledges the film's firm roots in the 1970s: De Visé opens his book by evoking the befuddlement in the "Saturday Night Live" studio audience on the night of April 22, 1978, when Belushi and Aykroyd—donning suits, hats, and atti- tude—marched onto stage and performed, inexplicably, Floyd Dixon's "Hey Bartend- er." Here was the national debut of the Blues Brothers, but who—or what—were they? "Was this an elaborate skit?" De Visé writes. "Was it serious? No one seemed to know. SNL was a comedy show that took its music seriously. Lorne Michaels, the program's creator and showrunner, had hedged his bets, presenting the Blues Brothers in the guise of a sketch rather than a musical break. He left viewers to judge whether the act was serious or satiric." Although it was more the latter than the former, Belushi and Aykroyd's affection for the blues was not a put-on. As a youth in his native Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Aykroyd developed into a serious connoisseur of blues music, attending a performance by Memphis soul duo Sam Moore and Dave Prater at the Expo 67 in Montreal. "I came back and I said, 'This is the music I want to know about,'" Aykroyd said. Years later, upon meeting heavy metal fan Belushi, Aykroyd shared his idea for an R&B duo: "The kind of guys who had done time in Joliet Prison," as De Visé puts it. B o o k s a b o u t s i n g l e f i l m s h a v e b e - come a genre unto themselves in recent years—some of the more notable examples include volumes about "Chinatown," "The Godfather," and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?"—and most of them share what seems to be an unavoidable flaw: because the making of one movie is unlikely to sustain several hundred pages, these books often are weighed down with digressive background material. Alas, De Visé's book is no exception: Crammed into the book are, among other things, extended mini-biog- raphies of Belushi, Aykroyd, and director Landis, a fulsome account of the early years of "Saturday Night Live," ample material on Second City and "Animal House," and so on. All of this is interesting, so far as it goes, but it adds up to pages upon pages to plough through before we reach the ostensible subject: the movie "The Blues Brothers." Happily, De Visé proves an able chron- icler of the film's production. We learn that the somewhat nerdish, undeniably obsessive Aykroyd produced a screenplay that far exceeded standard lengths. "I was told that most screenplays were 120 to 150 pages long," Aykroyd said, "but when I sat down to write 'Blues Brothers,' there were so many descriptive passages in there, just paragraphs and paragraphs of shots and concept sand ideas." Ultimately delivering a draft of 324 pages, Universal was both excited and bewildered. "With all the insane flying-through-the-air cars and destruction of property, the movie was not going to be cheap," said executive Thom Mount. TUNEFUL: John Landis directs "The Blues Brothers." P H OT O : P H OT O F E S T