Find out how John Belushi, unmanageable, impacted the filming of the “Blues Brothers” to the point that its director punched him in the face!
On the set of The Blues Brothers, drugs weren’t hard to come by, and actor John Belushi’s self-destructive, drug-addicted temper impacted the set far more than anyone could have anticipated.
Remember, the film tells the story of two brothers who must raise the sum of 5,000 dollars to save the orphanage in which they grew up. For this, they decide to reform their youth musical group: the Blues Brothers.
We are October 25, 1979, late afternoon. John Landis is extremely tense. He directed his fourth feature film, The Blues Brothers, a rock’n’roll musical comedy. He turns with John Belushi, a comedian from Saturday Night Live with whom he has just done the comedy American College, in which he burst the screen.
Alongside the troublemaker Belushi, another headliner of the film, there is his friend, also from SNL, Dan Aykroyd, who will become world famous for Ghostbusters. Their duet in front of the Landis camera is expected to be a hit at the box office, but behind the scenes, it’s a disaster.
Universal Pictures
The film is way behind schedule, costs a fortune, and filming isn’t finished at all. One of the reasons for the delays is due to Belushi’s lifestyle, addicted to cocaine, which he takes constantly, except for the times when he is forced to rest, and he then takes a valium. He’s in a daze most of the time. And this day of October 25, 1979, he refuses to leave his caravan.
Landis, exasperated, enters by force, and finds his actor seated, bloated, in a terrible state, his hair disheveled, his gaze lost in the void. The smell of cognac and urine mingle, a pyramid of cocaine is placed on a table.
The terrified director shouts to him:
John, you are killing yourself! Economically, it’s untenable, don’t do that to my film! Do not do this to me ! Don’t do this to Judy [la compagne de Belushi, ndlr] and don’t do that to yourself!
Belushi remains haggard. Seeing Landis start flushing the coke down the toilet, he laboriously gets up and starts walking towards his director, who greets him with a punch to the face! Belushi, much more massive than his friend Landis, falls on the ground and bursts into tears: “I’m so ashamed, so ashamed”.
Universal Pictures
Convinced that he cannot do his job without taking drugs, Belushi will continue his self-destructive behavior on the majority of the rest of the filming as on the rest of his career, before dying in 1982 of an injection of “speedball” (mixture of heroin and cocaine) during a party given at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.
The one who was seen as one of the most promising comedians of his generation will have finally known only a fleeting glory.