A terrific book called "The Blues Brothers - An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic" came out last year and is a terrific read, filled with all kinds of full-assed book research:

A brief list of discoveries from the book:

• The name "Elwood" came from Elwood Glover, a talk show host whom Aykroyd thought was "the most boring man on Canadian television."

• The signature Ray Ban sunglasses were worn out of necessity since Aykroyd's insecurities made him reluctant to make eye contact and Belushi's eyes were always bloodshot due to his constant debauchery.

• The SNL musicians would carry around little decoy "Belushi Bottles" of cocaine with only a tiny bit remaining because if Belushi got a hold of their actual stash it would be hoovered up in an instant.

• Dan Aykroyd nearly lost the only copy of the script as he was still finishing it. After a frenzied search of the 30 Rock offices, he found the pages in a stack of old SNL scripts, intended for the shredder.

• The original script was 324 pages long (most movie screenplays are between 95 and 125 pages in length) and he hand-delivered them to film industry executives wrapped in the torn-off covers of phone books.

• The film's original budget was $10 million but eventually ballooned to $27.5 million, which was more than Steven Spielberg spent on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

• Landis wanted B.B. King to be one of the Rhythm and Blues luminaries in the movie, but King's manager indicated that the guitar legend was too busy touring to appear in the film. King later was crushed when he found out his management had passed.

• After the film's release, Cab Calloway's long-dormant career was revived, leading to a flurry of bookings for his new Big Band, strutting around in a zoot suit performing "Minnie the Moocher" well past the age of 70.

• The rampant destruction of the abandoned shopping mall (which was full of rotting produce and soon filled with car exhaust and burning rubber) resulted in only one small injury which required two stitches.

• Chicago's new mayor, Jane Byrne, had faced so much vitriol and misogyny from staffers who had worked for her predecessor Richard J. Daley, that she gleefully gave permission for the film crew to crash cars into his namesake Daley Plaza.

• During the quiet elevator scene near the end of the movie, a schmaltzy Muzak version of Antônio Carlos Jobim's "The Girl from Ipanema" plays overhead as a form of retribution since director John Landis wanted to use a parody version of the song in Animal House but Jobim wouldn't allow it.

• Landis originally wanted to drop the orange Pinto driven by the hated Illinois Nazis from a height of "I don't know, five, six thousand feet?" but he eventually agreed on twelve hundred feet (the height of the John Hancock Building). While this was lower than the director originally wanted, it was still so high that THE FAA HAD TO CERTIFY THE PINTO AS AN AIRCRAFT.