THE MORNING LIST
This week, back to the future with John Belushi, the Blues Brother gone too soon. A tribute to Lars Vogt, who also left too quickly. And two subjects of red alert: asbestos, the killer fiber which continues to be produced in millions of tons on the planet, prohibited in only sixty-seven countries; and wine, whose alcohol content continues to increase, due to global warming. Plus a message of hope, in these difficult times: the Happy Cafés and their “happy team members”, suffering from mental or cognitive disabilities, true “nice organizers” of a society in social and solidarity change.
Portrait of a comic genius with self-destructive impulses
RJ Cutler places in his artistic orbit the most gifted actor of his generation, star of the legendary film The Blues Brothers, died of an overdose in 1982, at age 33. John Belushi remained, until the worldwide success of John Landis’ film in 1980, an essentially American phenomenon. The documentary not only draws the forced trajectory of a comic genius, with the self-destructive impulses inseparable from this talent. It meticulously reconstructs the thread of an existence, from audio recordings recently found, with the testimonies of those close to Belushi: his friends from “Saturday Night Live” – the NBC entertainment program in which all future stars passed comedy: Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell… –, Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd (with whom he formed the duo of The Blues Brothers); directors John Landis, Michael Apted, Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman; actress Carrie Fisher; the comedian’s widow, Judy Belushi Pisano.
Here emerges the portrait of an artist aware of his unusual talent, inhabited by an uncommon self-confidence, from the outset confronted with demons that he will never be able to tame. In Wired (1984, translated into French, in 2015, by Capricci, under the title John Belushi. The crazy and tragic life of a Blues Brother), reference survey on the comedian, Bob Woodward, the journalist of the Washington Post, stigmatized a drug culture shared by the actor’s entourage, a microcosm that did nothing significant to get him out of this path. Belushi serves as a national treasure, whose chubby, expressive face runs through the best comedies of the second half of the 1970s. Samuel Blumenfeld
Belushi, documentary by RJ Cutler (United States, 2020, 113 minutes). Available on OCS City.
You have 73.35% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.