WIRED: by Bob WoodwardA critical analysis of the life and death of John Belushi
Who was John Belushi? Where did he come from and how did he get to where he got: a quirky stardom and premature death through drug overdose? Belushi, like a number of others who have gone before him, e.g. Tony Hancock, Freddie Prinz and Lennie Bruce, appears to have been an oxymoron, that most ludicrously tragic of all human figures, a depressed comedian.
The above begs a question, of course. Assuming Belushi really could be classified as depressed in the clinical sense of the word (something we have yet to establish) which came first, the depression or the comic acting out behavior? In 1977 Mitchell Glazer, a 24 year old writer for Crawdaddy magazine (modelled on Rolling Stone) did a cover article on John Belushi. What follows is part of an interview done with Michael O'Donahue, fellow actor and cocaine abuser with Belushi on Saturday Night. Because of their close association and his own perceived need of cocaine to keep him going O'Donahue was in a better position than most to understand what it was that drove John Belushi to his excesses in substance abuse.
What you have to remember is that it's that very
self-destructive drive, that crazed, death-oriented gusto, that puts the edge on his performance. It gives him the edge and puts him over the edge. (cited by Woodward, 1984, p. 112)John Belushi was 33 years old when he died of a heroin overdose. His drugging career probably began in his mid-teens with marijuana and progressed to heavy and frequent marijuana usage, as well as experimentation with other available drugs, during his university years. John's college years were in the late sixties/early seventies when campus drug use was considered almost normative. His most frequent companion in these early dope sessions was his girlfriend, Judy Jacklin, who was later to become his wife and to remain as the principal woman in his life until his death in 1982.
Once John Belushi's acting career truly got underway cocaine became his main drug of abuse, but long before that he was abusing amphetamines and any hallucinogen he could access, with the deleterious effects on his performances already frequently in evidence. In 1972 Belushi was introduced to cocaine by Tony Hendra, director of the off-Broadway production, Lemmings, a spoof on Woodstock. It quickly became his drug of choice but never replaced his amphetamine abuse entirely. Once started on cocaine Belushi began using 'downers' such as quaaludes (methaqualone), a sedative-hypnotic, to get him off the cocaine highs.
Judy Jacklin Belushi reportedly found the state of drug intoxication to be a liberating one, and the only way to have a vacation when there was no time or money for real vacations (Woodward, p. 53). In an endeavor to keep up with her husband, Judy Belushi subsequently developed a cocaine habit which she managed to give up later, in 1977, only with considerable difficulty. As for John Belushi he was never able to give up cocaine once discovered, even though he tried on various occasions. After his death, his wife commented
He would try sometimes to give up cocaine but people kept offering it to him. He'd refuse and they would push. Belushi was no fun just watching others do it; he was funny when he joined in. Cocaine gave him a positiveness about himself, it made everything important and intense. (Woodward, p. 142)The above is probably true in part but Woodward reports interviewing many other of Belushi's associates who avoided offering cocaine to him, pretending they did not have any, because of his tendency to use up all that was available. He also bought it in copious quantities once he started to make money. It becomes clear throughout Woodward's book and also in the film, Wired, that Judy Belushi was an enabler. She admired her husband's talent, loved him, feared for him and made it her personal mission to look after him. To this end she felt entitled to openly approach others with whom Belushi associated both at work and at play and to enlist their assistance in cutting off his drug supply. The ultimate result, predictably, was a backlash in which Belushi tried harder than ever to access drugs and became enfuriated at the notion of anyone attempting to curtail his freedom.
At the core of enabling behavior is a need to control. Yet it is hard to fault Judy Belushi for her attempts to control her husband's drug habit when he was clearly on such a self-destructive path. It is also hard to dismiss her claim that he was ultimately led down the pathway to self-destruction by the drug culture in which he was immersed. As Bob Woodward has so ably documented in both the book and the tape cocaine use was, and is, normative in the high-pressure Hollywood environment. Furthermore, there was a prevailing belief that cocaine was a benign drug, basically a high-class pep pill you could use to give you energy to cope with high pressure situations but with effects that were temporary and completely reversible. The enabling and the mixed messages John Belushi was receiving extended well beyond his wife. As he gradually deteriorated during the last few years of his life, just as he had become a hot commodity, various directors and producers were prepared to turn a blind eye to his drug abuse whenever possible since confronting him led to scenes of childish rage and further slowed down productions. At other times his use of cocaine was even covertly encouraged since it was often the only way for him to get the energy he needed to perform. But during the last few years of his life Belushi was so unpredictable and his drug use so out of control that he was often guarded by an "enforcer" during peak work periods. This was with his agreement since he did want to succeed at the tasks he set for himself. However, all of these manoeuvers must have helped to reinforce the notion for him that control of the drug was outside himself and not really his responsibility.
Indirect methods were found to moderate Belushi's drug use. Some of the crew members of Blues Brothers palmed off diluted cocaine on him to minimize the damage. He also received inconsistent messages from different people at different times, sometimes stringent and punitive and sometimes indulgent and even encouraging in terms of controlling his access to drugs. Morris Lyda, originally hired as the road manager for the Blues Brothers band, became John's personal overseer during the movie of that name . His role was to jolly Belushi along and keep him supplied with enough drugs so that he remained functional during the filming while monitoring him closely enough so he would not lapse into excess. As he described to Woodward later
. . . he couldn't take a stand because of his own drug use. It would have been laughable. He was both facilitator and regulator of John's drugs: it was an impossible contradiction. (Woodward, p. 19)Many people asked Belushi why he took drugs in such excess and risked losing so much. His career was burgeoning. He had a wife and friends who loved him and would do just about anything for him. He had plenty of money. Why risk it all with drugs? His various responses to such queries are sadly informative. When John Landis, the director of Blues Brothers, asked him this question he replied "I need it. I need it. You couldn't possibly understand" (Woodward, p. 20). A later enforcer, Smokey Wendell, asked Belushi the same question about the time of the filming of 1941.
"I don't understand when someone like you has all this going for himself. . . . Why do you have to rely on drugs?" "Basically, it's the pressure," John answered. "Whatever you do as a person to maintain patience and stay alert - the people in this business rely on drugs to do that.""That doesn't make sense to me," Smokey said, "By doing what you're saying, you've got to realize how it's endangering your ability to function. Like alcoholism.""Alcohol and drugs are different things," John said with disgust. (Woodward, p. 179)This answer has a certain appeal because it is partially true. Drug use is endemic and considered normative by most in Hollywood. Expectations from others are often unmeetable and criticism unavoidable. There is no privacy. There is no resting on one's laurels. An actor is only as good as he or she is today. Like second incomes in a family the energy derived from pep pills and cocaine are perceived by many of this beleagered tribe as a necessity for survival, not a luxury. And there is a general disrespect for the body with many stars and would-be stars being so frenetically worried about the present that they can't even think of the long-term consequences of their drug use and abuse they might have to face in the future. However, very few die of a drug overdose at a young age and of those who do it is generally much more of a fluke than it was in Belushi's case.
There is ample evidence in Woodward's book that Belushi was not just reacting to the external stressors imposed by his sudden stardom. There are various indications that he was deliberately creating and sustaining a persona through the use of drugs that he considered central to his success. There are also many references to an unsettled emotional state that existed long before his acting career began In a 1978 Newsweek critique of the newly released Animal House the writer commented
Belushi is a rarity among comedians. What you see on stage is also what you see off. He is a bundle of conflicting emotions.Yes, he wants success, money and stardom, but the punky kid in him recoils at the prospect of it all. Belushi enjoys operating at full throttle, on the edge, and he knows very well that his manic style has helped get him where he is. (Woodward, p. 152)If Belushi's long-term abuse of cocaine was merely a calculated effort to assist him in sustaining a marketable persona it seems likely that the use would have been more moderate and there were certainly times when he used or implied he used cocaine in that way. Woodward cites a conversation with Carly Simons, actor, one night in 1978 on this point.
Drugs were bad for everyone, John said, but they unleashed something unique that helped a performer, and the key was to find some way to retain that without being destructive. (Woodward, p. 143)Throughout his career Belushi's drug excesses appear to have done much more to harm his performances than to help them and this was so blatant it must have beeen obvious even to him. There was something in his personality that drove him to these excesses, however. Lorne Michaels was the switchboard during the filming of Blues Brothers and describes him as follows. "He was like a child who needed more of everything - attention, love, scolding, explanations. But he was capable of subtlety." (Woodward, p. 94).
As mentioned earlier Belushi consumed many substances to excess. He ate excessively, and by the time he died was markedly obese and out of shape. He drank excessively when he drank but alcohol was always something he could take or leave. The same appears to have been true with the hallucinogens and the other designer drugs he dabbled in. He had a kind of voracious curiosity and a total disrespect for his body and what these substances might do to it. He was exploring the limits, wanting to know all that was out there, whatever the cost might be. Why? What drove him to do this day after day and year after year?
Belushi had a fascination with creatives who had ended prematurely through substance abuse, e.g. Dylan Thomas, Bruce Lennie. Even as a teenager he had an unusual interest in death. Does this preoccupation plus his blatantly self-abusive behavior point towards the type of indirect suicidal intent characteristic of some depressives or was there another root to his unusual behavior? In an interview with Michael Segell of Cosmopolitan on August 19, 1981 (seven months before he died) Segell commented that some of John's friends had mentioned his self-destructive tendencies. Belushi replied as follows
It's taken me a long time to break out of that.... I think I have, though. It's the kind of thing that tends to be cyclical, feeding off itself. You go through periods of deep depression. (Woodward, p. 229)In May of 1981 Judy Belushi, concerned that her husband appeared to be heavily into cocaine again after a period of relative abstinence, described his increasingly erratic behaviors to a Los Angeles cocaine therapist, Dr. Ron Siegel. He speculated that a mood disorder might be present and, if so, an antidepressant such as lithium might be helpful. Of interest is the fact that Judy Belushi, who had lived with John Belushi for more than ten years at that point and likely knew him better than anyone, could not relate to the depression theory. That was not the John she knew. There was something else.
Let us consider John Belushi's personality characteristics as identified by friends and associates and alluded to in various passages throughout Bob Woodward's book on him.
Karen Allen, a young actress who worked closely with Belushi in Animal House, "found John astonishingly shy and vulnerable. Rather than being a confident established star, he seemed nervous about meeting everyone, about fitting in." (Woodward, p. 125). Michael O'Donahue, costar in Saturday Night, described how "John's most annoying traits were also his most lovable - the boyish inquisitiveness, the careless spontaneity and reckless compulsions".
Belushi also had obsessional tendencies and an inability to handle unstructured time, almost a fear of it. Bernie Brillstein, producer of Blues Brothers, described Belushi's behavior during slack time while this movie was being filmed. "When there was idle time, John would go get drugs, or go get three pizzas, a blow job, or a nap". (Woodward, p. 24).
Belushi's anti-authoritarianism, his need to not be controlled by others, alternated with an equally strong need to exert control over others. When his drug abuse was getting clearly out of hand during the filming of Blues Brothers Brillstein attempted to point out the dangers of this to Belushi. Belushi threw a major temper tantrum as he did on other similar occasions and drew his line in the sand which he would not allow Brillstein or anybody else to cross in terms of what they could and could not dictate to him.
Although so strongly against anyone exercising control overt him Belushi was fascinated by tyrannical leaders like Hitler and Napoleon who exerted maximum control over others (Woodward, p. 196). In his movies Belushi attempted to control everything, the directing, the actor's words and movements, even the stage sets. He would listen to some extent to a few people very close to him like Dan Ackroyd but otherwise was very closed to other people's ideas. He was not a team player and considered any movie he was in as his movie. To gain this degree of control he collected information feverishly. As Brillstein explained to Brown, Belushi's costar in Continental Divide,
One peculiar thing - he's got to know everything and I mean everything. . . . You're getting along fine. He likes you. But don't ever lie to him. He'll find out, and then you'll have a real problem. (Woodward, p. 212)Belushi's need for control seemed to be in compensation for a deep sense of vulnerability. His early and deep feelings of inadequacy (discussed below) were apparently kept at bay through frenzied activity, novel diversions, pretend grandiosity and a willful effort to control others who might reveal his weaknesses in some way and who could therefore be seen as a threat by him. Blair Brown, his costar in Continental Divide, describes the classic control games he played out in their relationship.
Brown found Belushi all nerves; he also seemed bored and never really focused on her and, at first, seemed to regard the material as if it were going to be a snap. Brown tried to make herself seem approachable through strong eye contact with John, but he remained aloof. They read some lines, but she had the feeling that John would have liked to leave. As they rehearsed over several days, Brown saw that John had a way of keeping her off balance. If she approached something seriously, he would try to cover it with a laugh. But if she tried to lighten it up, he would hit her with a serious side. The remoteness remained, and she felt more and more on the outside. (Woodward, p. 192)Belushi's anti-authoritarianism and need for control were to some extent offset by his volatility and his deep need for affection and acceptance. He was not cool and calculating enough to be termed antisocial. There was also an indecisiveness in him at times that he found almost torturing. A good example of this occurred very early on when he was vacillating between attending an audition for the Shawnee Summer Stock Theatre, a very unusual opportunity for a high school senior, and just concentrating on a football scholarship to pay his way through university. Elements of grandiosity (he claimed to be 5'9" and his wife states he was 5'7", much too short to compete effectively as a linebacker) vied with paralyzing feelings of inadequacy. Just after his audition he knew he had been good because of all the laughs he had received but soon his confidence flagged and he was full of doubts. (Woodward, p. 35-37). A short while before he died Belushi ordered heroin from Cathy Smith and changed his mind three times about whether or not to go through with it (Woodward, p. 360).
Belushi's low self-esteem, fear of failure and indecisiveness were undoubtedly exacerbated by two external factors. First there was his family, hiding their ethnic heritage as Albanian from their middle-class and presumably anti-communist neighbours. Then there was his sudden rise to fame and to a position he was very afraid he could not hold. He would not be the first star to be crushed by the Hollywood machine. Yet many have survived so we must look deeper still to understand what it was that was his undoing..
Belushi's dark complexion, Middle Eastern features and short, bandy legs gave him a certain anti-establishment charm but to him they were not charming. He did not like or respect his body very much as is evidenced by the way he treated it. He was inherently very strong and hardy and he exploited this for every laugh he could wring out of it from deliberately choking on a chicken bone until he turned blue to running full tilt into brick walls and breaking bottles and flattening beer cans against his head. He took drugs in rapid succession that had contradictory actions, first stimulating and then depressing his heart and other vital organ functions and on several cases passed out, vomited, quit breathing and would have died without assistance. Were these the kinds of covert suicide attempts one sees in depressives who reason "If I live I live and if I die I die" or were they more a demonstration of being completely out of touch with his body and its needs?
One other issue of note is Belushi's general uncomfortability around women in authority. As a young actor he would sabotage skits prepared by women writers (Woodward, p. 86). Yet some of his most remarkable impersonations were of transvestites.
Like many substance abusers Belushi clearly had some very serious personality problems. He had major issues around control, was obsessional, constantly sought novelty and was afraid of being alone and having to cope with unstructured time. He sought immediate gratification and often acted out like a spoilt, undisciplined child. David Gelbart, screenwriter for Continental Divide, expressed his astonishment at Belushi's performance during the audition to Woodward in a subsequent interview.
He was a terrible reader and acted like a kid with homework that he didn't want to do. He made repeated mistakes. He was also smoking marijuana and offering it around. John left the readings a couple of times, and when he came back it seemed as though he was more withdrawn than before. Gelbart was sure he was taking something stronger when he was out of the room. (Woodward, p. 209)Clearly John Belushi had some fairly serious identity problems. Who was he anyway? Was he the star portrayed in the media or just a short,fat guy who had accidentally struck a chord with his audience and now had to maintain this "manic edge" through cocaine or sink back into oblivion? Did he act in the self-defeating manner described above because he could not sustain a belief in himself and felt such anxiety over the inevitability of his exposure as a nobody that to some extent he just wanted to get it over with? At many critical points in his career he acted in the above fashion according to the information collected by Woodward.
I have watched two of Belushi's movies: Blues Brothers and Animal Farm in order to gain the necessary perspective to complete this analysis and I was not impressed. I have read reviews on these movies in Halliwell's The Filmgoer's Companion, Scheuer's The Complete Guide to Videocassette Movies and Morris' The Film Companion and the reviews range from lukewarm to openly derogatory. The brilliant comic timing, the legend that Belushi was touted to become in the media is not in evidence. Hollywood hype has destroyed a lot of actors, made them today and broken them tomorrow. As McLuhan said, "The Media is the Message". Perhaps Belushi vacillated between being sure he was really a failure and believing that some of the hype was correct. Cocaine would have helped him maintain the illusion of success, the feelings of power and control. Perhaps he was right when he pleaded that he needed it. To survive in that world under those circumstances it may well be that he did.
What pathology could we ascribe to Belushi that would possibly explain his bizarre drug abuse? Was he psychopathic? No. Regardless of his antiauthoritarianism and control needs he had real connections to other people and a strong need for approval and affection.
Was he depressed? Undoubtedly at times and his sleeping and eating disorders would certainly fit in with this diagnosis. However, this depression may have been secondary to the biochemical imbalance created by his substance abuse. From what we know of him he did not quite meet DSM-4 criteria for clinical depression in terms of coexistence and duration of a set of specific symptoms independently of what can be explained through neurotransmitter alteration secondary to his substance abuse.
Did he have some other type of personality disorder, antisocial for instance? He would meet the criterion for this disorder, 3 out of 7 descriptors expressing a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others even though he was capable of expressing remorse at times. Again, though, we have to wonder to what extent it was the drug blunting his affect, his sensitivity, his prosocial tendencies. Yet even at a young, pre-drug age he demonstrated a number of these antisocial qualities including a veritable obsession with getting his own way.
Although it might seem paradoxical at first blush one can also speculate about the presence of an Avoidant Personality Disorder. His fear of intimacy seemed quite evident in terms of his relationship with costar, Blair Brown, described earlier. The frantic humor could have been a mechanism for keeping people at arm's length and keeping his true self concealed. He let Judy Jacklin into his world to some extent and also Dan Ackroyd. With others he seems to have had a sentimental, superficial and/or exploitative relationship.
What about Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Certainly his larger-than-lifeness, fear of boredom, constant craving for novelty and addictive personality would fit this mold. Woodward (p. 18) reports that he once told Carrie Fisher they were alike, declared himself an addict and explained that what he meant by that was his constant craving for excitement and his seeking out the possibility of more.
One last personality disorder we might consider is Dependent. His difficulty in making decisions, his need for others to assume responsibility in major areas of his life (despite his constant, childlike battle for control, his feeling of helplessness when alone would fit but other qualities would not.
What the above exercise demonstrates is the limitations of DSM-4 and the futility of attempting to categorize people in general. If I had to speculate, never having met this man I would start with an hypothesis about an unusual expression of Avoidant Personality Disorder. Belushi clearly had a considerable amount of self-loathing, a contempt for his physical being and deep feelings of inadequacy. He had no clear, defining sense of who he was in this world apart from his role as comic. When he did express strong emotion, as in anger, his moods proved very brittle and could crumble in a second. If we pursue this hypothesis we can speculate that he spent a lifetime trying to escape himself and to become what others expected him to become while never letting down his guard to anyone to reveal what he truly was. Such a lonely odyssey would be truly draining and ultimately very depressing.
Given the above what could have been done to save Belushi from himself? Did he in any sense commit suicide in an indirect way by slowly and inexorably pushing his body over the edge? He must have known something about what this combination of drugs could do to him? If his enablers could have succeeded in keeping him away from drugs would he have survived or would he have found another path to self-destruction? At one point in Woodward's book Judy Belushi states that she wishes her husband's cocaine abuse had been exposed and his career ruined. That way he might have survived. Is this conclusion likely to be true.
John Belushi seems to have been set on a self-hating, self-destructive course from the beginning. He found an escape from himself in his comedy but never believed himself to be truly that good and it seems quite possible that this perception was correct. Fear of failure often causes people to wilfully present themselves in a bad light, i.e. not learn lines, be lazy and irresponsible, handicap themselves through substance impairment, in order to not have to face up to the fact that even if circumstances were ideal and they did everything right they still would not be good enough. It is this fear of failure, this inability to truly love and believe in himself that ultimately destroyed John Belushi. Cocaine and amphetamines, heroin and quaaludes,. were just the vehicles.
BibliographyWoodward, Bob. (1984) Wired: The short life and fast times of John Belushi. New York: Simon and Schuster.
American Psychiatric Association. (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.
Canadian Pharmaceutical Association. (1995) Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties, Thirtieth Edition.
Scheuer, Steven (1987) The Complete Guide to Videocassette Movies. New York: Henry Holt.
Morris, Peter (1984) The Film Companion. Toronto: Gagne Printing (World Film Festival).
Wired: (1984) Director:
Animal House. (1978) Director: John Landis
The Blues Brothers. (1980) Director: John Landis.
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