Word: hollywood
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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From the moment his body was found in a Hollywood hotel room in March 1982, the victim of a drug overdose at age 33, John Belushi became the subject of an inevitable barrage of media scavenging. First came the newspaper stories, detailing the cocaine and heroin abuse that led to the Rabelaisian comic's early death. Then a book, Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi, written by Watergate chronicler Bob Woodward. The tell-all tome implicated several of Belushi's Hollywood friends and associates for condoning, or at least ignoring, his self-destructive behavior...
...next step in the media onslaught, of course, is the movie. But that is where this Hollywood story hit a snag. Plans for a film version of Wired were set in motion more than four years ago. But problems in getting financing delayed the shooting until last summer. And not until last week, after months of turndowns, did the producers find a company willing to distribute the film. The stumbling block, say Wired's backers, was a Hollywood community that closed ranks against a picture it wanted to squelch. Says Woodward, an adviser on the film: "A large portion...
...list includes several of the comedian's friends who were angered by Woodward's book, among them fellow Saturday Night Live star Dan Aykroyd, SNL producer Lorne Michaels and brother Jim Belushi. Reluctance to alienate Ovitz and his clients, claim the film's producers, is what frightened most of Hollywood away. "In this town," says co-producer Edward Feldman (Save the Tiger, Witness), "the word was put out that this was a project not to be touched...
...Teen Wolf and Wish You Were Here. Some contend that Wired's producers are simply trying to generate controversy over a bad film with poor box-office prospects. "The only thing that the producers have to hang on to is the image of Wired as 'the movie that Hollywood tried to stop,' " says Bernie Brillstein, Belushi's former manager. "I think this is a very good plan to get some excitement for the movie...
...drug abuse (Less Than Zero, Clean and Sober) have fizzled at the box office, and Wired is an especially downbeat example. What's more, with Belushi's work so vividly remembered (and still widely available in TV reruns), a movie re-creation might seem morbidly gratuitous, even by Hollywood standards...