John Belushi SNL 40

Still miss this guy he made me laugh many many times.

 

The Blues Brothers is my favorite movie of all time.

 

So funny to see him and Eddie Murphy in the same scene. Wish they had been able to get him to do more, but he was just doing it as a favor to the band to get them on the show.

 

he is missed...one of my favorite SNL comedians.

 

I always wished they'd included the opening to one of the episodes of Police Squad! (in color!) that he was in (but never aired) in the DVD collection of that series.

 

Man...I never knew about that.

The amazingly talented John Belushi filmed a cameo for one episode of Police Squad, in which he was seen underwater wearing “cement shoes”. Belushi sadly died before the episode aired and so the part was changed and his character re-cast out of respect for the actor.

 

And the Zucker brothers said the footage is lost.

 

No, I actually was the actual technician, working freelance for Paramount, who replaced the shot the day of air. From my dim (1982) memory, shot showed Belushi in a bad guy's car sitting in the back, you heard some gunshots, and his body was thrown out of the car. We removed that clip a day or two after Belushi died (but before his appearance was scheduled), and I think dropped in a replacement shot of Lorne Greene doing the exact same thing. It didn't even occur to me to keep a copy, and I figured it'd be in bad taste anyway.

The Paramount exec I worked with on the show used to shake his head and said there were times he thought he and I were the only people who "got" the show and laughed at it -- the ratings were very bad. Very much a show "ahead of its time."

 

As a huge Airplane! fan and a fan of the Naked Gun movies, I never thought Police Squad the tv show was funny. Even years later I rented it on vhs and felt the same way. I also thought Top Secret! was unfunny too.

 

I thought (and still think) that Police Squad was hilarious. The Naked Gun movies simplified and dumbed down the humor a bit, and were not nearly as good.

 

Just wanted to point out that Lorne Greene appeared on the first episode, which aired March 4, 1982 (which happened to be the day before Belushi died). So your memory must be mistaken (understandably, after 39 years). The common lore is that Belushi was supposed to appear on episode five and was replaced by Florence Henderson. However, episode six features William Conrad "dying" in the same manner that Greene did on episode one (being stabbed and thrown out of a moving car). So perhaps Belushi was originally in episode six and you've gotten Greene and Conrad confused in your memory?

 

I still miss him! but I have the first 5 seasons on DVD so I can revisit the great "John" years anytime.

 

another great bit of info for the archives...thanks.

 

I'm confused - when were Belushi and Murphy together?

I didn't see anyone other than Belushi in the OP's video clip.

Is there another sketch from that same episode where they're together?

EDIT: I found the whole sketch and see that Murphy was in it as well - just not on screen at the same time:

 

Belushi didn't even wash his hands.

 

This was 1981. They didn't discover that hand-washing was a good idea until the mid-90s...

 

They are in the same sketch....except Eddie meets Donald Plesance at the begin and then walks out of the bathroom....then Belushi enters by himself to cheers and that ends the sketch.
But Eddie and John don't interact in the scene.
Outside of SNL, I think Eddie Dan and John hung out once and John offered him blow. Eddie turned him down cause he doesn't do drugs and John called him a pu$$y
In a playboy interview they asked Eddie what was his reaction to John's death and he said "Basically, it was a waste"

 

this still freaks me out..

 

I didn't see the Police Squad series until after seeing the Naked Gun, when it was rentable on VHS. I was surprised when I found out it existed. I was a pretty young kid when it originally aired so probably would've had to have been lucky to find out it was on. Just about the earliest comedy for adults I can remember seeing is the SNL episode where Buckwheat got shot, and that was about a year after Police Squad aired.

Naked Gun is definitely my favorite thing from the ZAZ brothers. I had seen Airplane on TV before and definitely loved it, especially Leslie Nielsen's part. So Naked Gun took the funniest actor in Airplane and gave him non-stop hilarious things to do for the entire movie. That movie is what firmly cemented Nielsen as the Laurence Olivier of spoofs once and for all, deservedly so. I still think it's the most rewatchable of the ZAZ movies because it really has a strong plot line all the way through that gives the humor its "straight" reality to bounce off of. The Naked Gun plot makes perfect sense, but is still so succinct and simple that you don't have to focus on it while the movie uses it to logically connect lots of huge, self-contained comedy sequences. Airplane is still the next best thing they did, full of classic moments, but is a little more randomly structured when they throw in cutaways and vignettes for jokes about the passengers.

Police Squad is probably better than the Naked Gun sequels. It has more of the blink-and-you-miss-the-joke style of Airplane and Naked Gun. The Naked Gun sequels were blunter, with more in-your-face sight gags, gross-out jokes and slapstick. Of course, the Naked Gun movies swiped a lot of jokes right from the show, so the show probably feels less impactful for people who saw any of the movies first. The advantage the movies have over the show is that the show was burdened with setting up a fairly complicated detective plot from scratch every episode, and therefore had less time to work in completely out-of-left-field sequences like the disco in Airplane or the baseball game in Naked Gun.

I also saw Top Secret on VHS later and thought it was really funny. The flaws in the movie are the obvious ones, that Val Kilmer wasn't that naturally funny and that Elvis musicals were a weak subject for parody in the 1980s. The spy material and the completely random jokes like the Wizard of Oz reference are the better parts of the movie.

I never got around to seeing the Hot Shots movies, but the first is still free on YouTube so I should probably check it out.

 

I love Top Secret! (apologies for going off topic, Mr. Belushi). It was one of those movies I would recommend to friends, almost all of whom had never heard of it. It's definitely a acquired taste (a parody of Elvis movies and WWII movies), and hard to classify. Maybe not for everyone.

The scene that won me over when I first watched it was the one where Nick Rivers is crawling in a war zone, pulls up to a pair of military boots (one of the hoariest cliches of war movies), the camera pans up... and there's no one in them.

 

Huge John Belushi fan as well and a favorite is Continental Divide. Not a "great" film, but Belushi's terrific in it. He's an unconventional leading man to be sure and there isn't much chemistry between Belushi and Blair Brown, but as an actor his chops are solid. Man, if only Belushi lived...

 

Yeah, I edited with an update to include the whole scene!

 

IMDB trivia says William Conrad was the actor who replaced Belushi's scene in Police Squad. But they also have the erroneous description of "cement shoes" in there.

I think Ghostbusters and Spies Like Us were originally written to co-star Belushi. Were there any other movies that actually came out which would've had Belushi in them if he hadn't died?

Another bit of trivia I learned recently. Dan Aykroyd fired actor J.T. Walsh from Loose Cannons after two days of filming because he found out he acted in the unauthorized Belushi biopic Wired. Of course, Aykroyd despised that film and had spoken out against it many times:

When Aykroyd Fired Walsh Over Wired

 

Quick story about this movie. I grew up in Wheaton, IL, John's hometown (both of my parents went to high school with John). Not only that, but I lived on the same street, albeit a few blocks down. Him being on SNL was a HUGE deal around town. When I was in 7th (or 8th??) grade, we took the train into Chicago to do some Christmas shopping. John happened to be shooting Continental Divide at the train station. While everything was well roped off, we got to watch filming for a while. Afterwards, John waived to everyone as he headed to a cab. As it was, I was already wearing a Wheaton school jacket, which John saw from him cab. He pointed to me and waved me over. He asked me all kinds of questions about Wheaton (he LOVED that I lived on Elm and also that I knew his mom who had worked at the drug store down the street where we bought all our candy and comic books). I our conversation lasted only 6-7 minutes, but it seemed to last forever. Looking back, it seemed John was able to take a short break from his troubled life and just enjoyed connecting with someone from his less-troubled past. I've been in music/video/book distribution for 30 years and have met a ton of celebrities over the years. But nothing comes close to my encounter when I was 12.

 

Could well be William Conrad. He was roughly the same size and weight as Belushi, so the match would be easier. I think the insert was just the body rolling over in the street, like a 5-second shot. This is one show I saw twice 41 years ago, so it's been awhile.