Wired (film)

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Wired
Directed by	Larry Peerce
Produced by	Charles R. Meeker Edward S. Feldman
Written by	Bob Woodward (book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi) Earl Mac Rauch (screenplay)
Starring	Michael Chiklis Ray Sharkey J.T. Walsh Patti D'Arbanville Lucinda Jenney Alex Rocco Gary Groomes Jere Burns
Music by	Basil Poledouris
Cinematography	Tony Imi
Editing by	Eric A. Sears
Distributed by	Taurus Entertainment Company
Release date(s)	August 25, 1989 (USA)
Running time	112 min.
Language	English
Budget	Unknown
Gross revenue	$1,089,000 (USA)
IMDb profile

Wired is a 1989 film biography of John Belushi directed by Larry Peerce, and adapted from the book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi, which was written by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward and published in 1984. It starred Michael Chiklis (The Commish, The Shield, Fantastic Four) as Belushi in his film debut. Wired was a critical and commercial failure.

The book was a best-seller but was criticized by many close to Belushi for its sensationalism, and the film adaptation does nothing to separate itself from the book's reputation. Like the book, the film was boycotted by several of Belushi's friends and family, including Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, and Belushi's widow, Judith Belushi Pisano.

The film's makers were unable to obtain rights to the original Saturday Night Live skits that had made Belushi a star, and the film's screenwriters were forced to write imitations (e.g. "Samurai Baseball").

The movie was also criticized due to the addition of several fictional elements that were not present in the book, such as a guardian angel character, and the addition of Woodward himself (played by J.T. Walsh in the movie). These problems were also a factor in the movie being a disaster at the box office, aside from the boycott.

As of this writing, this film has never been released on DVD, and the videocassette (released by International Video Entertainment, now known as Lions Gate Home Entertainment and later re-released by Avid Home Entertainment) is out of print.

1 Plot
2 Critical reaction
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Plot

The story follows John Belushi shortly after dying from a drug overdose, as he literally awakens in a morgue and is about to undergo an autopsy. Panicked, Belushi escapes and finds himself in the company of the enigmatic Angel (Ray Sharkey), a Puerto Rican cabbie who takes Belushi to significant moments in his life from the beginning of his career to the courtship of his wife, Judith, into his burgeoning comedy career and his eventual decline. The film alternates between Belushi as a ghost and his journey with Angel to flashbacks (in non-linear) style as his career starts to heat up. Meanwhile, journalist Bob Woodward (J.T. Walsh) is researching Belushi's life as he prepares to write a book about the late comic actor.

[edit] Critical reaction

Leonard Maltin condemned the movie as "the film fiasco of its year... mind-numbingly wrongheaded."

Writing for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley dismissed the movie as "the silliest celebrity bio since Mommie Dearest" and "a biography without an ounce of soul or a shred of dignity. Billed as a fantasy-comedy-drama, it manages to be none of these. The drama is laughable, the comedy lame, the fantasy without wings."[1]

Also writing for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wondered if this movie is "what the real Belushi's family, friends and fans really need. Certainly Belushi deserves as much scrutiny as the next public figure who died after heavy drug use, but this autopsy seems unnecessary." Howe had no praise for Michael Chiklis' performance as Belushi: "Despite a histrionic outpouring of growls, snorts, yells and re-creations of familiar Belushi shticks, from Jake Elmore to Joe Cocker, Chiklis seems to miss every opportunity to redeem himself. He's loud where he should have been soft, flat where he should have been funny and dead where he should have been alive."[2]

Vincent Canby for the New York Times described the movie as "a bit fuzzy and off-center."[3]

Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that the movie "is in some ways a sincere attempt to deal with the material, but it is such an ungainly and hapless movie, so stupidly written, so awkwardly directed and acted, that it never gets off the ground." He also criticized the movie's lack of authenticity: "There should be, at some point in a movie like this, a moment when we have the illusion that we are seeing the real John Belushi...That moment never comes. I always was aware that an actor (Michael Chiklis) was before me on the screen, and that Wired was an ungainly fictional construction. The saddest moments were the ones in which Chiklis attempted to re-create some of Belushi's famous characters and routines. He never gives us a living Belushi, and so why should we care about the movie's dead Belushi?"[4]

Rolling Stone labeled the movie "a howling dog...Whether by design or by forced compromise, Wired is even more of a gloss than the candy-assed view of Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire!. Far from pointing any fingers, Wired the movie hardly names names...it appears that nearly everyone Belushi encountered in big, bad Hollywood tried to warn him off demon drugs. Wired packs all the investigative wallop of a Care Bears flick."[5]

[edit] Trivia

Michael Chiklis won the role after being chosen over 200 other actors. Many thought that Chiklis would never ascend to stardom for being the lead in such a negatively received film.

Lucinda Jenney, who played Belushi's wife in the film would play across from Michael Chiklis as a City Auditor out to get him in season two of The Shield.

The Blues Brothers never performed "634-5789" in concert as they do in this movie; however, Eddie Floyd performed the song in the movie Blues Brothers 2000 (1998).

In the scene where John Landis is walking across the set from The Blues Brothers, a helicopter can be heard in the background (a reference to the helicopter accident which occurred when Landis filmed Twilight Zone: The Movie). Landis flat out refused to have his name or image incorporated into the film and threatened to sue, causing the producers to label a generic name on the film director who appears in the film. The film director is an obvious lookalike of Landis during The Blues Brothers sequence.

One scene in Wired features Joe Strummer's song "Love Kills", from the soundtrack to Sid and Nancy (1986) - another biopic about a celebrity drug casualty (Sid Vicious). Interestingly, both Sid and Nancy and Wired tell their respective stories largely in flashback form, and both movies use the image of a taxi cab as a metaphor for the afterlife.

The producers had problems finding a distributor for the film, as many of the major studios refuse to distribute the film. Several independent studios such as New Horizons backed away from it. Atlantic Entertainment was about to distribute it, but financial problems prevented that from happening, so Taurus Entertainment agreed to distribute the film.

Two years after the release of the film, Belushi's widow, Judith Belushi Pisano, wrote her first book (Samurai Widow, 1991) to counter the image of her late husband portrayed in the original book and this adaptation.