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John Belushi was an actor and comedian, one of the first performers on Saturday Night Live and one half of the Blues Brothers. Known for his legendary characters and sketches on Saturday Night Live, Belushi imbued his brilliant performances with a manic, boisterous energy that has never seen before or since. He died due to an accidental overdose on March 5, 1982, at L.A.'s Chateau Marmont. The talents of director John Landis and Saturday Night Live's irrepressible John Belushi conspired to create a rambunctious, subversive college comedy that continues to resonate.
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And a man whose personal cracks were inevitably widened by the money, pressure and excesses that accompanied becoming, for a few short years, the biggest star in – and best buddy of – America. But as Belushi found fame, he also found himself deeper in the throes of addiction. Not unlike his Animal House counterpart Bluto, Belushi’s lifestyle thrived on alcohol, drugs, and a revolving cast of enablers who recognized that when Belushi was intoxicated, he was fun. On March 5, 1982, he overdosed while speedballing (a mix of heroin and cocaine) at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel.
Perspective I was on campus when 'Animal House' debuted. It changed everything. - The Washington Post
Perspective I was on campus when 'Animal House' debuted. It changed everything..
Posted: Tue, 15 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
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A Blues Brothers movie was green-lit before Ackroyd had even written his monstrous 324-page script, but it proved a mixed blessing for Belushi. Cinematically the 1980 film remains his finest hour, as Jake and Elwood chase the spirit of the blues around Chicago with the police, country rednecks and Nazis on their tail. “John inserted himself into practically every sketch in a two-hour show,” National Lampoon editor Tony Hendra said in Belushi, recalling his 1972 trip to Chicago to check John out for a potential role in the magazine’s off-Broadway Woodstock pastiche Lemmings. The resounding success of Animal House was more than just a steppingstone in the career of John Belushi.
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Prior to the movie, Belushi was a regular on "Saturday Night Live." He has since released a double-platinum album with The Blues Brothers and focused on making movies. "Animal House" first premiered on July 28, 1978, and has been claimed to be an inspiring film that left an impact on comedy and movies. Over three decades ago the University of Oregon tried, unsuccessfully, to hide its participation in Animal House.
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Is 'Animal House' Based on a True Story? - Collider
Is 'Animal House' Based on a True Story?.
Posted: Thu, 16 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
"His death scared a whole group of show-business people. It caused a big exodus from drugs," Williams told Entertainment Weekly. "Hollywood was toxic to him. People wanted him to be the Belushi they'd seen on screen," said Michaels in the same article. Only in a small part, he appeared in the western flop Goin' South with Jack Nicholson and Mary Steenburgen. The next year, he took on a serious role in Old Boyfriends with Talia Shire, which failed to find an audience.
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Filming Stephen Spielberg’s 1979 wartime comedy turkey 1941, he’d go awol or injure himself falling from the wings of planes. And when he was in Chicago filming The Blues Brothers, all of his old networks of contacts reopened, the cast and crew were awash with drugs and everybody in town wanted to palm Bluto a bag of blow in a handshake, just to see how wild he’d get. Animal House was the first film produced by National Lampoon, the most popular humor magazine on college campuses in the mid-1970s.[12] The periodical specialized in satirizing politics and popular culture. Many of the magazine's writers were recent college graduates, hence its appeal to students all over the country. They made their debut in 1973's National Lampoon's High School Yearbook, a satire of a Middle America 1964 high school yearbook. Kroger's and Pepperidge's characters in the yearbook were effectively the same as their characters in the movie, whereas Vernon Wormer was a P.E.
Bluto’s motivational speech, spoken with true ignorance, takes on the gravitas of historical urgency – without any real information or plan. Bluto’s frat brothers roll their eyes, content to let the animal man tire himself out. One by one, the college students are roused until they are charging out the door, ready to take on the whole campus. Beyond Animal House, Bluto’s zealous monologue has become a viral movie clip in its own right.
A potential career as a serious theatre actor was short lived; as a high-school graduation present, Belushi was taken to a show at Chicago’s Second City, an early improvisational comedy venue where Joan Rivers had earned her spurs. “When he walked out of the theatre that night it was as if a light had gone on in his head,” Judy wrote in her 2005 oral history of his life, Belushi. A new film about John Belushi is currently in the works and the cast appears to be star-studded.
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At the market, Pinto meets a young cashier named Clorette and invites her to the party, while Otter flirts with an older woman, who turns out to be Wormer's alcoholic wife, Marion. During the toga party, at which Otis Day and the Knights perform, Otter seduces Marion, while Pinto and Clorette make out until she passes out, drunk. Pinto resists the temptation to rape her and instead takes her home in a shopping cart. He later discovers that she is the 13-year-old daughter of Carmine DePasto, the town mayor. In the fall of 1962, Faber College freshmen Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman seek to pledge a fraternity. Larry and Kent are accepted as Delta pledges and given fraternity names "Pinto" and "Flounder," respectively.
According to Bob Woodward’s 1984 Belushi biography Wired, over the coming days of almost non-stop drug taking, Belushi fell in with Cathy Smith, an ex-partner of various members of The Band and Gordon Lightfoot who had turned to dealing heroin to the likes of The Stones and Hollywood figures. At Belushi’s request, Smith introduced him to speedballs – a mixture of cocaine and heroin – and administered 11 shots to him over the course of two and a half days. After The Blues Brothers wrapped, however, the death of his grandmother Nena gave John the jolt he needed to admit to his problem. He agreed to hire a former Secret Service operative named Smokey, who had helped the Eagles’ Joe Walsh stay clean, to break his habits. Initially the pair played cat and mouse games, as Smokey swept toilet cubicles and conducted pocket searches to confiscate gram after gram being slipped to Belushi, and John continually tried to give him the slip.
The outlandish comedy had crazy car chases, neo-Nazis and nearly everything else but the kitchen sink in it. The film also featured several musical cameos by such talented recording artists as Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway and James Brown. Before one SNL show, after a night out with The Rolling Stones, Belushi’s lungs began filling with fluid and he barely made it onto the set (he’d quit the show soon afterwards).
Some of his most famous characters were a sword-wielding samurai, a killer bee and a cone-headed alien named Kuldroth. Belushi also continued making fun of the famous with hilarious takes on the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Kissinger, Truman Capote and William Shatner. While he was on Saturday Night Live, there were many stories going around about rampant drug use by the members of the cast. To deal with pressures and his own insecurities, Belushi is said to have done cocaine and other drugs. The film's significant cultural impact can be seen across many college campuses in the United States. At Harding University, a private Christian university affiliated with the Churches of Christ, Titans Men's Social Club refuses to put on a spring formal for its members.
For his next project, Belushi became active behind the scenes and wrote the screenplay for Noble Rot. In the months leading up to his death, he was reportedly spending about $2,500 a week on his habit, according to People magazine. Belushi was traveling back and forth between his home in New York City and California to work on the script in 1982. During the final week of his life, Belushi rented a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, a popular hotel for the Hollywood set. On the night of March 4, 1982, he was reportedly partying with the likes of Robin Williams. Only thirty-three years old, he died from a drug overdose of a combination of cocaine and heroin, also known as a "speedball." The woman who was with him and had supplied him with drugs, Cathy Smith, was questioned by the police and released.
University President William Beaty Boyd instructed Director of University Relations Muriel Jackson to negotiate with the studio, and an agreement was signed on October 4 to allow filming on campus in return for $20,000 and a commitment that the university not be identified in the film. The cast of comedy classic 'Animal House' have pursued careers in acting, directing and producing since the film's release 40 years ago. Fully abandoning any formal credo leaves a person with the options to despair or embrace it, and the Deltas advance the latter choice to its sloppy logical conclusion. Fat, drunk and stupid may be no way to go through life, but it certainly takes the edge off. They rebel against a world they want nothing to do with through partying, insulating themselves from the mellow-harshing responsibilities of adult life by remaining in college indefinitely.
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