'Belushi' Documentary Sketches Comedian's Short Life

John Belushi, who died of an drug overdose in 1982, is the subject of R.J. Cutler's documentary Belushi on Showtime. 

Director R.J. Cutler stitches together audio interviews with Belushi's closest friends and associates, including his wife Judy, brother Jim, comedy partner Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and more.

John Belushi with a Blues Brothers pin, circa 1980

The doc delves into Belushi's drug problems, which Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels had to deal with every week. “He’d been out with [the Rolling Stones'] Ronnie Wood and he was a mess,” Michaels says about a show in February 1979. “He was coughing, he looked terrible and the doctor says, ‘John can’t go on,’ and I was somewhere between rage and very little sympathy.”

RELATED: Samaurai Blues Brother

Belushi is also a focus of Jim's reality TV show on Discovery Growing Belushi in which he culitivates legal marijuana in Oregon. Jim contends that John would be alive today if he'd used marijuana instead of heroin and cocaine.

 

Become a Patron!

Steve Bloom

Steve Bloom

Publisher of CelebStoner.com, former editor of High Times and Freedom Leaf and co-author of Pot Culture and Reefer Movie Madness.