Belushi: A Biography
Woodward had never met Belushi, and was a showbiz outsider when he started researching his book. His introductory note is pensive. “What happened?” he asks. “Who was responsible, if anyone? Could it have been different or better? . . . He made us laugh, and now he can make us think.” For Woodward the meat of Belushi’s story lay in his drug addiction, and he chronicled Belushi’s prodigious cocaine use and the monstrous behavior it spawned with a fetishistic eye for detail. Belushi’s comic talent and personal charm were at best ancillary concerns for the Washington Post reporter. Woodward saw the Belushi story as a spectacle, a car wreck that onlookers could observe with fascination.
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Many of the contributors are screenwriters, comedians, and directors, and they have a lot to say about the particulars of Belushi’s comic style. His brother Jim traces the origins of his very physical comedy back to his childhood, when he communicated through gestures with their Albanian grandmother. Former SNL writer Alan Zweibel remembers Lorne Michaels watching Belushi do his irate weatherman character on “Weekend Update” and murmuring, “It’s Gleason”–seeing in Belushi a reincarnation of Jackie Gleason’s archetypal prole, Ralph Kramden. Quite a few touch upon Belushi’s ability to improvise on camera, a skill that gave his performances their critical–and hilarious–element of surprise. Says his Animal House costar James Widdoes, “During the scene on the cafeteria line, [director John] Landis was talking to Belushi all the way through it, and Belushi was just taking it one step further. What started out as Landis saying ‘Okay, now grab the sandwich,’ became, in John’s hands, taking the sandwich, squeezing and bending it until it popped out of the cellophane, sucking it into his mouth, and then putting half the sandwich back. He would just go a little further each time.”
Judith Belushi Pisano
